An old-fashioned fruit becomes fashionable again

At http://www.bestforreading.com I cannot believe that another week has gone by. Here in the southern tip of Africa we are preparing for winter and what better idea is it to go to http://www.bestforreading.com, purchase a book and then curl up with your latest book. Those of you living in the northern hemisphere visit

http://www.bestforreading.com to have something to read for those long summer holidays. This is especially if you are heading for the beach.

In one of my previous blogs, The Cape of Storms became the Cape of Good Hope, I have written about  how sudden the storms arrive here at Cape Town at the beginning of the winter season. Well, last Wednesday this is exactly what happened. For one day only the heavens opened and everywhere there were floods. I hardly could get into my house and when I left at lunch time, I had to travel another route as all the other roads were flooded.

When I took my dog for a walk later that afternoon, most of the water had run off but the Liesbeek River was still in flood. Here are a few photo's of the Liesbeek River.

Nearly over the banks

The river flowing towards the camera

A beautiful scenery

I am not going to write about the weather today. This I have done in a previous post, as mentioned before. I am going to give you a recipe about an "old fashioned" fruit which in a way is not grown anymore. When I was a child every yard either had once bush of this fruit in the yard or if you were on a farm you most likely would have had a lane of these bushes. This is the quince fruit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quince. It is also known as an extremely healthy and nutritious fruit. http://www.nutrition-and-you.com/quince-fruit.html.

Stews are a very popular dish in South Africa. A very traditional South African recipe is a quince stew. This recipe comes from Hetta van Deventer-Terblanche.

Ingredients:

4 onions chopped up coarsely

4 carrots, peeled and diced the same way

Cooking Oil to sweat the above

5 ml fine cassia

2.5 ml fine nutmeg

30 ml fine coriander

5 ml turmeric

Salt and pepper   

1.4 kg lamb. Preferably the ribs, cut into pieces

8 washed quinces

2 l lamb or beef stock

3 potatoes coarsely chopped

Hand full of fresh herbs

Method:

1. Pre-heat oven to 160 deg Celsius

2. Saute onion and carrots in oil until onions are golden brown. Use a heavy duty oven pan with a lid that can go into the oven. Take out onion and carrots

3. Rub spices into meat and throw in used pan and saute meat until brown.

4. add onions and meat 

5. Cut 4 quinces with cork and all in quarts and add between the meat.

6. Add stock to meat, add more water if necessary and bring to boil

7. Place lid on and place pan in oven and leave for 90 minutes

8. In the mean time bake the remaining quinces on a baking tray in the oven -about 40 minutes. as soon as the quinces are soft, take out and keep to the side.

9. take meat out of oven after 90 minutes and add potatoes.

10. Add more water or stock if it looks to dry.

Add salt and pepper to taste and place back in oven until the potatoes are soft and thoroughly cooked.

To present, cut baked quinces into big pieces and throw over stew and sprinkle the fresh herbs over.

Dish up with rice and salad.   

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