Cooking and recipes in English.

A friend bought me a packet of port wine jelly from Australia. In America, jelly is called jello.

I was wondering what to do with it. “It’s very popular in Australia,” my friend said. “People make trifle with it.”

“Ah,” I thought. “Trifle! I haven’t made trifle for years.”

This is what I did to make a trifle.

I made the jelly and put it in the refrigerator to set.

I made a pint (450ml) of custard. I was in a hurry so I used a packet of instant custard. Be careful though. You want the custard to be thick. So use only half the amount of milk that the instructions say.

I bought a sponge cake from the supermarket. I broke it up into pieces. I divided the pieces into three piles. I used one pile to make a layer of sponge cake in a glass bowl and poured some apple juice over it.

I chopped up the jelly and put half of it over the sponge cake.

I poured half the custard over that.

Then I repeated the layers; sponge cake with apple juice, jelly, custard.

I put the last pile of pieces of sponge cake on top. I put it in the refrigerator and forgot about until it was time for dessert. Then I decorated the top with cream and raspberries. Here is a picture. It’s not very pretty is it?

Trifle is a traditional English dessert. It usually has custard, sponge cake and fruit. Every family has their own recipe. Everyone has a strong opinion about the recipe and they are all different.

Some people soak the sponge cake in sherry. Other people use fruit juice. Many people use jelly in a trifle. My mother never did. She always spread the sponge cake with strawberry jam. The friend who gave me the jelly said, ”Where are the peaches? I always put canned peaches in trifle!”

So maybe a trifle is whatever you want it to be.

Have you ever made a trifle?

*Note: trifle is an interesting word. Look it up! It means something small and unimportant;  “a mere trifle”.

If you ever heard two cooks discussing dessert trifle, you might get another idea! Something large and rather important! This is because everyone has their own ideas about how to make a trifle. Modern trifles often have many ingredients so there are many things for cooks to disagree about.

The original trifles in the 17^th century were probably rather simple desserts. Just fruit and custard or fruit and cream. They were also sometimes called fools.

This simple version “a trifle” is still popular in modern English cooking and it is called a fool. But  the modern trifle always has cake in it.

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Cooking and recipes in English.

A friend gave me a bag of snow peas. He had just picked them from his garden. So I made stir fried beef with snow peas.

I had some beef in the freezer so I defrosted it. I try to catch it before it is completely defrosted. It is easier to cut thin slices if the meat is still half-frozen.

Most recipes don’t have cashew nuts. But I added some because my family likes them.

Recipe (for 4)

400g thinly sliced beef

2 tablespoons (30ml) soy sauce

1 tablespoon (15ml) sherry or mirrin

1 tablespoon (15ml) sugar

2 tablespoons (30ml) of grated ginger

2 cloves of garlic chopped

1 teaspoon (5ml) of cornflour)

2 cups snow peas

½ cup cashew nuts (if you like them)

2 tablespoons of cooking oil (I used peanut oil)

chopped red and green peppers

This was very quick – I put the soy sauce, sherry, sugar and cornflour in a bowl and mixed them together well.

Then I added the garlic, ginger and beef, and stirred until the meat was mixed with the seasonings.

Then, I left it all for a few minutes.

I washed the snow peas  and took the leaves off the top. The ones in shops usually have these removed already.

I heated the oil and threw the contents of the bowl into the wok. When the beef looked almost done I added the snow peas and stirred.

I sprinkled the chopped red and green peppers on top, and the meal was ready.

Thought: My peas were very young. If you buy them in the supermarket, they might be older. So you might have to drop them into boiling water for a minute. Drain the peas and run cold water over them. Then shake them dry before you add them.

My friend also gave me a box of freshly picked strawberries so we had them for dessert. You have to love this time of year!

Stir fries are great when the weather gets hotter. They need almost no cooking so there is not too much heat in the kitchen.

Do you have a favourite stir fry combination?

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