This recipe should really have been posted last Monday to compensate for my absence from my Blog for more than one week. Jo and I decided from one moment to the next to make a 13 hour car journey (one way) to visit both our daughters in their respective Colleges in another part of India.

But more about this in my next post.

This recipe was given to me by Farial, a dear Lebanese girl friend when I lived in West Africa. It is delicious and so easy to make but, the trouble making anything ‘jelly’ in a tropical climate is, that before you can count to 10 the jelly starts melting and if you try to photograph your ‘creation’ as well, you really need to be “Speedy Gonzales” to get a half way decent photo before you have red wine jelly juice!

Ingredients:

2/3 oz powdered gelatin

Juice and finely grated rind of ½ lemon

1 fl oz brandy

2 Tbsp water

½ pint dry Spanish (or any other) red wine

8 level Tbsp redcurrant jelly (optional and if available)

4 oz sugar

Method:

Put gelatin into a bowl with lemon juice, brandy and 2 Tbsp water and stand for 10 minutes to soften. Put remaining ingredients into a saucepan; bring to the boil, boil for 5 minutes then strain. Add softened gelatin, stir until dissolved. Strain into a 1 ½ pint wetted mould (or any other shapes) and allow to set in a cold place.

Serve with frosted white grapes.

Brush small bunches of grapes with lightly beaten egg white, sprinkle with caster sugar and stand in a cold place for about 1 hour to harden.

Carina