Fig Jam and Foxtrot

by Lynn Bedford Hall

  STRAWBERRY AMARETTO SYLLABUB

  There was a time when, in order to make syllabub, you had to milk a cow into a bowl. There’s a lot more to the story, but suffice it to say that dozens of new versions of this dessert have evolved over the years, both in and outside of England, and you no longer need a cow in order to make it. But the basics are almost always a tipple of alcohol and a lot of cream, and this version, incorporating berries and liqueur, is superb. Presentation is important, but apart from that it’s one of the easiest, most luscious, do-ahead desserts imaginable.

  400–450 g sweet, ripe strawberries

  60 ml (¼ cup) castor sugar

  60 ml (¼ cup) Amaretto liqueur

  a squeeze, about 5 ml (1 tsp), fresh lemon juice

  a little milled black pepper (optional)

  250 ml (1 cup) thick cream

  15 ml (1 Tbsp) icing sugar

  toasted almond flakes for topping

  Rinse, hull and dry the strawberries, then thinly slice them. Spread out in a large, shallow bowl, sprinkle with the castor sugar, liqueur and lemon juice, and cover and macerate for about 1 hour. By this time lovely juices will have been drawn. Carefully pour them off – you should have almost 125 ml (½ cup) – and set aside. Spoon the strawberries into 6 red wine glasses – use glasses (or goblets for that matter) that are roundish rather than longish. If using the pepper, give a quick twist over each nest of berries – just a little. Whip the cream lightly, adding the icing sugar as you go. Slowly drizzle in the reserved juices and whip until thickish – firmer than floppy, but not stiff. Spoon over the berries; there’s heaps of cream so you’ll be able to pile it high. (In fact, there’s enough for another helping of berries.) Sprinkle generously with almond flakes. Place the glasses on a flat tray so that they don’t fall over, and transfer to the coldest part of the fridge for the rest of the day (6–8 hours). By serving time, the cream should have just started to melt and trickle down to the berries. Eat with small spoons. Serves 6.

  CHOCOLATE MOUSSE TRIFLE

  This is neither a mousse nor a trifle, but there are elements of both in this dreamy combination of chocolate and cream softly set on a base of sliced swiss roll moistened with coffee and liqueur. It makes a special-occasion, party-sized dessert, to serve in wedges with ribbons of a fruity coulis as the perfect foil. Fresh strawberries whizzed with a touch of sugar are super, while lightly poached pears blended to a smooth purée are just as good with the chocolate-coffee flavours.

  1 jam-filled chocolate swiss roll (about 450 g)

  125 ml (½ cup) warm, medium-strength black coffee

  20 ml (4 tsp) quality coffee liqueur, e.g. Kahlúa

  200 g dark chocolate

  3 XL free-range egg whites

  45 ml (3 Tbsp) castor sugar

  250 ml (1 cup) cream

  30 ml (2 Tbsp) icing sugar

  a few drops of vanilla essence

  chocolate scrolls to decorate (optional)

  Cut the swiss roll into 1.5 cm thick slices and squish them in to fit tightly into a large, 25 cm diameter pie dish. Mix the coffee and liqueur and drizzle over evenly. Smear a small heatproof bowl with butter, add the broken-up chocolate and place over simmering water. Don’t try to melt the chocolate; the blocks should just soften completely. Cool slightly. Meanwhile, whisk the egg whites until stiff, slowly add the castor sugar and whisk to a stiff meringue. Slowly add the soft chocolate in small dollops, whisking all the time. By the time it has all been incorporated, the meringue will have deflated somewhat – this is correct. Without washing the beaters, whisk the cream, icing sugar and vanilla essence until stiff. Gently fold into the chocolate-meringue, and pour over the swiss roll base. Use a spatula to spread evenly, then immediately place in the coldest part of the refrigerator and leave to firm up, loosely covered, for 24 hours before serving. Sprinkle with chocolate scrolls, if using, slice into thin wedges and use a spatula to transfer to serving plates. Drizzle coulis alongside, and serve immediately. Serves 10–12.

  APPLE AND PEAR DESSERT CAKE

  This is a sweetly nostalgic pud, closely related to Eve’s Pudding – the traditional, homely, sponge-topped apple dessert – but presented here with a few twists: pears with the apples, cinnamon and almonds in the topping. Serve warm, after supper, with thick cream, crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream, or at room temperature, sliced into wedges, for high tea.

  500 g ripe Golden Delicious apples, peeled and chunkily chopped*

  500 g ripe Packham’s pears, peeled and chopped*

  100 ml (2/5 cup) light brown sugar

  seeds from 1 vanilla pod, or a few drops of vanilla essence

  30 ml (2 Tbsp) water

  125 g soft butter

  100 ml (2/5 cup) castor sugar

  2 large free-range eggs

  250 ml (1 cup) self-raising flour

  a pinch of sea salt

  7 ml (1½ tsp) ground cinnamon

  60 ml (4 Tbsp) ground almonds

  30 ml (2 Tbsp) hot water

  Stew the apples and pears with the brown sugar and vanilla in 30 ml (2 Tbsp) water until soft. Keep the heat low so that the fruit will release its juices – about 12 minutes should do if the fruit is sweet and ripe. Spoon into a lightly buttered pie dish, 23 cm in diameter and about 5 cm deep, adding any juices. Cream the butter and castor sugar until pale and fluffy, then whisk in the eggs, one at a time, adding a pinch of flour with each egg. Sift in the flour, salt and cinnamon, and fold into the butter mixture along with the almonds. The batter will be thick and should now be lightened by folding in the hot water. Don’t try to spread this over the fruit, just drop it all over, in big dollops – it will spread during the baking. Bake at 180 °C for 35–40 minutes until golden brown and puffed up, with just a hole or a crack here and there with a bit of fruit peeking through. Serve warm, rather than hot. If serving at room temperature it will be easy to slice into wedges, as the sponge gradually absorbs the juices. Serves 6–8.

  * Try to use these varieties, as they provide the correct texture and sweetness.

  ROOIBOS EARL GREY FRUIT CAKE

  This is not simply your ordinary boiled fruit cake. The marriage between Earl Grey and nature’s nectar from the mountains of the Cape makes it just that little bit different. It’s a sweet, dense, almond-topped cake which – for a boiled cake – looks quite grand.

  125 g butter, cubed

  250 ml (1 cup) light brown sugar

  250 ml (1 cup) water

  500 g fruit cake mix

  juice and grated rind of 1 lime or ½ small lemon

  5 ml (1 tsp) bicarbonate of soda

  3 Importers Rooibos Earl Grey sachets

  2 XL free-range eggs

  5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla essence

  30 ml (2 Tbsp) brandy

  60 ml (¼ cup) chopped glacé cherries

  250 ml (1 cup) cake flour

  250 ml (1 cup) self-raising flour

  1 ml (¼ tsp) sea salt

  2 ml (½ tsp) each ground cinnamon, mixed spice and grated nutmeg

  whole blanched almonds for topping

  Place the butter, sugar, water, fruit cake mix, lime juice and rind, bicarbonate of soda and tea sachets into a large, deep saucepan (because the bicarb fizzes). Bring to the boil, stirring, then simmer gently, half-covered, for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the stove, then use a wooden spoon to press down gently on the sachets in order to release all the flavour (being careful not to break them). Leave the mixture to cool completely. Discard the tea sachets. Whisk the eggs with the vanilla and brandy and add, with the cherries, to the cold fruit mixture. Sift the flours, salt and spices, then fold into the fruit mixture. (Use a large mixing bowl to combine everything properly.) Turn the mixture into a 22 x 6 cm cake tin*, first oiled and then lined, base and sides, with baking paper. Spread evenly, and then top with almonds, like a Dundee cake. Bake on the middle shelf of the oven at 160 °C for 1¼ hours. The cake won’t rise much due to the abundance of fruit, but should be richly browned. Test with a skew
er and, if done, stand for 30 minutes before turning out carefully. Remove the paper and cool, almond side up. Store in an airtight container for a day or two before cutting.

  * For a plumper cake, use a 20 cm tin, and allow extra baking time.

  ROSA

  One Friday morning, Daleen, the estate agent, received a letter out of the blue.

  ‘Funny stamps,’ remarked Harry the postman. ‘Where does it come from?’

  Daleen shot him a look. ‘Curiosity killed the cat, and patience is a virtue. Wait.’

  Squinting, she held the letter up to the light, turned it over several times, reached for a pair of scissors on her desk and carefully slit the envelope at the side.

  Harry drummed his fingers on the handlebars of his bicycle while Daleen slowly scanned the contents.

  ‘Well I never,’ she finally exclaimed.

  Harry looked up expectantly.

  ‘If you want to know what it says, then stop playing piano on your thingamajig. It comes from a Mr Luigi Castello, and he wants to know if there is a shop for sale in Corriebush.’

  Harry pedalled off to tell the world, and Daleen immediately sent off a telegram.

  ‘The fish shop next to Hannah’s Hairdressing Salon is standing empty. Superior accommodation, with four rooms above the shop, a garden with fruit trees, a fish-fryer, chip basket, and a beautiful painted whale on the wall. A snip. Several buyers interested. Awaiting prompt reply.’

  Then she sat, holding thumbs.

  ‘I haven’t sold anything in months,’ she confided to Anna who, having heard the news from Harry, dropped in right away. ‘Maybe an old fish shop is not everyone’s cup of tea, but you never know with people. What’s sauce for the goose is meat for the gander, and I really must have a sale before Christmas or its tickets.’

  ‘I wonder how he heard about Corriebush?’ Anna mused.

  ‘Search me. Probably stuck a pin into a map of Africa.’

  Mr and Mrs Castello arrived in a large van, with their family of five small sons, an older daughter and Mr Castello’s aged mother, and even while they were still unloading, the news was being passed from house to house.

  ‘I see the Italians have come to town,’ Anna told Lily.

  ‘Straight out of Rome, I hear. Coming to look for a better life in South Africa with a bit of space to raise the family. They say Rome is really full up these days.’

  ‘He’ll have a better chance to make a living out here, what with all those mouths to feed.’

  ‘We must do our best to make them feel at home, even if we can’t speak the language. I only know arrivederci from the song.’

  As was their custom, the women wasted no time in paying a call, all six of them together, in case they needed help with translating.

  ‘You should have heard the opera when they found us on their doorstep!’ Sophia told Dawid later. ‘Mr and Mrs, the six children, even the old grandmother came out all talking at the same time, and when we gave them our baskets they invited us to sit down with them at the kitchen table and share everything we’d brought. My scones and strawberry jam just flew! And then they poured out sweet wine and little biscuits to dip into it, and in the end we all had a bit of a party.’

  ‘And since when do you speak Italian, Sophia?’

  ‘Don’t be funny, Dawid. Rome isn’t in the sticks, you know. They all speak English very nicely. The children learnt it at school and the parents picked it up from the tourists. That’s how they heard about Corriebush. A tourist told them. Fancy that. And what a happy family Dawie! Full of the joys. They’re going to open a lovely shop, much smarter than fish.’

  ‘Selling what?’

  ‘All the exotics. Polony and ham and cheese and spaghetti. And you should just see Rosa.’

  ‘Rosa?’

  ‘The daughter. Nineteen years old and nothing short of a madonna. Black hair to her waist, eyes like pools and teeth like sapphires.’

  ‘You mean pearls, Sophia.’

  ‘That’s right, pearls. The young men are going to buzz around like flies.’

  In no time the exuberant Castello family became part of the Corriebush community and the shop began to thrive. Luigi loved to stand in the doorway, plump as a salami in his long, white apron.

  ‘Hey Missus! Come have a taste!’

  Then he’d carve a slice off a ham or a hunk of cheese and offer it on the tip of his long knife. Rosa was always there, keeping an eye on the small boys, while the grandmother sat quietly folded on a stool in the corner and Mrs Castello hung strands of fresh spaghetti over racks to dry, or stirred the chunky soups and pasta sauces that bubbled on the stove in the corner. Soon, Italian dishes were appearing on dinner tables all over town, and everyone agreed that the Castellos were the best thing ever to have come out of Italy.

  ‘Better even than Mona Lisa,’ remarked Lily.

  ‘Much better than Mona Lisa,’ said Sophia.

  ‘Talented too. The principal of the primary school says those three boys are as bright as buttons. They’ll go a long way, he says.’

  ‘And there are two more to come, of course.’

  ‘I wonder how the mother manages.’

  ‘It’s what they call the Latin temperature.’

  ‘Temperament.’

  ‘That’s what I said. Temperament. Eat, laugh and be merry. Haven’t you noticed how nothing bothers Mrs Castello? Even the washing. When her lines are full, she just hangs it all over the pear tree. Sometimes the garden looks like a circus tent.’

  ‘We could learn a thing or two from people like that.’

  When Rosa’s twenty-first birthday approached, her parents invited the whole town to a celebratory party.

  The women discussed it over tea one afternoon.

  ‘It’ll be a bit of a squash, but never mind, such lovely people and the food will be good, and of course Rosa will look like an angel.’

  ‘My Daniel says she has a figure like Rubens,’ Amelia told them, a trifle smugly. ‘A figure like Rubens and a complexion like marble.’

  ‘My goodness Amelia! How does he know?’

  ‘Someone once gave him a calendar of famous oils.’

  ‘Oils? Oh oils! Of course!’ and they sipped their tea thoughtfully.

  On the night of the party the little shop was filled to bursting. Guests spilled over into the kitchen, even up the stairs and into the street. Under the pear tree in the garden a table stood buckling under the weight of food and bottles of wine.

  Sophia filled her plate and found Maria and Anna sitting on a bench. She motioned them to move up so that she could sit down at one end.

  ‘I’m worried about Rosa,’ she said. ‘There she goes, such a sweet child, looking like a princess in that red skirt and flowers in her hair, and she’s never had a boy.’

  ‘A beau,’ said Maria.

  ‘That’s right. Never had a beau. What’s wrong with the local young men do you think?’

  ‘They go to the shop in their dozens, I know that, and they buy capers and olives and other things they don’t even want, just to catch a glimpse of her. But ask her for a date? Not a chance.’

  ‘I think they’re nervous. After all, they’ve never handled a foreign beauty before.’

  It wasn’t long after this discussion that Rosa married Francois Uys. It was a small ceremony, just the family, in the Catholic church.

  ‘Blow me down with a feather,’ said Sophia. ‘A small wedding I can understand, after having to pay for that big party and everything, but Francois Uys! I mean, Francois must be pushing fifty if he’s a day!’

  ‘I simply don’t understand it,’ Anna mused.

  ‘Of course he is the richest farmer in the district, but that doesn’t make him any younger. Hardly a catch for a beauty like Rosa.’

  ‘Not a bad looker, though. When he rides at the horse shows with all his apparatus – I mean those long, shiny boots and a cap and a jacket with a split up the back, he looks a bit like John Wayne.’

  ‘And it wasn’t his fault t
hat his fiancée left him high and dry. She just wasn’t the farming type. I hear she went on to marry a tycoon and lives in Johannesburg.’

  ‘Well, I heard that he sometimes lifts the elbow rather high.’

  ‘Perhaps that was the reason, then.’

  ‘Well it may not be true, and we never hold with gossip. I think he was just too upset about his fiancée leaving him to think of anyone else until now. And look what he’s finally got. The pick of the bunch!’

  Maria, however, was distinctly uneasy about Rosa’s betrothal. ‘I just don’t feel right,’ she said darkly. ‘Something funny there. I feel it in my bones.’

  After the marriage, Rosa seldom came to town.

  ‘She’s very busy on the farm,’ Luigi told them when they enquired. ‘Loves the life, big house, lots of servants, horses to ride, a river for swimming and a man who’s really good to her. Of course, he often has to go away to horse shows, but then he brings her presents and she says she doesn’t mind staying alone.’

  ‘We really miss her here in the shop,’ chipped in Mrs Castello. ‘But she’s happy, and that’s what matters.’

  The women were pleased to hear it, but decided they had allowed a decent enough interval to pass, and the time was ripe for them to go and see for themselves.

  ‘First, we must organise our transport.’

  ‘For the six of us we will need two cars and two husbands to drive. That mountain road is very bumpy. We’ll have to hold our cakes on our laps. One big pothole, and they’re in their glory.’

  The day was set, and they had already started baking little treats to take out to Rosa, when a hideous and unexpected thing happened.

  Nellie was the first to hear of it. Having run out of walnuts for her cookies, she went to the shop; Castello’s always stocked them, fresh and shelled. Rosa was sitting in the kitchen with her mother. They were both sobbing, their heads in their hands, and did not even look up when the little bell tinkled. Luigi was behind the counter, wiping his eyes with his apron.