Sweet and savoury together - yes or no?

I can not be the only person in the world who has an aversion to fruit in my savoury dishes.  I don't just mean that 1970's dinner party staple, Chicken and Apricot casserole - although I do have to raise my guilty hand on that one.  Hey! I was in my 20s and it was the height of sophistication.  Ahhh the food memories of those wild and wacky years: go on, admit it, you're sitting there in your caftan dipping chunks of French bread into gooey cheese fondue, or eating prawn cocktail out of a lettuce cup, or pumpkin soup - cooked in the pumpkin! How clever were we?  

Speeding ahead to this decade, I admit to enjoying the well balanced flavours of sweetness in or accompanying a meat dish, but to my mind there is something very wrong about chicken and apricot on the same fork, or a finding a strawberry in your otherwise green salad.

With this in mind, I struggle to explain some of the dishes I enjoy where fruit does make an appearance.  With guests for  the long weekend, one of the lunches I make includes apple in a root vegetable salad (below).  As I am explaining that I think the original recipe has sultanas in it but I can't stand fruit in my salad blah, blah, blah, the h-g innocently enquires as to whether apple is a fruit.  Well, yes.  So isn't this very salad a vegetable/fruit combo?  Hmmm, how to back out of this one gracefully?  I can't.  

However, in my mind and to my palate some things work and some things don't.  Pork and apple works.  Strawberries and lettuce doesn't.  Watermelon and feta cheese works.  Lamb and sultanas doesn't.  In fact, anything savoury with sultanas doesn't work in my book, even those otherwise delicious North African/Moroccan dishes made with fragrant herbs, soft couscous and crunchy pine nuts.  However, when I google 'apricot chicken' out of curiosity, 1,960,000 hits tells me perhaps I am a lone voice railing against fruity flavours in otherwise savoury plates.  


I am not sure where I first found the recipe for this raw salad - probably in one of the popular diet books of the 1980s, like the F Plan or Liver Cleansing, or one of the myriad of raw food plans that were around then.  If you would like to make it, it's delicious AND good for you AND easy to make.

Beetroot, Carrot, and Apple Salad 

Beetroot, Carrot and Apple Salad: 

• Peel and grate raw beetroot, carrots, and apples. The one pictured is heavy on the beetroot but the relative quantities do not really matter. 
• Layer on a serving plate or in a bowl - I prefer to layer so the beetroot doesn't bleed into the other ingredients, but again, it doesn't matter.  
• Toast some sunflower seeds (or whatever other seeds and nuts you like) and toss over the top. 
• Pour over whatever vinaigrette you like, but in this instance I use a dressing made from red wine vinegar, grainy mustard, honey, olive oil, salt and pepper. 

Also whipped up over the weekend, another easy and delicious, but not so good for you dish. This recipe is from Issue 62 of Cuisine, for many years the leading NZ food magazine (which incidentally also won a host of international food writing and magazine awards in its day).  Not many of you will have a 15 year old copy of Cuisine hanging around, so here's Julie Biuso's recipe.  

A dacquoise is not to be confused with a pavlova.  Pavlova, first made in New Zealand though often claimed by Australia, was created to honour the ballerina Anna Pavlova. It is a meringue disc, crisp on the outside and light and fluffy on the inside, topped with cream and some kind of fresh fruit. 

A dacquoise, on the other hand, is made with layers of almond or hazelnut meringue, sandwiched together with whipped cream. It takes its name from the feminine form of the French word dacquois meaning 'of Dax', a town in south western France.  

This is a smart looking dessert that will wow your guests and cement your reputation as a cook of note! 

Apricot Dacquoise
5 egg whites

The meringue discs are sandwiched with pureed apricot
swirled through whipped cream

250gm castor sugar
100gm blanched and roughly chopped almonds (I used hazelnuts in this one)
pinch of cream of tartar

Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the castor sugar. Fold in the almonds and cream of tartar until just mixed, using a large metal spoon. 

On two oven trays lined with baking paper, spread the mixture into two 20cm discs. Bake for at least one hour in an oven preheated to 140 C. When cooked the underside of the discs will have no sticky patches. Cool on wire racks. 

When completely cool, sandwich together with 
a 400gm can of soft apricots (drained) pureed with 1 Tablespoon of brandy, swirled through 300ml of whipped cream.

Layer the discs with the cream filling at least 6 hours before you want to eat it so the cream melts into the meringue a bit and softens it. In this way it won't shatter everywhere when you slice it in front of your awestruck guests. 

A standard rubber Custard Square

Speaking of shattering everywhere, what about the flaky pastry on a Custard Square?  

Typically the mass produced items seen in every bakery comprise a virulent yellow solid rubbery plug of "custard", and pastry which manages to bend rather than flake when you bite into it, all the while squishing filling out the sides.

It is a treat to get one where the custard is so light and the pastry so flaky it does shatter!  I know they are hard to make because the h-g had a hankering for some recently, so I made a batch. They were not pretty to look at, as you can see, but they did taste damn good.  

My sad, but tasty batch of Custard Squares

So when I come across the perfect Custard Square it is nothing short of a delight.  I find them at Bosco cafe in Te Kuiti (I am on a road trip, okay?)  I ask if they made them there. Uh uh, came the response - they come from Denheath Bakery in Oamaru in the South Island (this is over 1,000 kms and an inter-island ferry away!) and "we only have them here on Fridays". My lucky day!  These wee treasures have a fluffy delicate custard sandwiched between two layers of genuinely flaky pastry.  Coconut dusted lemon icing provides zing, along with a wee slash of passionfruit pulp.  Heaven on a plate.

Denheath's light as a feather Custard Square as served at Bosco.

So a road trip to Oamaru is in the planning - to see the historic stone buildings of course,. And go to the source of the best Custard Squares in New Zealand. 

Cruising the Pacific Coast Highway - Part two

Perching high on the hills of San Simeon, approximately halfway between Los Angeles and San Francisco, sits Hearst Castle.  Not to be confused with Hurst Castle, Henry VIII's Device Fort near Lymington in England, this Hearst Castle's plans for construction began in 1919 when William Randolph Hearst instructed his architect, Julia Morgan, that "we are tired of camping out in the open at the ranch in San Simeon and I would like to build a little something". 

The front entrance of Hearst Castle, with
towers inspired by a Spanish cathedral

These words must surely rate as one of the understatements of all time.  Hearst's little something took almost 30 years and created an estate comprising 165 rooms decorated with imported European art and artifacts  and 127 acres of gardens, terraces, pools (indoor and outdoor) and walkways. 

The Neptune Pool, heated year round

A visit to the house, which is now owned and operated by the California State Parks, offers a choice of several different tours: the Upstairs Suites; the Cottages and Kitchen; the Grand Museum Tour.  We choose the Grand Tour to get the overall feel for the place. All tours include a 40 minute film about the history of the Hearsts (no mention of the Symbionese Liberation Army) and begin with a five mile bus drive from the Visitor Centre (run with military precision) up the winding road to the hilltop estate.  Still a working ranch of 250,000 acres, it is also possible to spot zebra (yes you read that correctly) grazing with the cattle, as for many years Hearst operated the largest privately owned zoo on the grounds.  The zoo was dismantled in 1937 when Hearst needed to liquidate some assets. Only the zebra remain.

Hard to spot, but the castle sits atop the hill

Inside the castle is akin to touring a museum that is a multi-cross between a European church, an American western ranch, a neoclassical art gallery and a movie set.  Hearst had agents in Europe seeking out pieces he could put into the castle  - you know, the odd fully complete C15th Church ceiling, or C3rd Roman mosaic floor -  and he never let practicality get in the way. The architect was frequently required to redesign rooms to fit new acquisitions, or in some cases rooms were torn down and rebuilt.  No wonder it took more than 30 years to build.  Just think, today there would be a multi season TV reality show that would give Grand Designs'  Kevin McCloud palpitations.

Hearst was a great host and invited the Hollywood glitterati and all manner of influential others to stay in the house and guest cottages in the grounds. The food was, apparently, excellent.  However, although he had a massive and well stocked wine cellar (to which only he had a key) the abstemious Mr Hearst deplored excessive drinking and rationed his guests.  This was particularly hard on the heavy drinkers of the Hollywood set and caused David Niven to remark " the wine would flow like glue during the meal" . 

We arrive out on the coast by way of the vineyards of Paso Robles which, locals tell us, is the fastest growing wine area of the US.  Currently there are about 26,000 acres planted with over 40 different varieties, some doing better than others.  In the early days (1950s and 1960s) Bordeaux varieties were mostly planted, and from the 1980s the emphasis shifted to Rhône  varieties including Syrah,  Grenache, Mourvèdre, and Viognier. The ubiquitous (in California) Zinfandel is widely grown and often blended with other varieties.  "Crazy Blends", is the nickname for Paso Blends, as these  wines do not follow traditional rules of wine making.  Lots of experimentation and, as you can imagine, the results can be variable. 

Wild Coyote Winery

We stay an adobe style Bed and Breakfast attached to the Wild Coyote Winery and vineyard, about 8 kms out of Paso Robles.  The location is spectacular: at an elevation of 550 metres we have expansive views over the vineyards, Santa Lucia mountains and the canyon.  It was just as well the location was great, as the welcome is cool, and not in a good way.  The owner/winemaker, who never actually introduces himself even as we do, adopts a patronising tone in our discussions of wine, grape growing and wine making, as if his way ("I've been doing this for over 20 years you know") is the only way.  I really hope our New Zealand cellar door  operators take a much more open minded approach with their visitors, particularly overseas grape growers and wine makers!  Overall the visit could have been enhanced by the presence of actual wild coyotes.  

Our final port of call before departing for home ex San Francisco, is Monterey. 

Monterey Bay

"Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream."  So begins John Steinbeck's 1945 novel, set  on a street of sardine canneries in Monterey during the Great Depression (as opposed to the not-so-great depression). The paragraph continues "Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses."

Breweries rather than canneries

Steinbeck wouldn't recognise 2012's Cannery Row,  now best described as a cup of clam chowder, a bus of Japanese tourists, shops full of junk trading on Steinbeck's novel, and the zip of a credit card machine. The closest you will get to a sardine is in the Aquarium, as the industry collapsed by the mid 1950s due to overfishing.   Even so, it is a pleasant enough area to stroll around and the bay itself is quite beautiful. 



And so ends our Pacific Coast Highway trip - we head up to San Francisco to exit the country.   Sadly, I do not find a yoga room in the International departures terminal.

The Pacific Coast Highway stretches ahead