turkish delight au poisson
There was, understandably, consternation in the kitchen last night. I decided to test a recipe for Turkish Delight and, as this meant standing by the stove for an hour, I reckoned I might as well cook a smoked haddock kedgeree for tea at the same time. Mmmmm, fishy, turmeric-infused Turkish Delight, anyone? However, the fears of Simon and the children were allayed as I stirred the glutinous mass of what looked like sticky Vaseline and remembered to change spatulas when moving to the rice and fish.
We've made Turkish Delight before but it didn't turn out well. TD has a very strange texture but this stuff had the wrong strange texture, was too wet and slimy, and the flavour wasn't sufficiently 'boudoir'. As a result, I wasn't convinced that TD could even be made at home.
But I was not prepared to give up that easily and decided to have one last attempt. I found another recipe, stocked up on sugar and cornflour and set to work creating the extra-thick wallpaper paste-like mix to which we added rosewater and fuchsia food-colouring at the last minute.
Turning it out of the tin this morning, I could see that it had worked well. It is beautifully, pinkly translucent and gently scented, and when I cut it up and covered it with snowy icing sugar and cornflour, I could almost imagine myself in Narnia.
And how does it taste? Well, I reckon it's the closest I'll get to the real thing when making it in a domestic kitchen. It's soft and sticky yet firm and yielding. It's sweet and perfumed and it makes you very thirsty. It's not authentic Turkish Delight because I really don't think you can beat TD made the traditional way in Turkey. But I like to think it might tempt Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
One thing, though. You can cook TD and kedgeree at the same time, but I wouldn't say you'd get any Michelin stars for serving them together.
Or maybe I'm wrong. Now I come to think of it, my rose-scented, gelatinous Turkish Delight and smoked fish combination is not a million miles away from Heston Blumenthal's signature dish of oysters and passion fruit jelly with lavender... And look at the way he's convinced people it's what they want.
