Candied Peel...

Before ConEd started messing with our gas supply, I decided I'd do some English Christmas cooking. I had big dreams: mince pies, Christmas pudding -- maybe even a Christmas cake with marzipan and royal icing. I started with the Christmas pudding -- and at once hit a roadblock when it came to locating all the ingredients. I used vegetable suet instead of beef suet but then I was stumped when it came to finding candied peel:



This being New York, I thought there must be a gourmet food store somewhere that would sell it. I tried various famous fancy places, plus the English food shops, with no luck. On what I thought at the time to be a stroke of genius, I wandered uptown to an area where there are lots of Indian food stores -- and sure enough, I found a big (and rather expensive) tub of candied peel.

Of course, a week later, I was at the Puerto Rican supermarket across the road from our apartment, looking for ground almonds (for mince pie pastry). I didn't find the ground almonds -- but I did find a whole lot of candied peel, for a fraction of the price I paid at the Indian food store.... So there you go. I am now an expert on Manhattan's supplies of candied peel. And since there's still no sign of our gas, there's going to be a large supply of the stuff in our cupboard until next Christmas (unless I get around to making hot cross buns, I guess...)

(I did actually serve the pudding for Christmas dinner at Bill's parents -- and we managed to set it alight quite successfully. I think the Americans present didn't really enjoy the taste of it (I'd like to claim that's because it's an acquired taste, not just because of my cooking) but they appreciated the theatrics of it.)