anna_wing

For weeks, now. Monsoon season, plus a string of typhoons. Floods and people displaced in large numbers all over South and Southeast Asia. Pacific Ocean typhoons seem to be bigger than the ones in the Bay of Bengal, while packing the same punch per km/h, I suppose because they have more space to spread out and grow. There's another one spinning itself up east of the Philippines right now, on the heels of Shanshan and Yagi. And then next month the second Bay of Bengal cyclone season begins...

There's been a lot less sun this monsoon season, so the dragonfruit plants only managed to produce five this year, despite an initially promising crop of buds. The papayas seem to be happy, and everything else is growing like mad, including the homicidally slippery algae on the drive. Everyone has to walk very carefully right now. The Heliconias and the Marvel of Peru and the species Torenias are flowering intensively, grabbing every little bit of sunlight they can. My swimming-pool pump broke down, turning it a brilliant shade of green before we managed to get it fixed, and is currently overflowing (into the overflow drain, so far, fingers crossed).

Housekeeper made fabulous pineapple jam from a load of juicy but non-sweet pineapples, which was variously given away and used for jam tarts, and we grilled a couple of leftover fruits with a smidgen of sugar, which came out very well. We experimented with hot-water pastry for the jam tarts, which came out very well indeed, light and crisp, even substituting butter for lard, which is not available in processed, conveniently usable form here (and we are not going to go about rendering it down ourselves). We'll be using that recipe in future, for savoury dishes too.

I had it in a restaurant more than fifteen years ago (now closed, sadly, they also did the best cheese straws), and have eaten versions of it ever since. It is very simple:

Warm cooked beetroot, chopped into cubes, crumbled feta cheese (or any crumbly cheese, it's nice with Wensleydale too), walnuts, and an orange, peeled and segmented (two, if they're the little peeling oranges). The original had arugula, but I don't usually bother. I might add shredded mint or basil leaves. Peeling oranges are more convenient, but segmenting a regular orange is fine too, and gives you more juice, which mixes nicely with the crumbled feta, to basically form a dressing. A bowl of that with a slice of buttered, toasted home-made bread, and fruit afterwards, is a perfect meal, and never fails to cheer me up.