Mincemeat

[magid]

I don't know why, looking at the fruit in this week's delivery, I thought "mincemeat." I've never made mincemeat, nor remember eating it, but the thought was there, and the only way to exorcise it was to do it.

So I went online, looking for mincemeat recipes. I found recipes with suet, recipes with meat (venison, even), recipes with just fruit, recipes with citrus, recipes without citrus. Some had ginger and/or vinegar, others didn't. Some featured green tomatoes. I read a bunch of them, and realized that I could make it up as I went along, and it would likely be fine. (Also, it's rather like chutney without onion, garlic, or hot peppers.)

I got home from last night's play (on which more anon) around 10:30, strangely with enough energy for cooking. I got two batches of dough rising, then started on the fruit.

A couple of years ago, when I was having much envy over the variety of non-kosher sausage available, Queue gave me a meat grinder. Specifically, a Porkert brand one, which, being German, has the word Fleischhacker on the box (I don't know why this is so amusing. It just is.).

I never used it until last night (read: it's still pareve). I clamped it onto the table (the counters were too thick), and started grinding, pears first. Except that it seemed to be juicing more than grinding, so I diced the five pears, dumped them into a pot with grape juice (being the only fruit juice in the house), and started grinding more solid things: a lemon, two oranges, raisins, candied peel (made a couple of months ago for the fruitcake experiment), some medjool dates. I put some unground raisins and some currants into the pot as well, and let it all get friendly, along with brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice. Once the grape juice had mostly boiled out, I added a glug of dark rum, and let it cook another hour or so over low heat.

This morning it had cooled, and I punched down and rolled out the small batch of spiced dough that had doubled overnight (the spices being the same ones as in the mincemeat). I put some of the mincemeat in the middle, rolled them up, cut them in pieces, and baked them. (Again, I'm not sure why that, rather than pie or something, but that's what I felt like making) The fruit's oozed out the top of them, but they look nice.

I have a lot more mincemeat left. I'm wondering what it would be like with actual meat; I might take some of the ground turkey destined for meatloaf and make a little bit into a fruity meatloaf. And I can totally see experimenting with future batches, adding ginger/ black pepper/ nuts/ cranberries/ dried peaches/ dried figs....

Comments

[queue.livejournal.com]

Sounds yummy. Almost as good as my breakfast this morning.

Have you had any yet? When you do, I'd love to know how they turned out.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I had two of the end ones (ie, higher dough : filling ratio), and they tasted pretty good. I don't know how long the (cookies? pastries? not sure what I'd categorize them as) will last, but I could make another batch next time I'm going to see you, or give you some mincemeat directly.

I used the Fleischhacker! Whee!

I also found out that it must be dried off immediately, otherwise parts not exposed to air are likely to rust.