Pear compote

I've recently moved to a new home in England, and my neighbours, at the back of my garden, have a pear tree. I've been told that according to English law, if any of the fruit happens to be on my side of the wall, the fruit belongs to me. I've been looking at this lovely little pear tree for a few weeks now, and the pears are finally ready. 

However, they are very waxy for my taste and I wouldn't eat them straight off the tree, because they leave a bitter aftertaste. So I made 3 pears in compote. As I've only moved recently and I haven't got many herbs and spices, I used what I had in my cupboard to flavour the pears ... Mmm, not much! So I infused them with lemon and ginger tea and a tablespoon of caster sugar. Once they were slightly soft, I put them in a jar in the fridge. I know I will eat them very quickly. 

Serve as a refreshing, healthy desert, with a dollop of half-fat creme freche (the one that Jamie Oliver likes!). De-li-cious!

Digi credits: photo by moi, gypsy PS action by Florabella Collection, texture by Kim Klassen, blending mode: soft light. Pear from my neighbour's tree! -- Oh, and the saucer is a little treasure I found in my local Antique Chinese furniture shop

Risotto with an Asian twist

Last week I posted a recipe using Yunnan's dried mushrooms, which were kindly sent directly from Shangri-La by our friends at Songtsam Lodges (here). Yesterday I made mushroom risotto, with an Asian twist, as suggested by Ling. This is an adaptation of Jamie Oliver's recipe.

Ingredients

1 litres vegetable stock
1 small knob of butter
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
handful of dried Yunnan mushrooms
1 cup frozen peas
400 g risotto rice
2 wineglasses dry white wine
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
knob of butter
Grated cheese (ideally Parmesan, but otherwise, whatever Jenny Lou's has to offer)

Method
1)

 In a pan, heat the olive oil and butter, add the onions, and drained mushrooms and fry very slowly for about 15 minutes without colouring. When they have softened, add the rice and turn up the heat.

2)

 The rice will now begin to lightly fry, so keep stirring it. After a minute it will look slightly translucent. Add the wine and keep stirring.

3) 

Once the wine has cooked into the rice, add your first ladle of hot stock and a good pinch of salt. Turn down the heat to a simmer so the rice doesn't cook too quickly on the outside. At this point you may add the frozen peas (they are the only type of peas available in Beijing in February). Keep adding ladlefuls of stock, stirring constantly and allowing each ladleful to be absorbed before adding the next. This will take around 15 minutes. Taste the rice to see if it's cooked and carry on adding stock until the rice is soft but with a slight bite. Season to taste. If you run out of stock before the rice is cooked, add some boiling water.

4) 

Remove from the heat and add the butter and grated cheese. Stir well. Place a lid on the pan and allow to sit for 2 minutes to let it cream out! Serve with crusty farmhouse-style bread and butter.

The Flavours of Yunnan

This winter has been one of the coldest in recent years in Beijing, certainly the harshest since I came to live here almost four years ago. We've had freezing temperatures, snow, rain and the highest, most terrible, unhealthy pollution levels. Many days in the last months, we just wanted to stay wrapped up at home, avoiding going out as much as possible.

One day, I received a package from our friends in Songtsam Lodges (here). The small box had a beautiful bag full of delicious dried Matsutake mushrooms from the mountains in Shangri-la. Memories of our wonderful holidays last summer came back  immediately and as I brought the bag close to my face and smelled it: the earthy, strong fragrance sent me back to the pine forests on the mountains of Yunnan. The whole family had been mushroom hunting with our guide, Dorma, and later we ate a feast of barbecued mushrooms under the stars.

So, back home in Beijing, on a cold winter's night, I made this soup. like most Chinese soups, it is thin and clear, not creamy or heavy but more like a broth or consommé. This is the recipe, with a little bit of help from my friends Liming and Ling.

Chicken and Mushroom Soup (a Chinese classic)

Ingredients

a handful of dried Matsutake mushrooms

3 chicken legs (more flavoursome than chicken breast)

half an onion (roughly chopped)

a piece of ginger, sliced (about 3 slices should be enough, you don't want to cover the mushroom flavours)

water

1 or 2 tbs fresh coriander leaves

small bunch of spring onions

1 tbsp Shaoxing rice wine

seasoning to taste

Method

First wash the dried mushrooms in cold water and leave to soak for a few hours or overnight.

In a big saucepan, put the mushrooms, chicken, onion, ginger and salt to taste. Liming tells me that in Yunnan they would use free-range chickens, but they are not so readily available in Beijing. I should mention that the first time I cooked it, I roughly chopped the mushrooms, but their shape is so pretty, that the following times I left them whole.

Cover with cold water and bring to a quick boil. Bring the heat down to low, skim off the scum with a strainer and let the soup simmer for about 1 hour or until the water is reduced by half. If you want, you can remove the chicken from the liquid and after leaving to cool for a little bit, remove from the bone and skin and return the shredded pieces to the soup.

To finish off, remove from the heat, add Shaoxing wine rice (optional), coriander, green onions, pepper, adjust seasoning, and serve.

dried mushrooms straight from Yunnan

mushrooms, chicken, onion, ginger and water to begin with

skim off the scum with a strainer 

beautiful shape

If you are interested in our adventures in Yunnan - The Kingdom South of the Clouds, you can visit my other blog postings here:
Buddhist Basketball
Little wild flower of Yunnan
Last Hidden World
Tibetan Buddhism prayer flags
Yunnan mooncakes

Sausage and Bean Casserole

This winter has been particularly cold and miserable in Beijing, and I've had to come up with ideas to cheer up our family meals. One recipe that never fails is Sausage and Bean Casserole, from The Good Housekeeping Recipe book. I've had this book for almost 20 years, and this was one of the first English recipes I learnt. It's a classic.

In Beijing I buy home-made sausages from Drew, bjsozzies at gmail.com

1 small onion
1 carrot
1 tbsp oil
500g pork and herb sausages
1 tin chick peas (400g)
1 tin red kidney beans (400g)
1 tin tomatoes (chopped)
1 tbs flour or cornflour
350ml stock
1 tsp tabasco sauce
2 tbsp tomato puree
salt and pepper to taste
2 tbsp chopped parsley

Slice the onions and chop the carrot. Heat the oil in a casserole (pan). I like to cut the sausages before cooking them, it is less messy. Fry them for 5 minutes until nice and brown. Since the sausages have some fat in them, I don't need to use much oil. Remove from the casserole. Lower the heat and add the onions, then the carrots. Cook until soft. Return the sausages to the pan. Drain and rinse the chick peas, kidney beans and add to the casserole with the tin tomatoes. Stir well. Blend the cornflour with a little of the stock , then add to the casserole with the remainder of the stock, Tabasco sauce, tomato puree and seasoning. Stir.

Bring to the boil, cover and cook on a medium fire for about 1 hour or longer, to increase the depth of flavour (it tastes even better the following day). Sprinkle with the chopped parsley. Serve in a bowl and accompany with home-made, rustic bread or serve on a plate with mashed potatoes. Sit in front of the telly and watch 'Modern Family' followed by a nice cuppa and a biscuit. Ahhh ... Bliss!

Dishy fishy

After a trip to the Jingshen fish market with some friends, I made two delicious seafood dishes tonight. If you would like to see some photos and some information about the market, check out my blog here.

I saved the salmon for another occasion, so it's in the freezer now. As soon as I got home I peeled and cleaned the tiger prawns and defrosted and cleaned the mussels. I found this excellent video clip that tells you how to clean and handle these wonderful Greenshell mussels from New Zealand here, they are so succulent and yummy! As soon as they are caught, they are cleaned and frozen, but the nice thing is, besides their attractive green shells, they come already open, with only one shell, so eating them is not a fiddly business. I had no idea how to cook my catch, so I used the ingredients I had in the fridge, and part from memory, part guessing - as I would have prepared it in Argentina. I cooked the mussels in a white wine sauce with a bit of garlic, spring onion and parsley - as a starter. Thank you Lucy for introducing me to these delicious mussels.

For the tiger prawns, I made vermicelli 'al dente' and cooked the prawns in a Provencale sauce: garlic, shallots and parsley, with a dash of white wine and cream. For the prawns I left out the wine because the girls don't like it.

These two dishes are very simple and quick and the children love pasta with prawns.

Greenshell mussels from New Zealand 

vermicelli with tiger prawns a la Provencale

Festive Cheesecake

I made New York cheesecake for the first time yesterday. It is delicious and I prefer this baked version to the other, easier, no-oven-needed version that is made with condensed milk and whipped cream.

I used a recipe I found online on the BBC Good Food website (here), it takes 900g cream cheese, and given the price of cream cheese in Beijing, it was not a cheap treat; but worth it every kuai. The only problem I encountered was the amount of time you need to prepare it - it's not complicated, but you do need time to let it finish baking/dry in the oven (2 hours with the oven off) and then cool down (at least 8 hours in the fridge). I had visitors for Sunday Lunch and I only started making it at 9am, but yesterday it was very cold in Beijing (minus 12 Celsius), so I could speed up the cooling down process by leaving it (covered) outside, in the garden, until it was time for desert. You can see from the photo that it is slightly runny. Next time I will follow procedure and I am hoping it will be perfectly light and airy.

Although the cheesecake was very good yesterday, today it's even better! I added seeds and juice from a couple of passion fruits for the topping. The tartness of the passion fruit goes very well with the dense, creamy filling and the thin, crusty base made with gingerbread cookies instead of digestive biscuits.

Cheesecake with a festive, tropical twist, I love it!

Making mince pies in China

Mince pies are not easily found in Beijing. With the Christmas season upon us, temperatures going down and a bit of snowfall, we all feel homesick and want to have a some festive comfort. So I made mincepies for my husband and for the school party. Suet-free recipe for the filling, delicious pastry - very short, it melts in your mouth. Perfect with a nice cup of tea - English tea!

home made mince pies

home made mince filling