Butterscotch sauce (tropical fruit salad)
Butterscotch sauce (Tropical fruit salad)
“You may not believe me before tasting it, but this is an ecstatically successful culinary combination” (Nigella p303).
After the success of the butternut and pasta soup on Sunday, I am making this fruit salad for dessert. As I said on my last post, I know that warming and filling soup, followed by a summery, fresh fruit salad are not quite in the same register; but never mind!
This post marks a milestone for my blog, as it is the end of the B section. I have loved cooking from the B section, and actually I think I’ve enjoyed it more than the A section. It has taught me so, so much and really expanded my culinary repertoire. I have cooked with scallops for the first time, learned how to cook successfully with sea bass, made the perfect and successful béchamel sauce, had *so* much success with beef which are too numerous to mention, but mainly include learning many new ideas for beef, including learning how to cook it perfectly to my tastes, I have learned that I actually quite like beetroot (including beet greens), made some spectacular birthday cakes, had some good fun with biscuits, startled myself with how much I enjoyed the black bean soup, reminded myself of the joys of blackberries and blueberries, completely removed the technique of poaching fish from my culinary repertoire, got into the borlotti bean groove, acquired fresh horseradish for the first time, made the perfect custard for the first time, baked my own bread (v. impressive), began building up a Christmas repertoire (brandy butter, bread sauce), enjoyed eating variations on my standard broccoli, learned some new ways to “jazz up” Brussels sprouts, tasted burghal again for the first time in years and loved it, made the tenderest chicken and reconfirmed my love of butternut squash; Not bad for one section. At the end of this recipe Chris and I are doing a top 5 countdown of our favourite recipes from this section…..stay tuned! A lot has happened in my personal life, too, whilst cooking from this section. I have taken my university exams; gained my first, graduated, and stayed in hospital and now I have begun my PGCE course!
I am not only looking forward to making this because it marks the end of the section, but also for its own merits. Firstly, I love butterscotch. Remember the apple butterscotch tart that I made for mothers day? That knocked all of our socks off; it was wonderfully sour-sweet and perfect. Secondly, I love fruit salads. I’m not thinking here of the slightly unfairly proportioned fruit salads of school-dinner fame (too many apples, pears and oranges and only a few strawberry halves!), but proper fruit salads which can be delicious if made with enough nice ingredients. Nigella says this should be a tropical fruit salad (with pawpaw, melon, mango and star fruit) and I’m planning on using that as a basis and letting my imagination and artistic flair take over from there! Thirdly, Nigella actually presents a slight variation on this theme in Nigella Express; butterscotch fruit fondue. As far as I can tell, the recipe is almost identical to the one in HTE. As I have said before, I always like it when Nigella repeats a recipe; it fills me with instant confidence and security!
Ingredients: There are not many ingredients in the butterscotch sauce, so don’t worry. In fact, I was pleased to realise that I had nearly all of the ingredients already in the cupboards. Even if you don’t, they can all be brought from anywhere. The choice of fruit is where you can really start having fun. I really enjoyed selecting my fruit and playing around with different flavours and colours. In the end I opted for papaya, strawberries, mango (Piel de Sapo), melon and fresh figs; YUM! I did try and look for star fruit, and they were in my local Tescos, but they were dangerously ripe (and already squashy and black in places), so I left them well alone.
Price: I won’t bother telling you how much the fruit was. It would probably give you an unrealistic picture, as the choices you make here are very personal and idiosyncratic anyway. As I mentioned, I had all of the ingredients in the cupboards anyway, so all I needed to purchase was single cream, which cost £0.46. As mentioned, I didn’t need to purchase butter, light muscovado sugar, caster sugar, golden syrup or vanilla extract.
“You may not believe me before tasting it, but this is an ecstatically successful culinary combination” (Nigella p303).
After the success of the butternut and pasta soup on Sunday, I am making this fruit salad for dessert. As I said on my last post, I know that warming and filling soup, followed by a summery, fresh fruit salad are not quite in the same register; but never mind!
This post marks a milestone for my blog, as it is the end of the B section. I have loved cooking from the B section, and actually I think I’ve enjoyed it more than the A section. It has taught me so, so much and really expanded my culinary repertoire. I have cooked with scallops for the first time, learned how to cook successfully with sea bass, made the perfect and successful béchamel sauce, had *so* much success with beef which are too numerous to mention, but mainly include learning many new ideas for beef, including learning how to cook it perfectly to my tastes, I have learned that I actually quite like beetroot (including beet greens), made some spectacular birthday cakes, had some good fun with biscuits, startled myself with how much I enjoyed the black bean soup, reminded myself of the joys of blackberries and blueberries, completely removed the technique of poaching fish from my culinary repertoire, got into the borlotti bean groove, acquired fresh horseradish for the first time, made the perfect custard for the first time, baked my own bread (v. impressive), began building up a Christmas repertoire (brandy butter, bread sauce), enjoyed eating variations on my standard broccoli, learned some new ways to “jazz up” Brussels sprouts, tasted burghal again for the first time in years and loved it, made the tenderest chicken and reconfirmed my love of butternut squash; Not bad for one section. At the end of this recipe Chris and I are doing a top 5 countdown of our favourite recipes from this section…..stay tuned! A lot has happened in my personal life, too, whilst cooking from this section. I have taken my university exams; gained my first, graduated, and stayed in hospital and now I have begun my PGCE course!
I am not only looking forward to making this because it marks the end of the section, but also for its own merits. Firstly, I love butterscotch. Remember the apple butterscotch tart that I made for mothers day? That knocked all of our socks off; it was wonderfully sour-sweet and perfect. Secondly, I love fruit salads. I’m not thinking here of the slightly unfairly proportioned fruit salads of school-dinner fame (too many apples, pears and oranges and only a few strawberry halves!), but proper fruit salads which can be delicious if made with enough nice ingredients. Nigella says this should be a tropical fruit salad (with pawpaw, melon, mango and star fruit) and I’m planning on using that as a basis and letting my imagination and artistic flair take over from there! Thirdly, Nigella actually presents a slight variation on this theme in Nigella Express; butterscotch fruit fondue. As far as I can tell, the recipe is almost identical to the one in HTE. As I have said before, I always like it when Nigella repeats a recipe; it fills me with instant confidence and security!
Ingredients: There are not many ingredients in the butterscotch sauce, so don’t worry. In fact, I was pleased to realise that I had nearly all of the ingredients already in the cupboards. Even if you don’t, they can all be brought from anywhere. The choice of fruit is where you can really start having fun. I really enjoyed selecting my fruit and playing around with different flavours and colours. In the end I opted for papaya, strawberries, mango (Piel de Sapo), melon and fresh figs; YUM! I did try and look for star fruit, and they were in my local Tescos, but they were dangerously ripe (and already squashy and black in places), so I left them well alone.
Price: I won’t bother telling you how much the fruit was. It would probably give you an unrealistic picture, as the choices you make here are very personal and idiosyncratic anyway. As I mentioned, I had all of the ingredients in the cupboards anyway, so all I needed to purchase was single cream, which cost £0.46. As mentioned, I didn’t need to purchase butter, light muscovado sugar, caster sugar, golden syrup or vanilla extract.
(Ingredients for butterscotch sauce; single cream, golden syrup, vanilla essence, sugars and butter).
(This is the fruit I used; strawberries, melon, mango, papaya and figs)
....
Method: This is really easy to make and in fact, is ready so quickly that it’s quite an idea to prepare your fruit before you start making this.
So, all one does is to melt some sugar, butter and syrup together in a pan and allow it to bubble away for 5 minutes. Be warned, this mixture will get hotter than anything known to man, because you essentially making caramel. Please be careful; I was stirring it (foolishly) with a plastic spatula and the heat bent it in the middle! So please, keep the kiddies away from it! Once it’s come off the heat though, its fine and cools down very quickly when the single cream has been whisked in. Nigella says that at this point you can add vanilla extract or rum here, but I opted for the vanilla extract because I don’t make a habit of keeping rum in the house and I didn’t want to buy in a bottle specifically for this.
It’s up to you how you serve this. It seems as though Nigella now serves the sauce in individual cups as a kind of fondue, but I piled lots of fruit up into individual bowls and poured the sauce over myself.
So, all one does is to melt some sugar, butter and syrup together in a pan and allow it to bubble away for 5 minutes. Be warned, this mixture will get hotter than anything known to man, because you essentially making caramel. Please be careful; I was stirring it (foolishly) with a plastic spatula and the heat bent it in the middle! So please, keep the kiddies away from it! Once it’s come off the heat though, its fine and cools down very quickly when the single cream has been whisked in. Nigella says that at this point you can add vanilla extract or rum here, but I opted for the vanilla extract because I don’t make a habit of keeping rum in the house and I didn’t want to buy in a bottle specifically for this.
It’s up to you how you serve this. It seems as though Nigella now serves the sauce in individual cups as a kind of fondue, but I piled lots of fruit up into individual bowls and poured the sauce over myself.
(Check out how amazing that looks! Doesn't it make you want to lick the screen!?)
Result: Firstly, I must take a minute to boast about how pretty this looked. The colours of the fruit were amazing and they looked so beautiful with the glossy brown sauce poured all over them. The reds from the figs and strawberries, especially, looked so wonderfully glorious; especially the figs; their garish red contrasted wonderfully with the velvety purple exterior.
The taste of the sauce was wonderful. I expected it to be cloyingly sweet, but it wasn’t at all. It struck just the right balance of flavours. The flavour reminded me of something…and I was pondering what, through mouthfuls, until I realised that it was very similar to the toffee from toffee apples. Yes; it tasted very much like toffee, which was fantastic for me, because I love toffee. What I really love about toffee is that it is sugary (certainly) without being cloyingly sweet, and this was absolutely no exception; it was truly lovely. I must say that I couldn’t really taste the vanilla extract; only in so much as it provided very smooth and silky base notes. The whole sauce though was fabulous; very rich, smooth and silky and so luxurious. It really felt so opulent, eating such a wonderful rich and smooth sauce over fruit. Yes, it was an extravagance, but a very necessary one in my opinion!
Nigella is absolutely right; it was fantastic with the fruit. In my opinion, it went best with the strawberries, because it reminded me of a toffee-based fondue, but it was lovely with all of the fruits really. It was, as Nigella says, a very successful combination. I am not too keen on melon (sorry!), but one bite of melon with the caramel sauce swathed over it, took its wateriness away and I loved it! Just to briefly mention the papaya; it was far too over-ripe (boo Tescos) and I ended up spooning it out in wet chunks into the bowl. Next time, I wouldn’t bother with it; it was just too much hassle!
(Butter, sugars and golden syrup bubbling away)
Other person’s perspective: Chris’s exact words were “Wow; you could use this with anything.” He said that it was basically liquid toffee, and that he could taste the brown sugar and the cream, but that it wasn’t sickly or sweet, but genuinely very nice. It was really good with the fruits also and like me, his favourite fruit with the sauce was the strawberries.
(With added single cream and vanilla essence)
Future changes: It would be fun to play around with the combination of fruits. Tessa Kiros does a totally red bowl of fruit salad and it might be fun to serve it with that. I might also up the quantity of vanilla essence, just to see if it would be more discernible and if so, what difference that might make.
(Our dessert!)
Rating: 5/5.
B section: With the B section over, I asked Chris to think about his top 5 favourite recipes from this section. I therefore present both his and my top 5 recipes;
Chris;
5.) Blini
4.) Butternut and pasta soup
3.) Scallops and bacon
2.) Meatballs in tomato sauce
1.) Beef braised in beer.
Amy:
5.) Blueberry crumble
4.) Cheese stars
3.) Tabbouleh
2.) Cambodian hot and sour beef salad
1.) Carpaccio of beef
