Posts Tagged ‘appetizer’
Perada – or Pear Paste
I love fruit pastes. I love them on cheese boards, but I do not love the price. This recipe makes about 450 grams and keeps for absolutely ages.
Ingredients
6 or 7 medium pears
2 1/2 cups caster sugar
1 cup of water
juice of 1/2 a lemon
4 tablespoons of liquid pectin or the equivalent
Methid
Boil the pears whole and unpeeled until soft. Remove from the water and when cool enough to handle, peel with a sharp knife and puree through a mouli (food mill). This should give around 3 cups of pear puree.
Weigh the puree and dissolve 3/4 of the pear puree weight in sugar in the water. Once boiling, add the pear puree, lemin juice and pectin. Boil repidly for a few minutesthen reduce the heat and simmer for an hour or so, or until the mixture thickens and pulls away from the sides of the pans. Fill moulds and cool completely before refrigerating until set completely.
Blinis
Small, delicate looking but with a firm structure, Blinis are perfect for finger food. The blini is like a cross between the lightness of a piklet and the firmness of a waffle. It is a bland sort of a construction that does not get in the way of the flavours of the topping such as Salmon, Caviar and Cream Cheese or Smoked Fish Dip and Chives.
They are best fresh but you can make them up to a day in advance and keep them in an airight box in the fridge, but top at the last minute to stop them going soggy.
Ingredients
75 grams plain floour
1 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of salt
2 eggs
full fat milk
30 grams of butter for frying
Method
In a bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, salt and eggs and drizzle in enough of the milk to make a thick batter. It must be able to slid but not pour of a teaspoon.
Melt the butter over a low heat in the frying pan and drop the batter in a teaspoon full at a time. After about 4 minutes, bubbles will begin to form on the top of the blini so turn them over.
When cooked, remov to a wire rack to cool.
These are best done in a non-stick pan. Wipe it clean with a paper towel after every batch so that the butter does not burn and taint the mix.