Intro
Awards
Book News
Schedule for this Year (so far) including Hitler's Daughter tour
What to do in the garden in June
Some recipes, especially veg ones!
Intro
It's rained!
And rained and rained and
rained ...Three lovely days' worth – and proper rain too, not the mingy
'showers clearing about the ranges' stuff which is all we've had for years, or
the thunderstorm that drenches the world but it's all dry again ten hours
later.
This was a band of clouds that just sat there and let it all down. Result: the
ground is more saturated than any time in the past, well, six years I think.
Not that the drought is over. We've had about three inches (75 mls) and we need
about ten (250 mls) more to even start replenishing the watertable. But the
grass is growing, the wilted leaves have all perked up and the wombats are
royally annoyed (the rain disturbed their dinner and breakfast too). There are
new droppings on just about every rock around as they mark their territory
again – or whatever they are doing with their droppings. (I am not
convinced it's as simple as territory marking. A symphony in wombat droppings?)
The lyrebirds are ecstatic
though. Lots of lovely wet soft dirt to dig through. The path to the creek
looks like a rotary hoe has been through it. But it's just big lyrebird feet
attached to very muscular lyrebird legs.
Other news: finally getting around to furnishing the cottage we bought next
door last year. We've had a tenant in it so far, but she is in her own house
now, so we're preparing it for guests, as well as a place to hold workshops or
even where mentorees can stay if they'd like a hand with some writing. The
first furniture went in today (if you want to break a drought just move house)
but there are still a few essentials to get first (like twenty chairs), most of
which we need to go to Canberra to buy.
Not that we can ask anyone to a workshop yet. According to last week's local
paper the Araluen bridge was about to be closed for two months. Trouble is by
the time that notice appeared in the paper there WAS no bridge – it had
been taken apart already and the timbers snapped up by various locals – a
small horde of tractors headed that way as soon as the first timbers were
pulled off.
So now there is a causeway across the dry river bed that will be open from 5 pm
to 7 am (6.55 am is a bit early to ask workshop participants to turn up).
There's also the Mountain Road, also called the Goat Track, that I walk every
morning. It's fine for feet and cautious drivers who don't panic at metre-deep
ruts, small landslides and unexpected wallabies (or a lyrebird landing on their
roof in panic). And the occasional large boulder too. In fact it's the road I
use all the time. But anyone who isn't a local tends to panic half way down and
wonder if they'll ever be seen again.
What else? Have been finishing off 'The Goat that Sailed the World' –
the true story of the very stroppy goat who sailed with Cook on the Endeavour.
And 'Josephine Wants to Dance' is off to the printer too, calloo callay, and it
looks wonderful.
Bruce (Whatley) has made this one beautiful, as well as hilarious. The Goat
will be out in August and Josephine at the beginning of November, and now I'm
catching up on this, columns, banking, putting books back in the shelves and
all the things that get left till a book is done. Won't start another till I
get back from the Fremantle Children's Centre at the end of the month –
just revise a few things and generally catch up.
In Praise of Vegies
Oh, and cookŠ
I'm writing this with fingers that smell of garlic and onion. Yes, I have
washed my hands, well, rinsed them, but I'm writing this in between ducking out
to the kitchen to check on the capsicums turning black and blistered in the
oven (I'll bung them in a plastic container to cool then strip off their skins)
and the garlic, eggplant, tomatoes and red wine vinegar softening in the blue
dish my sister gave me about twenty years ago and I've used at least twice a
week ever since. So hand washin g gets a bit perfunctory, but onion and garlic
smelling keyboards have never hurt anyone.
When it's all put together it'll be a vague version of caponata, the eggplant
and capsicum all soft and meaty and the juices of all the veg blended together
and piquant with red wine vinegar, and I'll eat it for lunch for the next week
with sour dough wholemeal bread from the new bakery up in town, sometimes on
its own and sometimes with red kidney beans added, or a few kipfler potatoes,
which I love 'cause they are more skin than flesh and I love potato skin. And
I'll keep eating it till either I'm sick of it, or the last of the autumn vegie
garden has been used up.
Next month, to go by past
seasons, it'll be cabbage sautéed with onions and lots of garlic for lunch
instead, with maybe a few cranberries thrown in, or red wine vinegar again and
thickly sliced Lady Williams apples, or more red kidney beans. And after that
I'll be hanging out for the first asparagus, artichokes and tiny new potatoes.
In between we'll eat soup – there's nearly always a container of it in
the fridge, made once a week, and what we don't get around to eating the chooks
will have instead. And that'll be made of the last of the autumn veg too, like
pumpkin and zucchinis that have turned into marrows, and then the winter veg,
curried potato and parsnip maybe, but not borscht because Bryan hates it, so
then I'll eat all the beetroot instead, baked with garlic and dressed with
lemon juice and olive oil.
It occurred to me yesterday,
peeling yet another clove of Russian garlic (giant mild cloves that are incredibly
sweet, almost sugary when baked – that as a a culture we have very few
real vegetable recipes.
Lots of vegetarian recipes, but they're different – a reliance on
cereals, pasta, rice etc, to make them 'main' meals. But otherwise vegie dishes
fall into about six camps:
cauilflower cheese and its cousins – basically gratins that you cover
with a cheese or cream sauce and bake or grill;
stir fry with spices, ginger, lemon grass, chilli or other flavours;
à la greque i.e. baked with olive oil and lemon or verjuice;
curried;
salad; or
add tomatoŠ
but apart from
ringing the changes on these by varying the choice of vegetables or spices,
there are very few 'just veg' recipes – ones that don't have lots of
rice, pasta, cheese, ones that celebrate the simple veginess of the
ingredients.
Caponata, is one, of course (see recipes at the end of the newsletter) and so
is ratatouille. And, come to think of it, there are lots of vegetable 'treats'
like thinly sliced parsnips fried till the slices turn into crisp chips –
also wonderful with celeriac or sweet potato. And 'single veg' dishes, baked
mushrooms, corn on the cob. But mixed vegetables – not so much at all.
Or maybe I'm just greedy. Come
to think of it, I'm happily eating caponata every day for weeks, so I don't
need another fifty recipes and, until recently, most families ate from a very
small palette of recipes indeed, none of them sourced from recipe books, and
all passed down from the memories and hands of mothers, grandmothers and aunts.
If a food is really good, it satisfies.
(I've started eating bread again recently, due to a new bakery in town that
produces a wholemeal loaf that tastes of flour and sunlight and earth and all
that a loaf should taste of – and not of salt, preservatives and
conditioning agents to make it rise faster. I'd forgotten how much I like
bread. And their fruit bread is a delight. Which makes one good bakery in
Canberra (Silo) that I know of and one in Braidwood (Dojo Bread), which isn't
all that many for over 100,000 people.
Book News
'My
Auntie Chook the Vampire Chicken' is out now, with the most wonderfully
hilarious Stephen Michael King pink and purple cover. 'Macbeth and Son' is out
now too – a bit more meat than Auntie Chook.
Awards
Secret
World of Wombats has just been shortlisted for the The Wilderness Society's
non-fiction book award in the Environment Award for Children's Literature 2006.
(It was shortlisted for the NSW Premier's Patricia Wrightson Award too.)
Schedule for this year
I'm cutting down the number of
talks I give these days, for health reasons – I can no longer manage to
give talks without a microphone and it's amazing how many school and library
microphones cut out after twenty minutes, with a dead battery or loose
connection! So please don't be offended if I can't open your school fair, or
travel to your town.
But this is what the year
looks like (so far):
June 22-25: Fremantle, W.A. A series of talks for kids and adults on everything
from books to chooks to wombats and gardens at the Fremantle Children's
Literature Centre. Contact the Arts Centre for more details.
August: Book Week talks in Sydney and Melbourne (just a few). Contact Lateral
Learning for details (bookings@laterallearning.com.au).
August: Melbourne Writer's Festival School days: Monday 28th to Wednesday 30th
August. Contact the Melbourne Writer's Festival for details.
Saturday, 4 November: Talk at the Open Garden Seminar at Major's Creek, NSW.
Details from the Open Garden Scheme.
Thursday to Saturday, 9–11 November, Ourimbah Children's Literature
Festival. Which will be fantastic, if anyone can get to it – but as
patron I'm biased. Come to think of it, no I'm not – it really is an
excellent programme.
Sunday, 12 November: Launch of 'Josephine Wants to Dance' and performance at
the Bungendore School Fair, plus a talk at the Wildcare Stall there.
'Hitler's Daughter' Tour
The wonderful people at Monkey
Baa are performing 'Hitler's Daughter', the play, this year. It's stunning
– extraordinary acting, sound and lighting effects, brilliantly funny in
parts and incredibly moving.
So
far the schedule looks like this –
Jackie French's
'Hitler's Daughter' 2006 National Tour
by Monkey Baa
Theatre for Young People Ltd
See the Monkey Baa National Tour schedule here
JUNE IN THE GARDEN
. if your garden
looks bare, mooch about your area, to see what's blooming – or visit some
Open Gardens for good ideas.
. water! Cold days – and especially cold windy days and/or heavy frosts
– dry plants and soil more than you think. A lot of 'cold damage' is
often just lack of water!
. prune most vines now, thinning out messy wood, but not spring flowering ones
– leave those till after they've bloomed.
. plant bare-rooted roses. They look like dead sticks now, but in a few months
at most they'll be glorious.
. winter is the time to move shrubs that are in the wrong place – but
most native plants don't transplant well. It's best just to plant new ones!
Put Some Zest in Your Backyard (citrus zest, that is!)
If I never ate another
home-grown mandarin in my life (though to be honest I'll probably eat another
two while I write this) I'd still grow backyard citrus, simply for their winter
looks. Just as the grass looks dull and most flowers die off most citrus start
glowing from their green leaves.
Which citrus?
Kid's Delight:
Mandarins - kids who have refused to eat citrus for years will guzzle down
mandarins they pick themselves.
Cook's Treat:
Tahitian limes, for the juicy fruit (a real flavour burst compared to lemons)
or Kaffir Limes for their leaves.
Most Elegant Citrus: Chinnotto, for the neat pointed and restrained decorator's delight
type shape. The tiny, slightly musty flavoured fruit (sometimes called Italian
cola) look stunning all winter. Great in pots.
Juicer's Joy:
Blood oranges. That deep red juice also makes great slushies.
Most Fascinating citrus: Buddha's Hand citrons – thick fragrant peel, juice like a lemon
and a definite conversation starter shape (even if the conversation is just
'what the heck is that!').
Most Heat-Hardy Citrus: pomelos, like giant overgrown grapefruit. They'll also grow down
south if you want a massive fruit to boast about.
Best Marmalade Treat: cumquats, calamondins (like a sourer cumquat), pink grapefruit or
sour but intensely flavoured Seville oranges.
Most Cold-Hardy Citrus: Bush lemons (will survive drought too) and Eureka lemons (NOT Meyer
lemons).
Best Potted Citrus: Meyer lemons, Chinotto, dwarf oranges, cumquats and calamondins.
Native Citrus:
Hunt out the rare Australian Round Limes - not much juice, but fragrant, and
very hardy and they are starting to appear in nurseries not just as novelty
plants but selected strains that are suitable for home gardens.
Possible citrus problems:
o Pale yellow leaves – feed, feed and feed, with compost or complete
citrus food in spring and mid-summer. Most backyard citrus are half starved!
Mulch and keep moist too – citrus are shallow rooted.
o Scabby citrus – can be a disease or insect or cold damage. Just ignore
it.
o Dropping fruit – too little or too much water.
o Sap-sucking bugs and other pests – vacuum off (seriously!) with your
vacuum cleaner then get rid of the pest-stuffed bag, or use Pestoil as directed
on the container.
Pot Plant Renovations
o Cover up daggy bare soil with coloured pebbles – there's a great
selection at most nurseries.
o Dust! Or wipe over with a damp cloth – a dusty plant looks tatty and
can't breathe either.
o Never used those giant brandy balloons or glass vases you were given last
Christmas? Turn them into an instant water garden with shade-tolerant pond
plants like twisted rush or many of the aquarium plants. Rinse glasses every
week to stop algae growing.
o Invest in some bright 'cache' pots to match your decor, then slip in
'bloomers' still in their plastic pots. Mulch the top with coconut fibre (also
from nurseries) to hide any gap between the two pots.
o Buy small plastic pots of herbs for your windowsill, then hide the ugly
plastic in a long rectangular vase.
o Fill a basket with brightly blooming polyanthus or daffodils or hyacinths,
then hide the plastic pots with moss from nursery or florist.
o Go for drama with the elegant foliage of Strelitzias or Dracaenas, or
brighten dull spots with 'never say die' aspidistras and kentia palms –
they may not grow much in low lights areas, but they'll survive.
o Don't overfeed or water! Water only when the soil is dry, and use slow
release fertilisers. If the plant looks sick, it may need more light or have
scaleŠŠ/what it doesn't need is more tucker!
o Use Pestoil – a light, non-toxic oil covering to suffocate indoor
pests.
o Don't liberate your indoor plant outside! Many can become real weeds –
and others like umbrella trees can become monsters that can disturb your house
foundations!
What to Plant in June
Frost-free climates: Passionfruit vines and seeds, mixed salad leaves, apple cucumbers,
butter beans, huge New Guinea beans, coloured capsicum, Chinese cabbage,
chillies, chokos, sweet potatoes, long oval eggplant, melons, okra, rosellas,
pumpkin, shallots, sweet corn and tomatoes. Try deep pots of parsley –
the roots may rot in hot damp soil.
Plants for beauty:
Alyssum, calendula, cleome, coleus, gerbera, petunias, phlox, salvia, torenia
and zinnia,
Cold to Temperate:
Plants to eat: Seeds of radish, onions, winter lettuce, silverbeet, spinach,
broad beans, peas, snow peas, spring onions, parsnips, fast maturing Asian veg
like tatsoi, pak choi and mitsuba. Seedlings of beetroot, broccoli, cabbage,
cauliflower, chicory, leeks, lettuce and spinach.
Plants for beauty:
Seeds of alyssum, calendula and lunaria. Seedlings of Californian poppy,
evening primrose, gazanias, primulas, pansies, polyanthus, Iceland poppies and
viola.
Some Recipes – especially veg ones!
An Araluen
version of Caponata
2 eggplant
6 tomatoes
6 red capsicum
2 heads garlic
4 red onions
olive oil- optional
red wine vinegar
1 tbsp brown sugar – optioinal
1 tbsp – optional
Possible accompaniments: red kidney beans, baked kipfler potatoes, slices of
extremely good bread (fresh or toast).
Splodge oil into the base of
an oven dish. Add chopped eggplant, peeled onions, whole tomatoes and peeled
garlic. Take seeds out of the capsicum then place on top of the pan.
Place in the oven and turn on as hot as you can. Turn the capsicum every ten
minutes till they are black or blistered all over.
Place capsicum in a plastic container with the lid on till cool. Peel off the
skin – it'll come off easily now – but do catch all the juice in
the container. Meanwhile add a good glug of red wine vinegar to the pan (and
the sugar and sultanas if using) and keep cooking till eggplant is soft.
Take out of the oven, add the capsicum and store in a sealed container in the
fridge.
Sounds horrible, doesn't it? But the pungency of the red wine vinegar
evaporates, and the juices thicken and the eggplant and capsicum become meaty
and the whole thing is a delight. I mostly leave out the sugar now and even the
olive oil unless I'm serving it to guests. And when I have mild Russian garlic
I use about six heads of garlic. I peel the tomatoes, too, if it's for guests,
but don't bother for myself.
Every lunch time I heat up some
red kidney beans or leftover potatoes, or even poach an egg in it all or just
have it on bread if Bryan has been up to town that day or the day before, or
with toast for the rest of the week. And it doesn't taste of any of the
ingredients, but all of them together and it is divine.
PS Don't be tempted to add zucchini – they make it too watery. Keep the
zucchini for ratatouille, with much longer cooking times to evaporate the
juice.
Pumpkin Fritters
1 cup flour
1 cup mashed pumpkin
1 dessertspoon sugar (I use caster sugar)
1 egg
milk to moisten (the amount of milk depends on how moist the pumpkin is. The
mixture should be thick but runny.)
Heat frypan, add a little butter, pour in spoonfuls of mixture. Cook on high
heat on both sides till light brown. Serve hot or cold.
Zucchini in Sweet and Sour Sauce
Cut 500 gms zucchini into
matchsticks and sprinkle with salt. Leave for two hours, drain and dry. Cook
with a little olive oil till nearly soft, add a good grate of black pepper, a
sprinkle of cinnamon, a tablespoon of brown sugar and four tablespoons of red
wine vinegar. Boil for five minutes.
Tarata
Sauté three green peppers and
one large thinly sliced eggplant in 2 tb olive oil with a large chopped onion.
When very soft take off the heat, cool, add a sprig of finely chopped mint and
two crushed cloves of garlic. Now fold in a cup of natural yoghurt.
Hot or Cold Beetroot Salad
This is yummy stuff.
Take three beetroot, peel,
chop into small chunks, place in a saucepan, just cover with water then boil
till the water is almost gone – the sugar in the beetroot will have made
them look all shiny and glazed by now.
Then add 3 tbsps extra virgin
olive oil, 1 tbsp white vinegar and two chopped cloves of garlic. Stir over the
heat for a minute, then tip the lot into a bowl, and guzzle either as a hot veg
or cold as a salad.
You can use red, yellow,
striped or white beetroot for this. They all taste pretty much the same, but
white beetroot has one great advantage – when you spill it down your
front it doesn't leave a stain!
Veg Kebabs
Ingredients: 1 large sliced eggplant (salt and drain for half an hour to remove
surplus juice and make the flesh firmer), 2 red onions, 25 button mushrooms, a
red capsicum, half a cup of olive oil, 3 cloves garlic, a dash of Tabasco sauce
(optional), artichoke hearts (optional), chunks of red tomato (optional), hunks
of boiled but firm potato (optional), thyme and juice of 1 lemon.
Cut the eggplant, red capsicum
and the onions (peeled) into chunks about the size of the button mushrooms. Mix
the other ingredients. Marinate for at least an hour or overnight.
Thread all the veg onto
skewers. Grill till softish and slightly charred.
Grilled Mushrooms
There are mushrooms popping up in the paddock by the cottage now- lovely shaggy
ones. If you don't have any wild ones to pick choose big flattish ones, as dark
and fragrant as possible.
Mix lots of garlic and black
pepper and chopped parsley into melted butter or olive oil. Pour a generous
amount into the cap of each mushroom. Grill the mushrooms top downwards until
the stems look cooked or until the mushrooms look like they might soon collapse
or burn. Eat hot. Toast is great to mop up the juices.
Stuffed Whole Pumpkin
Take one big pumpkin – a
giant Queensland Blue is ideal. Cut off the top – henceforth referred to
as the lid. Hollow out the seeds.
Stuffing
N.B. There may be too much stuffing for one pumpkin in which case stuff more
and keep the leftovers for later in the week.
Splodge three tablespoons of
olive oil in a pan, add one finely chopped large onion and six chopped cloves
of garlic and stir till transparent. Add one cup of Basmati rice, stir over
low heat till transparent and add four cups of chicken stock (or water if
you're vegetarian), three dessertspoons of pine nuts, three dessertspoons of
currants. Simmer with the lid off till all the moisture has evaporated. Don't
stir. As long as the temperature is VERY low below the pan it won't burn on
the bottom.
Stuff the cooked mixture into
the pumpkin. Put the lid back on. Bake in a moderate oven for at least two
hours, or till the pumpkin feels softish when you prod it with your finger
(don't burn yourself - be fast) or has turned coloured – JUST turned
colour I mean, not blackened or even bronzed.
Take it CAREFULLY out of the
oven (with oven mits - or you can cook the whole thing on a baking tray which
makes it much easier to handle once it is cooked and saves the massive
clean-up if you over-cook the pumpkin and it cracks, collapses and empties its
contents all over the floor of your oven). By now the lid will have resealed
itself, so cut it off again at the table. Serve everyone with a hunk of
pumpkin flesh and the adhering stuffing.
Onions with Sun-Dried Tomatoes and Marjoram
Ingredients:
8 medium sized white onions, peeled
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon marjoram, chopped
2 tablespoons sun dried tomatoes
black pepper
Combine all ingredients except
the marjoram in an oven-proof dish. Bake at 200º C for 45 minutes, stirring
once or twice as the dish cooks. Stir in the marjoram and cook for another 15
minutes. Season with black pepper (don't add this earlier or it will turn the
dish slightly bitter) and serve hot.
Twenty-layer vegetarian pie
The idea of this is to have
something as spectacular on the table as a browned turkey would have been -
tall, imposing, and with plenty of leftovers.
Ingredients
1 - 2 packets of filo pastry
various stuffings for the different layers - ricotta cheese with chopped
walnuts; sautéed mushrooms with garlic and butter; sautéed leeks in butter;
spinach in cheese sauce; hardboiled eggs mashed into sour cream; sautéed grated
beetroot (in butter with just a touch or sour cream); parsnip mashed with
butter; grated carrot, onion and garlic sautéed in butter then thickened with a
little mashed hard-boiled egg; sun-dried capsicum in olive oil topped with
toasted breadcrumbs; basmati rice with currants and pinenuts and red onion.
Leave out the ones you don't like, but at least have several of them (or make
up more depending on your preferences and the availability – there are
still sweet potato options, not to mention other wonderful veg like eggplant
(grilled or fried in breadcrumbs), pumpkin (baked with garlic and chilli),
cauliflower (with anchovy and garlic breadcrumbs) and celeriac (mashed) and on
and on... Make sure none of them are watery or the pie will turn soggy.
Now brush two sheets of filo
with melted butter and place on greased tray. Place a layer of filling on
them, leaving at least two inches free at the sides. Repeat with more layers of
stuffing and filo, but don't get the stuffing too close to the edge. At the
end of piling up the pie you should be able to brush the edges down so the pie
is enclosed in layers of buttery pastry. Spend a little bit of time thinking
about the colours as you organise the layers – this can look really
spectacular if the more vivid colours are arranged between the duller and
plainer ones.
Bake for forty minutes in a
moderate oven, or until brown and flaky on top. Serve hot, but the leftovers
are good cold.
Cut into slices at the table
so everyone can admire the whole thing. You need considerable dexterity to
transfer slices to each plate - don't worry if they collapse a bit. They'll
still look – and taste – good.
Spiced Quinces
These are good with any rich
meat – roasted chicken, pork or duck, or even a dryish stuffed pumpkin.
Add more sugar (For most tastes anyway) if you plan to eat them for dessert
with cream.
Ingredients:
4 quinces, peeled and cored
1 slice fresh ginger
6 juniper berries
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (no white)
2 tablespoons sugar
a little water
Place all ingredients in an
oven-proof dish and bake at 200º C for about an hour or until the quinces are
tender. Strain off the liquid and boil rapidly till it thickens. Pour over
the quinces to give them a bright shiny glaze. Serve hot.
Hot Mascarpone Creams with Raspberry Sauce
Cream Ingredients
250 gm mascarpone (Italian cream cheese - at a pinch you can use the Aussie
stuff)
150 ml sour cream (or light sour cream)
3 dessertspoons caster sugar
2 eggs
Beat the whole lot till
smooth. Bake in one large or several small pots (don't fill each pot any more
than two thirds of the way up so you have room for the sauce on top) in a
moderate oven till set (about twenty minutes). Don't let it brown though a
gentle gold colour is okay.
Sauce ingredients
Melt a carton of frozen
raspberries – one of the few fruits that really freezes well and, after
all, medieval mid-winter feasts were traditionally based on preserved food.
Heat gently in a saucepan and add a quarter teacup full of Cointreau (this can
be omitted if you don't have any). Mash a little with a fork, then reduce till
it's thick and pour it over the cooked creams to the top of the pot.
Serve at once.
Lemon or Lime Milk Pudding
You need:
2 and a half cups milk
2 cups cream
1 – 2 cups flavoured leaves: young lemon, Tahitian or Kaffir lime leaves
or Backhousia citriodora or lemon verbena leaves
4 eggs, lightly beaten
2 egg yolks
a third of a cup caster sugar
passionfruit or extra cream: optional
Turn the oven on to 160º C.
Place milk, cream and crushed leaves in a saucepan. Bring to the boil and
remove from the heat. Put the lid on and leave for twenty minutes. Scoop out
the leaves.
Whisk eggs, egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl. Add the milk mixture gradually
and whisk till blended.
Pour the mix into a cake tin; place tin in a baking dish in the oven. Pour near
boiling water into the pan till it comes half way up the tin.
Bake for about fifty minutes or till the pudding is just set.
Remove pan from water. Cool. Cover and leave in the fridge overnight to get
really firm.
Turn out on a plate.
You can eat your milk pudding with cream if you like, but it's nicest of all
with fresh passionfruit.
Lime tart
(Excellent. Other citrus can be used – mandarin is interesting)
Fill a pie crust with a cup of cream in which two eggs and half a cup of sugar
have been beaten, then half a cup of lime juice added. Add the lime juice at
the end or the lot may curdle. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake in a moderate oven
till set.