Forbidden Fruit (35 page)

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees.

Grease a 20 cm cake tin and line it with baking paper.

Mix nuts and fruit together, then add flour, sugar, baking powder, cinnamon and salt, and stir until combined.

Mix eggs, brandy and vanilla together in a separate bowl, then add to the flour mixture.

Mix until it is all more or less mixed, calling in members of your family to stir and make a wish.

Plunk into the tin and bake for as long as it takes—about one and a half to two hours. Test by poking it with a skewer. Allow to cool in the tin.

When cool, either pour another measure of brandy over it and shut it in a tin, where it will keep for a long time, or pour warm apricot jam over the top, stud with extra glacé fruits and serve.

Every vegetarian has been to a restaurant, sadly, where there is only one vegetarian option and it is always roast vegetable lasagne. While there are good, even superlative roast vegie lasagnes, some variety would be nice. It is as though a chef will expend endless effort on a meat dish, but not think a vegie one is worthy of his consideration. This is, however, changing.

I recall the complaints of some of our group on the Women Writers’ Train (note appropriate use of apostrophe—plural women, plural writers) when the nice ladies who made sandwiches for us had only one vegie sandwich and it was always sultana and grated carrot. And hard-core vegans would have to live on baked potato in some towns, which is not a good diet even if you are pure.

The world is full of gorgeous vegetables and all you need is a nice friendly organic grocer (like my own, Pompello, which is a
social centre and recipe exchange as well) and a good cookbook. Borrow an armload of vegie cookbooks from the library and see which one makes you hungry as you read. I like
The Cranks Recipe Book
. Remember also that most of the world looks on meat as an occasional treat and try lots of different cuisines. Try a different vegetable. I recently found fennel, which is gorgeous as a salad with fish. And boiled my first globe artichoke. And peeled my own broad beans … And if you find you don’t like the veg when you have prepared and sauced it properly, then put it in the compost, where it will be appreciated by the worms.

Try a cheesy vegetable muffin. If you want to make mini muffins, watch the cooking time. They seem to singe easily.

1 small onion, peeled and sliced

1 zucchini, grated 1

clove garlic, crushed

2 tomatoes, chopped

½ red capsicum, chopped

pepper and salt

Gently fry the veg in a little olive oil until soft but not brown. Cool.

2 cups self-raising flour

½ cup grated parmesan

2 eggs

1 cup buttermilk (if you have no buttermilk, use sweet milk with a squeeze of lemon juice and add 1 tsp baking powder. The buttermilk is a raising agent, oddly enough)

pinch of salt

¼ cup olive oil

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.

Mix the flour and parmesan in one bowl. In another bowl mix the eggs, oil and buttermilk.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, mix gently, drop into a 6-cup muffin tray, then top them with the cooked vegetables. Alternatively you can stir the vegies into the muffin mix, but this can turn out soggy. Even so it tastes very nice.

Cook in a moderate oven for 25 minutes or so until it springs back when poked. Perfect cocktail savouries—you can do yourself harm with the cocktails and good with the little muffins.

My grandma made gallons of this (a gentler beverage than her ginger beer, which gave ‘spritzig’ a meaning closer to ‘blast radius’) and it is a good way to quench the thirst without all those optional added chemicals. Any citrus fruit will do. The citric and tartaric acids are both natural substances, like the pectin used in my jams.

8 lemons or equivalent in grapefruit, oranges etc.; juice of all and grated rind of three

1 kg white sugar

8 cups boiling water

1 tablespoon tartaric acid

2 tablespoons citric acid

Mix all ingredients together until sugar dissolves. Bottle and seal. To serve, dilute one in four with water or soda water or, as a special treat, mineral water. Wonderful with gin …

The best book on pet rabbits in Australia is definitely
The Wonderful World of Pet Rabbits
by Christine Carter. Order one at
www.petrabbitworld.com
or email me if you want my copy. I would like it to go to a good home.

Beverley Nichols wrote the best books on cats,
Cats’ A.B.C
. and
Cats’ X.Y.Z
. They have been reprinted by Timber Press at
www.timberpress.com
. You will notice Nichols’ correct use of the apostrophe. A wonderful thing in these parlous ungrammatical times.

The carols come mainly from
The Oxford Book of Carols
and the choristers’ standby
Carols for Choirs 1
(known as ‘the green book’), both from Oxford University Press. ‘Villagers All’ by Kenneth Grahame was set to music by David Greagg.

Anyone who likes is welcome to email me on
[email protected]