I have to admit it. I don’t think there’s going to be a nuclear holocaust anytime soon.
As much as any respite from full time adult work would be welcome( because really, the novelty of that wore off a while ago)- I don’t think there’s going to be any kind of situation where the Hungry One and I have to bunker down in the apartment, not step outside for days and subsist on only what we have within our four walls.
We even made it out during APEC.
So maybe I should stop shopping like it’s going to happen..
It’s a bad habit. There are certain things that I just can’t seem to stop putting in a trolley, or picking up wherever I go.
There are always too many burrito wrappers in the freezer- and shock horror, shredded low fat mozzarella (which freezes ridiculously well).
Both of these always seem to be on special somewhere (and golly I can be thrifty when I need to be). And there’s something about being able to quickly make quesadillas- where the cheese is all oozy, the burritos all crunchy and smokey- whether they’ve got basil leaves from the balcony in the middle and you have them with tomato soup, or with coriander as a side to mexican beans, or just on their own because you’re feeling WAY too dusty to face anything else.
There are always Cevapci sausages in there too. The Hungry One’s mum grew up in South Africa so along with a few other things from his childhood- like jelly and low fat ice-cream- they came with him too. Cevapcis are skinless, quite lean and he can quickly cook them up when he works from home and have a very a manly lunch…
They’re also great bundled into little balls and braised with lentils and tomato, or as a ragu for pasta… I’m guessing they’d be great as sausage rolls too… but I haven’t had a need for sausage rolls in a while.
And lately there seems to be way too many packets of frozen berries bustling around down there. The quantity of them doesn’t make much sense as they’re hardly ever on special- and if they are, you get sucked into thinking you’ve got a great deal, when really you’ve only saved about 25 cents.
But I love that feeling that- if I wanted to make berry muffins now- I could. If the Hungry One felt like whipping up some daiquiris, I could be drinking them in 5 minutes on the balcony with a book. So the berries have become the automatic pilot final round in the supermarket stroll. Burritos- tick. Yogurt- tick. Cereal- tick. Frozen peas- tick. Frozen berries- tick.
You keep ticking like that and soon- the freezer starts to whinge when you shut the drawer.
So…. It’s had to be berry time at our place.
There were berry muffins made on the weekend and dropped around to the sister who’s just had a baby.
And there was somewhat of an experiment which we like to call Berry Misu.
Somewhere between a summer pudding and a tira misu and a complete bastardisation of both.
But if you need to make up a dessert for 4 and all you’ve got is a gross amount of berries, some eggs, mascarpone, a cupboard full of booze and some bits and bobs in the cupboard- then it does just fine.
Now there’s only 4 packets of berries to make it through….
At least if anything cataclysmic does happen- you know where to come to get a decent daiquiri to help you ride it through.
Berry Misu.
Take 1 and 3/4 cups of mixed berries and put them, 1 tablespoon of pomegranate molasses and 2 tablespoons of cherry jam ( though a good berry jam would be fine) and put them in a saucepan on a low heat to defrost. You want some of the juice to bleed and some of the berries to maintain their integrity.
While that’s happening whisk together 3 egg yolks and 1/4 of a cup of caster sugar and whisk until their creamy and fluffy.
Add 220 grams of mascarpone and a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the egg yolks.
Beat 3 egg whites until stiff. Fold them gently into the mascarpone mixture.
To the berry mixture add 25 mls of cointreau and 15 mls of good gin. If you had Kirsch, berry liqueur etc they would be fine also. That’s just what we had and we wanted to give it a bit of a punch.
We added much more than that- but quite honestly, I was a bit rat faced after eating it. It depends on what kind of crowd you’re catering for.
Take 12 Italian sponge biscuits. Dunk them in the berry mixture and layer them in the bottom of a glass bowl. Add the mascarpone over the top. Spoon out some of the berries. Layer them. Then the soaked biscuits, then the mascarpone, then the biscuits, then the mascarpone, then drizzle the last dregs of the berry juice over the top so it makes a pretty pattern….
Let it set in the fridge for at least 4 hours, then dig in.
