Intro | Wombat News and Calendars
New Awards | New Books
Schedule for the next 12 Months
The November Garden | A Solar Fruit Dryer
A Few Recipes
What went wrong at our Open Garden Workshops?
. It rained – two great deluges on the Saturday, the sort that drench you in ten seconds.
. A watermelon exploded in the living room before it could be cut up for guests. I mean EXPLODED. I walked in the front door and wondered why the carpet was wet… and then saw the red foam around the room. Then I noticed the sagging watermelon shell…
What went right at our Open Garden Workshops?
. The garden was a million shades of green, the creek sang, and so did the lyrebirds- though I suspect most of what they were singing meant : go away noisy humans.
. The new marquees turned out to be rainproof –and even the deluges turned into fun. We giggled like school kids as we passed plates of choc slices and apple and rhubarb cake and spring vegetable frittata between the tents.
. Mothball wombat, star of Diary of a Wombat and very much a real wombat, turned up midway through the first talk.
70 people sitting in the marquee watched her cross the creek, stop, stare and sniff at them and the new marquee as though she couldn't believe it (or them); stalk with great disgust around the tent; pause on the other side to express even more disgust (and present a perfect photo opportunity for screaming fans); walk up the steps and over to her old hole. She was asleep above the hole when they toured the garden. She opened one eye and glared at them, obviously saying, 'Go away.'
It was a strange weekend. Part of me is still in shock at the threat posed by the proposed reopening and extension of an old gold mine above us. This mine is only four kilometres upstream and threatens the gorge, my land and the valley itself – and it is only one and a half kilometres from the endangered species and ecosystems of the gorge.
The other part watched, the roses opening, the vegetables reaching for the clouds, Eastern Spinebills poking their beaks into the flowers and rejoiced in the beauty and happiness of the days.
Now they’re over for another year. My feet are sore, my knees are sore; the living room smells like horses with a bladder problem have been stabled there – that carpet may need a few weeks airing (if we get some hot days to get the smell gone). Bryan is munching left-over butter cookies and banana cake and the flourless blood orange and almond cake that somehow never got put out for the visitors (I love blood orange and almond cake).
The cups have been put away and this afternoon I’ll head back to the novel that has been put off for the last two weeks of working on the mine submission.
(This is a plea, too- the time for submissions has closed, but if anyone has time to write to the NSW Minister for Planning and Environment, Federal Environment Minister The Hon Tony Burke and Shadow NSW Ministers, please please do so, asking them to ensure that the impact of the proposed mine aquifer, endangered species, and critically endangered species is studied before any approval is given for mining.
No test bores have been dug in the National Park Reserve 1.5 directly downstream; none have been done on our place, which adjoins the National park Reserve. Both contain the most extraordinary range of species.
This is the area most likely to be affected by the mine- not the area mostly uphill from the mine that has been tested in the mine’s Environmental Assessment. But studies done on the ground water here in the valley- and one done up in Major’s Creek- indicate that the results of a 500 metre deep mine 4km above us could be catastrophic. But to have any real idea of what will happen test bores need to be dug while test drilling takes place- and we need to convince the various Ministers that this testing is essential.
Meanwhile: the creek still sings, and the Rufous Fantail is sitting on a branch 30cm from my computer. Mothball wombat ate half a doormat last night- possibly dessert after so much soft green grass.
I don’t know what the next six or twelve months may bring; destruction of the land I have loved and walked for more than three decades, floods, fire or meteor strikes. But just at this moment though it is very, very good.
Wombat News
She is fat, annoyed at the scent of so many strange humans but glad they were properly respectful and didn’t try to pat her or come too close. But mostly I think Mothball is secretly absolutely enchanted by a whole valley full of green grass – and every animal around here knows to step back from the bit she wants to eat. Even at sixteen, Mothball is one stroppy wombat.
Life is good just now for wombats in the valley.
Wombat Calendars
Our local Wildlife care association makes most of its money for food and medicines by selling gorgeous wombat calendars each month. They are stunning pics, make great Christmas presents – and help a very, very worthy cause. If you’d like to order one, contact Philip at: machin4@bigpond.com
They are only $10, plus postage and adorable photos – very, very good value indeed.
Latest Awards
The Night They Stormed Eureka won the NSW Premier’s History Award for Young People. Excuse me quoting all this… it is still such a joy to read it!
The judges stated: ‘This delightful novel combines the rigour of historical research and literary imagination to entrance young and old readers alike and make them want to know more about the events surrounding the Eureka Stockade.
The story is grounded in historical research which gives it a texture, believability and authenticity. Yet, young readers are not being lectured to. Although about an important historical event this is not a history lesson, despite the fact that there are important lessons to be learned, not least about the nature of history itself. The book imaginatively engages students and teachers to think about the gold diggings and Eureka beyond the story itself. The author’s notes at the end are like a conversation between the author and the reader. It provides an explanatory note on terms, language and key events including a description of what happened after the Stockade. And, finally, it provides recipes and handy hints from Mrs. Puddleham’s ‘instructory almanac’, so that young readers can engage creatively with the history into the future.
The Night They Stormed Eureka is a masterpiece of historical empathy. What makes this a brilliant work for engaging young people with history is that, as a work of fiction, it allows them to experience the past for themselves and to make their own imaginative leaps and judgements. Because Sam is from the future we see her being able to anticipate events and outcomes and thinking again, with renewed insight, into why the past events like Eureka, mattered at the time and should continue to matter today. The author’s notes are a lovely, creative input allowing readers to navigate the story, to know which bits are true and which are fictional, reminding us of the constructed nature and subjectivity of history. What a joy! An excellent book and much deserved winner of the Young People’s category.’
Other award news: Baby Wombat’s Week, co-created with Bruce Whatley, is on the ‘long list’ for The Kate Greenway Awards in the UK… wombat paws crossed that it makes it to the ‘short list’.
And the exhibition, ‘The Tinytoreum’, that Bruce Whatley and I created from the story-line, words and artwork for Baby Wombat’s Week has won the IMAGinE Museum Award.
All in all, it’s been a pretty good fortnight for awards…
Lots of other shortlistings this year and one other win, the ABIA (or Australian Book Industry Award) for Baby Wombat’s Week, created with Bruce Whatley. Though to be honest the book was a creation with so many others too, from Lisa Berryman to Jennifer Blau, Natalie Winter, Cristiana Rodriques and Liz Kemp, not to mention the wombat herself, and her baby, Bounce, plus the wombat a small boy played with many years ago.
I found them together in his bedroom at 7 am when he was three years old, a small boy – a bit muddy – and a strange wild wombat. The boy had his arm around the animal and the wombat looked a bit embarrassed, as though to say, ‘I’m not sure what’s happening but I think I like it.’
He was feeding it a carrot.
We called the wombat Chocolate. The boy is a man now, and I don’t even know if he remembers the moment. But whenever I wonder if humans can really learn to co-exist with other species, I remember the boy and the wombat, sitting together that morning.
New Books
Queen Victoria’s Underpants should be back in the bookshops – the first printing sold out faster than anyone thought it would.
The revised Chook Book is in the shops too now – twice as big as the original edition and much changed and updated. It’s all you ever wanted to know (and probably a bit more) about how to keep chooks in your backyard, or at school.
The last in the Animal Stars series is The Horse That Bit a Bushranger – the true as I can make it account of a few of my ancestors and bushranger Ben Hall, the story of a young convict who rode a giant brumby stallion no one else could tame; who won a race, a farm and a wife… and of what happened next.
Oracle is out, too. It’s the most exciting of all of my books so far; set in ancient Greek, at the court of Mycenae, where Niko and his sister Thetis are acclaimed as the greatest acrobats in Greece, so valued by the High King that they are even sent on embassies to other kingdoms. But Thetis has both a curse and a gift – if she speaks at all, she must tell the truth. And when the walls of Mycenae fall in an earthquake Niko and the wild horse dancer Euridice must follow Thetis as she finds her true place – as the first of the oracles of Delphi.
Coming December 1 for Christmas: A Waltz for Matilda.
This is, perhaps, the best book I have written. It wasn’t quite the book I thought I was going to write, either. Other voices kept intruding, more whispers from the past. Finally the book was twice as long as I had expected, more saga than story.
With the help of Aboriginal elder Auntie Love, the ladies of the Women’s Temperance and Suffrage League and many others, she confronts the unrelenting harshness of life on the land, and the long-standing hostility of local squatter, Mr. Drinkwater, she also discovers that enduring friendship can be the strongest kind of love.
Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl’s journey towards independence. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams.
Drawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this saga tells the story of how Australia became a nation. It is also a love story – about a girl, and about the land.
Other new-ish books
A Year in the Valley
This is a reissue of Seasons of Content, with a new introduction, as well as a new ‘What Happened Next’ section about our lives in the Valley since I wrote the book – more than twenty years ago now. I wrote it mostly for my own pleasure then and only hauled it into publishing shape on an impulse many years later and sent it to HarperCollins. It is about the Valley – the wombats, our lives, and the dances of the lyrebirds. It is also very much about food: the growing of it, the cooking, the sharing with friends, human and otherwise.
The Tomorrow Book
Illustrated by Sue de Gennaro… a look at the paradise we could create, maybe just tomorrow.
This is a special book. It’s closer to my heart than anything I’ve written before and Sue’s work is inspired: funny, whimsical and extraordinarily beautiful. It’s what happens when the King and Queen retire and go off in their campervan, leaving the kids in charge, and they find the solution to each of the world’s major problems in their library and create… tomorrow.
Every one of the solutions really does exist – and the possible tomorrows are very, very good indeed.
P.S. Sue created the extraordinary artwork in collage, using materials she found in her kitchen, from tea bags to labels. It is too magic to even have words to describe it.
Dance of the Deadly Dinosaurs
The sequel to Lessons for a Werewolf Warrior continues the crazy adventures of Boo, werewolf and hero-in-the-making!
The Night They Stormed Eureka
A fresh look at the history we thought we knew.
Are the history books wrong? Could the rebels have succeeded? Could we too have seceded from Britain, like the USA?
This is the story of Sam, a modern teenager, thrust into the world of the Ballarat goldfields, with the Puddlehams, who run the best cook shop on the diggings and dream of a hotel with velvet seats, ten thousand miners who dream of gold and rebellion, and Professor Shamus O’Blivion, who tries not to dream at all. But there is a happy ending for Sam, who discovers that when you stand together, you really can change the world – and your own life, too.
Schedule for the Next Few Months
I’m sorry I can’t accept every invitation – there are often two or three invitations to talk somewhere each day and, much as I’d love to, there is no way I can do them all, or even most of them. Basically, I can only do one trip away from home a month, and that includes trips to Canberra, so I mostly only speak to groups of more than 200 and when it will take no more than six hours travel each way (except Western Australia). I’ve also stopped doing early morning and after-dinner talks.
But as I have friends and family in Brisbane and Perth I always love an excuse to travel there... or anywhere that might involve a stopover in Perth, too.
New South Wales bookings are done by Lateral Learning (bookings@laterallearning.com.au), Queensland bookings by Helen Bain at Speaker’s Inc, Victoria by Booked Out, (simon@bookedout.com.au), SA bookings by Carol Carralloe (c.carroll@internode.on.net), WA bookings by the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, and for other bookings contact me at jackiefrench72@gmail.com.
But please don’t use any of these addresses for help with school projects, help in getting a book published, or just to have a chat – again much as I’d love that too, I can’t manage to answer more or, truthfully, even the number I get now. I already spend half my day answering queries and, despite having help in the office, am not quite sure how to cope, as questions come from overseas as well as Australia these days.
There are answers to nearly all your project questions as well as queries on how to get books published on the website, and answers to every gardening question so far received are in my gardening books, which should be in most libraries.
April onwards: Sue de Gennaro’s artwork for The Tomorrow Book will be at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre. Contact the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for more details.
November 20: Eurobodalla Slow Food Festival at Moruya, NSW. I’ll be giving a series of talks during the day, on everything from fruit trees to wombats, demonstrating how to make the perfect potato cake, reading and telling stories to kids, and launching the festival once again as its patron.
November 25: Botanic Gardens, Canberra, talk on This Generous Earth. Entry is free.
February, 2011: Probably a trip to Darwin
March 1-4, 2011: Probably talks in Melbourne: contact simon@bookedout.com.au if you’d like to make a booking.
March 19-21, 2011: Keynote address at Wombat Conference, Albury. (And if any schools or libraries nearby want talks while I’m there, this is the time to book!)
March 31, April 1, 2011: Newington Literary Festival, Sydney
May 9-13, 2011: I’ll be in Adelaide and country SA, available to talk some days.
May 18 and 19, 2011: Talks at Queensland schools. Contact Helen Bain, helen@speakers-ink.com.au
July 18 and 19, 2011: Talks at Brisbane schools. Contact Helen Bain, helen@speakers-ink.com.au
July 20 and 21, 2011: Cairns Writer’s Festival.
October 24-31, 2011: Fremantle, Perth and Albany WA. Contact the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre for details and bookings.
The November Garden
For once I think I’ll just say ‘plant’. In most areas of eastern Australia now, we’ve had rain, are getting rain, will get rain. So plant – vegies, trees, whatever you love and delights you. Mulch well; water and feed when you can… but plant.
The Very Best of All
Every now and then I’m asked, ‘Okay, if you had a small garden, what would you plant?’ which isn’t easy to answer, as one of the reasons we have a four hectare garden (and getting bigger all the time) is that I like to have EVERYTHING…
But the very, very best? Well, here goes!
The Most Glorious Flowers
Rambling roses, like Climbing Albertine. They ramble up trees and don’t need pruning, weeding or spraying – and possums won’t eat their glorious tangles!
Climbing Iceberg rose: It flowers all year round and, again, you can twine it up trees or posts or over the front door.
Japonica camellias: They bloom in shade in dull winters, and are much more drought tolerant than sasanquas!
Grevilleas: Birds adore them (so do I), and you can find varieties that bloom all year round.
Ginger Lilies. A scent like paradise and they bloom in shade.
Salvias: Like pineapple sage, blue sage, bog sage, fruit salad sage, tequila sage. I collect sages – hardy no matter how bad the drought and we have more birds per square metre sipping at their nectar or picking off nectar-feeding insects than anywhere else this side of the Black Stump.
The Best of all Fruit
Avocadoes. Once you learn that avocadoes will take frost and heat but NOT any wind at all – so plant them in a sheltered spot – they are the most generous fruit. Avocadoes feed us, the chooks and visiting dogs. Plant three varieties close together for year-round fruit.
Lemons. I don’t think I’d know how to cook without a lemon tree outside the kitchen so I could pluck a few fruit every day. Eurekas are the most cold hardy and fruit all year round if picked regularly.
Apples. Don’t know why, but apples have always symbolised productivity for me. A few lichened apple trees make me feel secure in the world’s bounty. Grow a hedge of dwarf ones, maturing at different times – and don’t forget a Lady Williams so you can still pick apples in July.
Plums. Totally hardy, incredibly generous.
Pomegranates. For their stunning orange flowers, generous fruit, fantastic pomegranate salads, all crunch and sweetness, autumn leaves – and for the birds who love them too.
Persimmon. Not for their fruit, though it’s okay, but for their sheer symmetry and beauty.
The Most Essential Veg.
Silver beet. Drought, hail, heat and frost can’t kill it, and there are always greens in the garden when you need them, say, every day… spinach soup, quiche, cheese and spinach pastries, stir fried with oil and lemon…
Carrots. As those supermarket things don’t taste of anything. They don’t even make the food they’re cooked with turn yellow!
Tomatoes. Ditto.
The ‘Can’t do Without’ Herbs
Parsley. Kids won’t eat their greens? Scatter chopped parsley on their pizza, pasta, mashed potato. Green ice-cream anyone?
Chamomile. Shop-bought chamomile tastes like compost, fresh flowers taste like pineapple and sunlight.
Lemon mint, peppermint, eau de cologne mint: for teas, soothers, salads, drinks…plus they grow themselves.
Aloe vera. Because a good slop eases irritating burns and insect bites. Ours grow in hanging baskets outside the kitchen door.
And of course I could keep going… and have, for the last thirty years of gardening! Come to think of it, the REAL essentials are the plants you love. Forget about what the neighbours are growing, or the garden you grew up with. What plants do you adore? Cinnamon and oranges? Pepper vines and lillipillies? Don’t settle for second rate in your garden. Plant what you adore.
A Solar Food Dryer
I do a lot of my cooking on a ‘solar oven’ – a mirror directs the sun’s raays onto the food. The solar cooker is the size of a suitcase, and you can use it on a patio or in the backyard or in a park if you want a barbecue. You don’t need any power except sunlight.
A badly-made solar cooker though can hurt you if the light is directed the wrong way. While they are easy to make at home or school, you need more help than just this pamphlet to get it right.
A solar-powered food dryer though is easy – and fun.
You need
. a cardboard box
. aluminium foil
. glue
. scissors
. fuse wire
. a sheet of clear glass or plastic to put over the box
. wooden blocks to put the box on
Optional: a metal grill rack
Line the inside of the box with foil, using the glue.
Cut holes in the sides and bottom of the box, about 5 cm apart.
Thread the fuse wire through some of the holes in the sides of the box so that you make a small rack to rest slices of food (or the rack) on.
Place the box on the wooden blocks in a sunny place. Put the glass lid on.
You now have your solar food dryer.
How this works.
The foil reflects the sunlight; the glass or plastic helps keep the heat in; the moisture evaporated from the food drips down through the holes.
How to use:
Cut apples, peaches or apricots into thin strips.
Dip them in lemon juice to they don’t go too brown as they dry. (Commercial dried fruit has added sulphate or other artificial products to keep it soft and coloured.)
Place the fruit on the rack, keeping at last 5 cm between each piece of fruit. It will take about two to three hot sunny days for the fruit to dry. You may need to turn the fruit over if one side is drying faster than the other.
A Few Recipes
Infinitely Variable Pancakes
These are fluffy pancakes – much easier to make than crepes, in fact so easy that kids can make them the next time, as long as you keep an eye out to make sure they don't burn themselves, the cat or the house.
They can be eaten plain, with jam and cream, butter and jam, lemon and brown sugar or maple syrup, or you can add to them, making them sweet or savoury. Both the fruit and vegie ones are perfect for a kid's (or grown up's) lunch box, as they stay much moister and more delicious than a piece of bread.
Just like a pizza, you can eat them with your fingers in front of a good DVD. And, yes, if you like you can smother the vegie ones in tomato sauce, home-made or bottled.
They're also great for breakfast: try adding a poached egg, or stewed fruit, though not at the same time.
Ease of making: Simple
Time taken: One minute to gather ingredients and mix batter; one minute till you’re eating your first pancake; ten minutes to cook the rest.
Serves: Depends how much vegies and other stuff you add to the recipe. Say four people for dinner (16 pancakes), but you can stretch them much, much further...
Ingredients:
2 cups SR flour
2 eggs
1½ cups milk
Optional:
1 cup cooked or grated apple, peach or pear (add 1 tbsp lemon juice so the fruit doesn't brown) or chopped pineapple;
or
1 cup chopped walnuts or macadamias (these can be added as well as the fruit);
or
1 cup mashed pumpkin or sweet potato, with an optional flavouring of 1 tbsp curry paste. Nuts can be added to these, too;
or
1 cup grated zucchini, optional 1 tbsp chopped chives, 1 tbsp chopped parsley, half a cup grated cheese, half a cup chopped cooked bacon or chopped ham. Grated carrot can also be added;
or
1 cup finely chopped, cooked spinach or silverbeet, optional half a cup of grated cheese – cheddar, fetta, camembert, your choice;
or
½ a cup of finely chopped roast capsicum, 2 tbsps chopped chives, 2 tbsps finely chopped celery.
Call the apple ones Apple Fritters, the pumpkin ones Pumpkin Fritters, and the vegie ones Vegie Pancakes etc.
Method: Heat a pan for a few minutes – it needs to be warmed all the way through. Keep it on 'low' though – these are thick pancakes and they need a low heat to cook properly. (A thin crepe on the other hand needs a hot fast heat.)
Add a tsp of butter or oil – my pan though is smooth and 'well tempered' and it doesn't need greasing. Try a bit of butter or olive oil to begin with, but you may find you don't need it as you get better at pancake making.
Glop in a spoonful – a big spoon will make a big pancake, a small one a small pancake. Wait till it bubbles; turn over; wait about the same time again, flip out and eat... or place on a plate under a clean tea-towel while you make more.
Strawberry and Passionfruit Crush
Ease of making: Simple
Serves: 4-8
Time taken: About 5 minutes. You can prepare most in advance but assemble it just before serving.
Calories: Not as many as you'd think, as the cream is whipped- far less than say a serve of sticky date pudding.
Ingredients
3 cups strawberries, as ripe and sweet as possible
half to one cup passionfruit pulp – about ten to twenty passionfruit, or use strained canned passionfruit.
1 cup crushed meringues – this is one time commercial ones are fine
1 cup cream, whipped
1-3 tbsps caster sugar, optional – if the fruit is really sweet you won't need it
1 tbsp Cointreau... leave out if kids are going to eat this and if they are around, they will.
Whip cream, sugar and Cointreau. Cover and leave in the fridge for up to eight hours.
Hull and chop berries and add to passionfruit. Leave covered in the fridge for up to eight hours.
Just before serving, mix them both with the meringues. Serve in glasses or glass bowls – the pink, gold and cream colours are divine. So is the taste.
My favourite Almond Biscuits
Note: This recipe is gluten free; also crisp and divinely delicious. The nuts are far better for you than wheat. This recipe is also low in cholesterol – no butter, oil or egg yolk. You'll find this biscuit satisfies your hunger in more ways than one: a snack to keep you going as well as happy.
Ease of making: Medium
Time taken: 10 minutes to mix, 20 minutes to bake.
Serves: About 25 small biscuits.
Note: You can double or treble the recipe and divide it so you make several flavours.
Ingredients:
1 cup castor sugar
2 egg whites, whipped till they stand up in peaks
2 cups raw ground almonds or hazelnuts
Optional Flavouring:
1 tsp orange zest and/or ½ tsp Cointreau or
1 tsp lemon zest and ½ tsp lemon juice or a dash of bitters or
2 drops almond essence or
½ tsp instant coffee or
½ tsp rum
Optional Extras to put on top:
½ a cup sliced almonds OR
1 cup chopped macadamias OR
halved walnuts OR
100 gm chocolate, melted
Method
Beat sugar into whipped egg whites: beat sloly and steadily till the sugar is nearly dosolved and it oesn’t feel as gritty.
Fold in the nuts. Add a flavouring if you wish to all or part of the mix.
Place teaspoon size balls on a greased tray or a tray covered in baking paper. Leave a good space between them as they will triple in size.
Top with nuts if you want them.
Bake for about 20 minutes. They should be just pale golden brown. Be careful not to overcook them so they are too dark.
They'll turn crisp as they cool.
If you want choc-covered biscuits brush over melted chocolate when the biscuits are cool.
Store in a sealed container for up to three weeks.
White Christmas Cake
This cake is superb: rich, buttery and moist. But make sure you don't use all self-raising flour, or it'll be too dry.
You can eat it plain; pour on hot lemon syrup and make it a lemon syrup cake; or serve it in slices with stewed apricots or stewed cherries.
If you're serving it at an 'everyone sit at the table and admire the food' type meal, try slicing the cake on a platter, pouring on the apricots or cherries, then drizzling the whole lot with thick King Island cream or mascarpone cheese mixed with pouring cream or creamy natural yoghurt.
200 gm butter
2/3 of a cup caster sugar
3 eggs
¾ of a cup plain flour
¾ of a cup self-raising flour
Optional:
1 cup red and green crystallised cherries and/or
½ a cup of ground almonds or
1 cup chopped macadamias
Beat butter and sugar till soft. Add eggs one by one – don't add another till the first is well beaten in. Gently mix in the flours and other ingredients.
Line a large cake tin (or two smaller tins) with two layers of baking paper. Pour in the batter. Bake at 150º C for one hour.
Lemon or Lime syrup
1 cup lemon or lime juice
1 cup caster sugar
½ a cup water
Bring to the boil when you take the cake out of the oven. Leave the cake in its tin. Simmer five minutes while you poke holes in the cake. Pour the hot syrup on the still warm cake. Leave it in the tin to soak up syrup for at least half an hour.
Stewed Summer Apricots or Cherries
Fruit, with or without seeds (seeds need to be spat out, but they do give extra flavour)
1 tbsp caster sugar for every cup of fruit
1 tbsp water for every cup of fruit.
Optional: 1 tbsp Cointreau or kirsch for every cup of fruit. A tbsp of port can be used with cherries, in which case add it with the water.
Place sugar in pan; add water then fruit. Simmer at a VERY LOW heat, stirring often, till the fruit just softens. Add Cointreau or kirsch.
That's it. Don't add more water unless it's scorching or more sugar unless the fruit has no flavour, in which case make something else.
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