Bite-size Stories

If the reader prefers, this can be read simply as a recipe. One that coaxes ruby-red tenderness from the hard and inedible fruit. When I first came across it in Gourmet Traveller , I was desperate for an antidote to the winter blues. Winter is not the kind of fair you buy a ticket to. Like it or not, you’re in attendance, with or without your scarf and gloves. The daily orchestra of rain, with its endless wind chorus, sets sadness even in the most joyful of souls. This questionable composition plays on for months, until its natural end. Deep in suburbia, I was ready for battle. Armed with vanilla, a cinnamon quill, and lemons, I set my eyes on a pair of quinces. I needed burgundy from the virtues of poaching. Instead, I found happiness - and a taste of spring itself. Ingredients From Gourmet Traveller with some small changes. 800g organic coconut sugar 1 vanilla bean, split 2 lemon, cut in half 2 cinnamon quills 3 star anise 2 or 3 large quinces Me...

Of course, there are better ways to tell a story - with intelligent characters, sophisticated dialogue, and a well-designed plot. This little tale, though, is all about dumplings. Tender pastry morsels filled with cherries. Back in Kiev, growing up, they were too lavish to have at any other time but cherry season, when the summer sun gave its abundance. At holiday houses, it was a family affair - hours around the garden table, folding small pockets of pastry, sometimes with blueberries, but mostly cherries, the favorite and the affordable. Fresh from the markets, they came in rattan baskets, carrying the sun in their burgundy weight. You’d split the flesh, prise out the stone, and carefully collect the thick, sweet juice for sauce. Each cherry was wrapped in a delicate pastry floret, sealing in its nectar. Allowed to eat with my hands, cherry juice streaked my face and dripped down my fingers. That’s how I learned: the messy things in life are often the best.