We've been snowed in for most of the week, so Christmas has taken us a little by surprise ... not many decorations, not much shopping. But all the family is here, there's plenty of good homemade food, and we've had time to enjoy doing not very much. A six-foot igloo was built, and then collapsed in the night in a rainstorm before anyone had a chance to take a photograph. Lots of laughter. Happy days.
So ... a very happy and peaceful Christmas to you. xx Joanna
We're snowed in here, so it's been a day of quiet pleasures: a walk round the wood, a little photography, some bird watching, a game of croquet in the snow, and Horatio is building an igloo which he plans to sleep in (shades of his father, for those with long memories). I had time to make a complex three-stage recipe, which in the ordinary way I wouldn't have bothered with: the most delicious brussels sprouts with caramelised garlic and crystalised lemon peel. So good that they'll be made here again and again.
Actually, this is a recipe you can make ahead: two of the three stages could easily be made the day before. And if you don't like brussels sprouts, you could leave them out and just have the caramelised garlic.
The unusual combination of flavours is the brainchild of Yotam Ottolenghi, and his recipe appeared in the Guardian on Saturday.
Best-ever brussels sprouts
4 heads garlic, cloves separated and peeled
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
caster sugar
water
1 lemon
600g sprouts (I used around 400g)
1 chilli, finely chopped (or a little chilli jam)
Put the garlic cloves in a pan of water and blanch for three minutes. Drain. Fry the garlic in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil; put them on a high heat and keep turning them until they are golden. Then put in a few drops of balsamic vinegar, a tablespoon of sugar, 90ml water and a pinch of salt. Simmer until there's virtually no liquid left (about five minutes).
Make julienne strips from the lemon peel (you can either use a potato peeler plus knife, or, if you've got it, one of those hole-y implements that make fine strips of zest). Put them in a small pan with a tablespoon of sugar, and the lemon juice made up to 100ml with a little water. Cook until the syrup is reduced to almost nothing (about 15 minutes).
Trim and halve the sprouts. Fry them in olive oil (in batches) at a high heat for about five minutes. Don't stir them more than once or twice, otherwise they won't char.
Stir everything together in a bowl (Ottolenghi specifies a chopped chilli, but I didn't have such a thing, so stirred in a couple of teaspoons of chilli jam). You may need to add more oil. Eat hot, or at room temperature.
PS Ottolenghi strew his dish with shaved parmesan and basil leaves, but I didn't; we don't have out-of-season basil leaves at this time of year, and the parmesan seemed to me to be over-egging the pudding. Unbelievably good without.
I love this new take on Brussels sprouts ... Alice Waters' new recipe in time for Thanksgiving. We don't just save sprouts for Xmas eating, so I'll be giving it a try in the next few days.
My favourite present by a mile was this lovely brooch from Canada, made to raise funds for Aids orphans in Lesotho ... I love those three little girls: Hattie says they are singing Tamla Motown songs, and I think she's right.
A whimsical watering can ran it a close second:
The sun is shining bright here, I'm off for a walk with my dogs.
PS here are our young, in a whirlwind of present unwrapping:
And here is Lucius, poaching eggs for the assembled multitude at breakfast this morning:
Well, this is a food blog, and he's brilliant at it. I can't poach (or boil) an egg to save my life - the secret, I'm told, is vinegar (but I can tell you that if you use red wine vinegar, it turns the eggs a slightly strange colour).
We're having our Christmas feast here tonight: smoked salmon, delicious roast lamb with lots of vegetables. I've made little lemon pots for pudding, and mince tarts, and then there's cheese and fruit. All the children are here (my girls are wrapping all my presents for me, I can hear them chatting by the fire next door ... very soothing).
Now I'm off to get dressed in the half hour before my oldest friend and my parents arrive. Suddenly, after the usual Christmas Eve pressures, I feel Christmassy. Lovely to have everyone under one roof - I always get it in the neck for saying that, but it's true.
The lemon pots are quick and simple: melt 75g sugar in a 3ooml tub of double cream. Add the juice of a lemon and pour into tiny pots or shot glasses. Put them in the fridge, and by the time the cream is cold, it will have set. Mmmm
The mince pies were particularly easy: I bought a jar of very standard mincemeat, and jazzed it up with the grated zest of an orange and a little armagnac. I made pastry with 240g flour, 120g butter, and the juice of the orange. I then pressed this with a wooden stick into the tiny holes of my tart tin. I then put the pastry into the fridge to rest for an hour before putting a little mincemeat into each tart and putting them in a very hot oven (220C) for 10 minutes.
Alfred says that he likes them to have lots of icing sugar (or what he calls sweet flour) ... and the more sugar they have, the better he likes them. They're also my father's favourite.
These celebration pastries are achievable by cooks at any level, and easy for experienced bakers. The basis is a white dough, enriched with sugar, eggs and butter. This is then smeared with more butter, and topped with a sugar and cinnamon mix, then rolled and cut. Not for dieters, obviously.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of making the rolls, then use the enriched dough as it is to make brioche.
If you're an incorrigible tinkerer with recipes, you could enrich your own favourite dough. It's what I did.
This is enough to fill one pan (mine's approx 30x25 cm). Or you could make it in 2 medium foil dishes so that you could freeze half for another day. Don't be tempted to use the small size, because it doesn't work (I used the not-very-good result to make a delicious bread-and-no-need-for-butter pudding*).
It sounds like a lot of trouble, but the work, such as it is, breaks down into three distinct parts, each of which takes only a few minutes. This is good make-ahead celebration food, whether you use the fridge or the freezer.
Brioche dough
5g instant yeast (or a sachet)
450g strong white bread flour
good pinch of salt
1 tbsp sugar (I used vanilla sugar)
125g melted butter, cooled
4 eggs
warm water
I mix this in my bread machine, but it works just as well if you stir everything together in a bowl and knead/stretch til smooth.
Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the cooled butter. Break the eggs into a measuring jug, and make up the volume with warm water to 100ml. Add to the bowl. Once the dough is smooth, leave it to double. (This will take about an hour in a warm room. Or you could put the dough into the fridge overnight and take it out for two hours in the morning.)
Cinnamon rolls
for 16
30g melted butter
70g muscovado sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
Glaze: 250g icing sugar mixed with 5-6 tbsp water (sieve the sugar, or you'll end up with little lumps, like those pictured)
On a lightly floured surface, pat the dough into a rectangle 30x45cm. Smear on the melted butter, then add the sugar and cinnamon mixture. Use your fingers to get this mess right to the edges - it's just like playing mud pies, so this is a good place to get young children involved.
When the dough is completely covered, roll it up along the long edge. Then cut the rolls and arrange in your tin/s. Leave in a warm place while you heat up the oven, to 190C.
Bake for 25 minutes, but start checking after 20. As soon as you get them out of the oven, pour on the glaze, making sure you cover them well.
Mmmm ... these are Lettice's new favourite breakfast-on-the-move when she's up and out of the house early. Better than a bought croissant, any day. Cheaper, too.
*PS bread-and-no-need-for-butter pudding: slice brioche into a buttered dish, pour on a custard mix made with 3/4 pint of milk and two eggs, a little sugar (you'd need more if this was for plain bread), and a drop of vanilla essence. Leave this to soak for half an hour or more, then cook in a low oven for about an hour. Cover with greaseproof paper if it looks like burning.
This time last year: we were at Eleanor's graduation ceremony and making parsnip puree. In 2006 I was making a spicy squid stew with chorizo - easy and memorable.
I recently found myself promising to make a Christmas cake for the raffle at the cricket dinner. Fine, I'm good at making fruit cake (if I say so myself). But not so good at decorating them. So I took the easy way out, and studded it with almonds, as if it was a Dundee cake.
This is the extra fruity Christmas cake I made last year, after lots of help from readers. I made two. I'll make marzipan for ours - it's a doddle, and much much nicer than anything you can buy. In fact, if I didn't have time to make a cake, I'd buy one and STILL make the marzipan, it's that good.
Icing? Well, I aim to crack that this year ... in the past, I've either bought very nasty ready-rolled, or made rough icing that slid down the cake, onto the plate and off onto the worktop. Can anyone give me any good tips on making Christmas cake icing?
Links to related posts
Boiled fruitcake my mother-in-law's foolproof and delicious recipe
Pistachio marzipan
Christmas presents are so much nicer when they're homemade: I treasure the chopping boards made by my children, the necklaces made of conkers, the jewelry cases made from old boxes decorated with beads, grandma's delicious marmalade and shortbread.
This is the work of moments, and I know it's going to be delicious. Lovely for dressing seasonal salads. And Christmas presents.
Fig vinegar
for one litre
250g ready-to-eat dried figs
75g runny honey
a sprig of thyme (or a teaspoon of dried)
a pinch of peppercorns (I used multi-coloured)
1 litre white wine vinegar
Snip the figs fairly small into a two-litre Kilner or Le Parfait jar. Add all the other ingredients. Shake. Put in a cool dark place for a week, shaking occasionally as you remember. After a week, decant into 4 sterilised 250cl bottles, using a funnel and sieve.
Keep in a cool dark place until you're ready to use it or give it away.
This is adapted from Nigella's Christmas.
I'm having a clear out, and in the larder I found a number of old packets of apricots. I also put Delia's Christmas book in the Oxfam pile. Then I remembered her recipe for spiced apricot chutney, utterly wonderful, the best thing in the book (the only thing I've cooked more than once). I've given it away for Christmas presents, and I often use it to liven up the leftovers which are my lunchtime staple. Delia recommends using it as the basis of a sauce to go with roast pork; that's good too. I'm posting the recipe because the book is definitely going to Oxfam. And because I'm down to my last half jar.
Spiced apricot and orange jam
enough to fill a 1-litre jar
400g no-soak apricots
1 tsp whole coriander seeds
225g soft light brown sugar
425ml cider vinegar
1 medium onion, chopped
50g sultanas
2 tbsp finely grated fresh ginger
2 chopped cloves garlic
grated zest and juice of one orange
Chop the apricots small. Dry fry the coriander seeds; when they are toasted bash them with a pestle. Put everything together in a stainless steel saucepan, bring up to the boil and simmer gently for up to an hour (it will take at least 45 minutes).
When it's good and thick, pour into sterilised jars and seal. (I sterilise my jars by putting them through a dishwasher cycle.)
Spiced apricot sauce for pork
Pork pan juices
15g plain flour
570ml white wine
3 tbsp chutney
grated zest of an orange
Blend the flour into the pan juices (I wouldn't weigh this, I'd do it by eye/feel, but you know what a stickler Delia is for detail). Gradually stir in the wine (I might well use stock, cider, or even water). When you've got a smooth sauce, cook it gently for a few minutes until the flour is cooked, then add the chutney and zest. Simmer for a little longer.
You have no idea how delicious this is - essence of sprout. (I'm assuming, of course, that you like Brussels in the first place.)
Whizz your cooked sprouts to a pulp. Jane Grigson says sternly that you should cook the sprouts specially, because their flavour coarsens as they cool. Notwithstanding this advice, I used three-day-old sprouts that had been cluttering up the fridge. Tip the very stiff puree into a saucepan, grate a lot of nutmeg onto it, and add enough 0% fromage frais to loosen the mixture. Heat gently and serve hot.
Happy Christmas everybody ... it's five past midnight, we've just had a very happy evening with my sister's friend Elizabeth and her family visiting from California, and my parents. Roast sirloin, lots of vegetables, good cheese, fruit (lovely sticky dates), some nice Beaujolais, and a great after-dinner game of Mafia .... some hitherto unsuspected brilliant liars amongst us.
Our guests have gone off to the midnight service at Henley parish church (where we were married), so now it's just us: all six of us under one roof, something which doesn't happen very often these days ... and a phrase which I'm always teased about, whether or not I actually say it. Now everyone has disappeared to wrap presents, I've just put on the washing machine, and I'm waiting to fill the dishwasher one last time before I go to bed. A little time to reflect ... and to wish all my cyberfriends A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS, and many more to come. See you on Boxing Day!
xx
These clementines filled the house with their spicy scent this morning when I came down to let the dogs out, make tea, and fetch the newspapers in from the bottom of the drive. Just as Giorgio Novelli remembers from his childhood Christmasses.
They took moments to prepare yesterday before we went to the cinema. I put them in the oven when I took out dinner, then switched it straight off. The morning, I only needed to put a little quince liqueur into them before putting them into the oven as it heated up for lunch. I took them out before it got up to temperature, and let them rest at room temperature until we were ready to eat them.
Delicious. Full instructions in yesterday's post. Just two things: if you use clementines rather than oranges, you won't be able to put in as much as a tablespoonful of liqueur; and put the liqueur in over the dish you're going to use to bake and serve the fruit, because then you won't waste any of it, and there might be a little to spoon over (as you can see, I used a tiny funnel, but only because I have it). Also, if you've got a sweet tooth, you might want to put a grain or two of sugar in at the same time (or use a sticky liqueur).
PS St Trinian's may be the best film I've ever seen ... it's a very silly, highly enjoyable, very English romp, a sort of pantomime on film, complete with Rupert Everett as both pantomime dame and baddy. It was filmed about a mile from here, as the crow flies. Then again, there are plenty of serious candidates for best film ...
As you know, I'm always on the lookout for puddings which are predominantly fruit, but a little more exciting than just eating the fruit. It's not that we eat much pudding, just that I like to know that when we do, it's delicious and as healthy as a pudding can be. So when I saw this recipe in the paper last weekend, I knew I'd have to try it. This is a recipe from Giorgio Novelli's mother, one which she made each Christmas: She put the spices and fruit into a very hot oven and then just turned off the heat. You'd wake up to this amazing smell and you knew at once which day it was.
This is a kind of Christmas cake without the cake, a Christmas pudding without all that steaming. Or suet.
I'm making this tonight, for lunch tomorrow, when my parents are coming. I've prepared the fruit, we're just off to the cinema to see St Trinian's (how can you resist Rupert Everett in drag??), and I'll put it in the oven after I've finished cooking supper when we get back.
Mama Novelli's spiced clementines
whole clementines
vanilla pods
star anise
cinnamon sticks
Kirsch, or whisky, or Cointreau - or quince vodka
Blanch the clementines in boiling water for 30 seconds, to soften the skins, and to melt away any wax used for preservation (you'll avoid this if you buy organic, although I know it's not always easy or possible). If your fruit is waxed, you'll get a whitish bloom which you can gently rub off with kitchen paper while it's still warm.
Pierce each clementine at the top, and stick with spices. Put on a baking tray.
Put the fruit into a very hot oven, and switch it off straightaway. Leave them overnight. It really is best to do this overnight, because the oven takes a very long time to cool right down (I know this from making moonblush tomatoes, another overnight-in-a-cooling oven process).
In the morning, the fruit should be dry to the touch. Pull out the spices, and spoon a tablespoonful or so of your chosen alcohol into the fruit. Put them back onto the baking tray, and then put them into a warm oven, 150C, for 15-20 minutes to absorb the alcohol. Leave to cool.
To serve, cut in two, and scoop over vanilla ice cream / whipped cream / creme fraiche.
I've made a version of this Christmas pudding once or twice in the past - one without suet (rock solid saturated animal fat), butter, or oils, just held softly together with eggs. I should think you could take out one or two of the egg yolks if you really wanted to reduce the saturated fat content - only then I think you'd need a little more spice, because the taste of an egg is in the yolk. No pictures, because I'm not making a pudding this year.
This is quick and easy. Worth making. Easy, because all you have to do is assemble, weigh and mix the ingredients. Quick, because that's it. Except that you have to make it ahead (which is a plus), although not weeks and weeks unless that's what suits. And except that you need to cook it twice for several hours. But you don't have to stand over it while it's cooking. So, as I said quick and easy. Wholesome ingredients and not a trace of an e-number. The only fat is in the three egg yolks, so it's ideal for those watching their cholesterol, as this will feed a lot of people.
Very low fat Christmas pudding
for up to 10
650g mixed dried fruit
200g fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs
100g soft brown sugar
50g ground almonds
finely grated zest of 2 oranges
1 1/2 tsp mixed spice
3 large eggs
150 ml brandy
Measure everything into a large bowl. Stir well. Oil a large pudding basin, pour in the mixture. Cover with foil. You need to put a little pleat in the centre to give the pudding room to rise, and fix it tight (you can use string; these days I have some special cookery elastic bands which I got from Lakeland). Put this into a large saucepan, add enough cold water to come 2/3rds of the way up the bowl. Cover, bring to the boil, then simmer for 3 hours. You don't need to do anything apart from check the water level after a couple of hours. If it's low, add a little boiling water from a kettle.
The pudding needs to steam again in the same way for two hours before eating. OR, if you make the pudding in a plastic bowl, you could microwave it, because a microwave oven is basically a steamer, and therefore cooks steamed puddings to perfection in very little time. (As to timings, you'll have to consult your oven manual.)
Notes:
After the first cooking I nearly always let this cool in the water, because it's less of a palaver. It's quite a good idea to change the foil before storing this somewhere cool, but I don't always bother. But the second time you cook it, you're really only heating it up, and you will need to get it out of the pan without burning yourself. One way to do this is to pull a long sheet of foil, long enough to cover the bottom of the saucepan and hang out on both sides. Fold this into three lengthwise, for strength, then drape it over the pan. Put your pudding basin onto it, and then, later, you can lift out the pudding using the foil cradle. Or you could use an old (clean) tea towel.
You can choose whatever fruit you like: figs are traditional (that's why the Victorians called it figgy pudding); I think candied peel is disgusting, even when I've bought the best and cut it myself; I'd rather have sultanas than raisins; if you're going to use cherries, the half-dried ones you can buy these days are nicer here than glace cherries.
Spice: either use mixed spice, or make your own mixture of cinnamon and nutmeg, perhaps a cloves.
If you want to add coins to your pudding, don't bother wrapping them up. Much better clean them - effortlessly, by soaking them overnight in Coca-cola. They'll turn out sparkling mint-clean - and you'll never again drink any cola drink.
It's rather a long time since I put the dried fruit into a plastic box with vanilla vodka and citrus zest. All the recipes say you should soak it for a short time, ranging from about two hours to perhaps a couple of days. I nearly always end up coming back to my fruit after a week or two has elapsed. No problem .... just as well, because this year's cake has twice as much dried fruit in it as usual, to make it more heart-healthy. The aim was to have a slice of fruit glued together with a little cake. And that's what I've got. (Photograph to follow - it's dark, but I've GOT to get this post out now or it will never happen.)
Luckily, as this year's cake is highly experimental, I'd written down notes about what I'd done two weeks ago, and what needed doing next. Otherwise, well - I'd have had to spend another few hours working it all out again.
The biggest problem with reworking a fruit cake recipe is that you don't know exactly how much mixture you'll end up with, or what size tin you'll need. So I decided from the outset that I would make one biggish cake and as many "cupcakes" and teeny cakes as possible. The mix that follows made one 6" cake, and a baker's dozen of variously-shaped little ones.
Extra-fruity golden Christmas cake
When you've got a little time, soak:
1 kilo mixed fruit
18 tablespoons liquor - I used vanilla vodka because that's what I had, but normally I use cheap brandy
zest of two oranges, finely grated
Normally, I put this into a mixing bowl, cover it with a teatowel, and leave it somewhere out of the way, which might or might not be a cool place. This has always worked fine. This year, because there was so much more fruit, none of my bowls was big enough, so I put it into a big plastic box with a lid which I use for picnics. I left it littering the kitchen, which is often very hot. No problem. And the smell was knock-out when I opened the box. Oh and one more thing - you don't need to believe cookery writers who tell you to keep stirring the mixture, there's absolutely no need to do this until you are ready to use it.
When you're ready to bake, assemble these ingredients:
200g Flora
225g caster sugar (less would be good, as there's so much sweet fruit)
4 eggs
100g ground almonds
200g plain flour
Beat the margarine and sugar until the mixture turns pale. Add the eggs one by one so that they don't curdle the mix (but, if they do, start adding the flour). Add the flour and almonds, and stir everything well. Add a teaspoon or two of mixed spice if you'd like. I didn't, because I wanted this cake to taste of the fruit itself (lots of sultanas, dried cherries and glace cherries).
Mix in the fruit, and turn into a prepared cake tin. You can fill this right to the top, because it won't rise much.
Smaller cakes were baked in various ways: I used heart-shaped tin moulds, stainless steel cooking rings (both very successful), and cupcake cases which were less successful because this mixture is lumpy with fruit (it's got twice as much as most "normal" recipes) ... but cupcake cases would be very good with a traditional cake mix.
I baked these at 170C. Start testing the smaller cakes after 30 minutes - if they're near the top of the oven, that's all they'll take. The cupcakes only took longer because they were right at the bottom of my oven in a cold spot - once they'd moved up a rack, they finished cooking in moments. The big cake took about two hours.
Next I'm going to make some marzipan, and then I've got to decide how to decorate. I've never had much success with icing a Christmas cake, so I'd appreciate all the help I can get from experienced cake decorators.
Last, but not least, I'd like to say a huge thank you to so many people who took the trouble to cheer me on and give me advice and help over this .... there are some really good ideas there - pureeing some of the fruit to replace a little of the Flora (I put less marge more almonds for the same sort of result, but only because I was too idle to puree the fruit ... also, since the party a couple of weeks ago, I can't find key parts of my Kenwood mixer) ... I'm going to make the summer solstice cake in a while, I'm toying with the idea of a chocolate fruit cake ... thank you BMP for that very sensible blokey suggestion of just getting on with it ... Steph, I hope you made your stollen ... and, yes, Shreya, you just double the fruit and leave everything else the same - it really works, amazing but true!
There's not a great deal of enthusiasm in this house for Christmas cake, the traditional dark brown sort ... I make it every year, in quantity too, because I make one for my neighbour, another for my father, plus ... well, you know how it can be. But last year, I gave my neighbour the recipe, and said that from now on she'd probably have to make it herself, because I didn't want to be tied to making it every year, since no-one in the house wants Christmas cake (I made four last year, none of them for us).
My plan this year is to make a golden cake, in the hope that it will have more appeal for my family. And to make it even more tempting, I want it to have much much more fruit than is normal, so that it's really fruit glued together with a smidgeon of cake. This will make it heart-friendly, and generally more healthful, since dried fruit counts towards your five-a-day.
And I was wondering, does anyone have any experience of tampering with Christmas cake recipes? I'm usually not afraid to mess with recipes, but baking - well, it requires precision.
My plan is to double the fruit for the recipe I'm using. I'd really like to triple it, but I think I'm chicken. I'm going to get round the cake tin / quantity problem by using the leftover mixture to make Christmas cup cakes (an idea shamelessly pinched from Nigella's Feast).
All suggestions will be seriously considered ... and, if useful, I'll send you one of the cupcakes, decorated as well as I can manage. As you see, I've started soaking the fruit - this year I'm using my homemade vanilla essence, and it smells absolutely wonderful. Most recipes tell you to soak the fruit for anything from one to three days. Let me tell you, you can leave it soaking for a week or more without any problem at all!
I'm having a bit of a cook-up this morning, finishing up what's in the fridge, and getting ahead for the busy days to come. One of the things I am making is a good supply of braised red cabbage for the freezer. I'm making it plain, so that I can change the flavourings when I come to reheat it. At that point I might add apples, or redcurrant jelly, or quince jelly, or lots of onions, or spices - say, cloves, star anise, cinnamon.
Braised red cabbage
Shred one red cabbage. I used the slicing blade on my Magimix for an instant result, but I have done it with a knife in the past, it doesn't take long. Put it in a large shallow pan with a close-fitting lid. Add wine vinegar and water in the ratio 1:2, just enough to cover the bottom of the pan - don't go mad here, better to put in too little and have to add to it, otherwise you'll have to boil off the excess liquid. Sprinkle on sugar and salt, in the ratio 2:1. Don't worry too much about the exact amounts, you'll be able to correct the seasonings when you reheat the cabbage. Mix well. Cover, and cook very slowly on a low heat ... start checking after 30-40 minutes, but it might well take over an hour.
When it's cool, decant into freezer containers, label, and freeze. I would aim to put one cabbage into four containers, and mark it accordingly (1/4 large red cabbage, etc). It might mean thawing two at once, but there's more flexibility, and, anyway, smaller containers are easier to thaw.
To use:
Thaw in the fridge, ie slowly. Tip the cabbage into a saucepan or lidded casserole, and add your chosen seasoning - about a tablespoon of jelly or a couple of cloves per quarter of cabbage, but you need to start tasting once it gets warm. You'll almost certainly find there's plenty of liquid in the bottom of the pan, but, if not, add a little water, perhaps some vinegar. Reheat gently, either over a low heat or in the oven with your main course. Either way, it needs about half an hour.
This is a really useful dish to have in the freezer for the winter holidays - it goes so well with wintery dishes such as roast meat, stews, bean casseroles. We eat red cabbage in quite small quantities, so never manage to eat a whole one in one week, even if it is the smallest one in the shop. The "other half" used to moulder away in the bottom of my fridge, reproaching me, until I realised how well red cabbage freezes. I always do this now.
I'm sending this to Michelle at The Accidental Scientist for this month's Heart of the Matter - holiday food. It's not the most exciting holiday dish, but it is a treat of sorts - a treat for the cook, who knows it's one more chore done, if that doesn't sound too organised.
Heart of the Matter, for those of you that haven't found it yet, is a website for heart-healthy recipes, built up month by month ... the kind of resource I wish had been around after my husband had a heart attack. Anyone can contribute - this month the theme is holiday food.
Lovely, easy-peasy recipe, the sort you just have to try straight away. Christmas presents (if you start this week). Once you've started, it can go on forever with the smallest effort. Melissa, at The Traveller's Lunchbox, whose idea it was in the first place, says this dark fragrant liquid gets more complex as time goes on. Lovely for baking.
This is what you do:
Get a one-litre jar. Put in all the pure vanilla extract you've got (I had 1/3rd of a bottle). DO NOT use that chemical vanilla essence; if you don't have any extract, leave out this step, it will just take a little longer to brew. Add cheap vodka, or any other spirits (rum? gin?). Chuck in all the vanilla pods in the house (at least six). Seal. Put somewhere cool and dark. Forget it. Add used vanilla pods when you think about it (rinse off the custard first!).
After at least six weeks, but the longer the better, strain off a little of the liquid into a tiny bottle. Add more spirit and more beans. (You can take out some old ones at this point if you like.) Seal. Put somewhere cool and dark. Forget it. Add used vanilla pods when you think about it (rinse off the custard first!). And so on, and so on, and so on.
If you think you might get into large-scale production, here's a link for buying vanilla in bulk in the UK. For the moment, I'm going to stick to buying it in Waitrose.
I'm including this in Heart of the Matter 8: Baking, which I'm hosting this month, because it occurs to me that this strongly-flavoured essence of vanilla would be wonderful for adding complex flavour to baking with little or no fat ... it's a sad fact of life that a lot of the flavour in all cooking comes from fat, particularly saturated fats - which means that, if you take those out of your cooking, you need to work hard on bringing in flavours from elsewhere.
Thanks, Melissa!
Amazingly, I made marzipan yesterday. Not something I've ever done before. Quick, easy, and much much nicer than the stuff in the packet. It's extraordinary how we have let the supermarkets make us think they are improving our lives, when the smallest effort to cook from scratch proves the opposite.
You need 250g of ground almonds, 250g of icing sugar, and one medium egg. You mix them together in a large bowl. That's it.
My children all say that they don't like marzipan. I gave them a little piece of the freshly-made home-made version, and they all said it tasted of almonds, in the tone of voice that suggested that this was a revelation. And they liked it.
I've got a packet I bought last year and didn't use. This is what it contains: sugar, almonds (25%), glucose syrup, colour lutein. I've got no idea what colour lutein is (except that I know enough gardening latin to work out that it is probably yellow), and I wouldn't want to use it in my kitchen. What a lot of sugar - and the fact that there's so much makes me wonder about the quality of the almonds they have used. The use-by date is June 2007 - I think mine will be eaten up by the middle of next week.
The idea of a low-fat Christmas sounds inherently horrible; if Christmas is a celebration, there should be feasting and plenty. The problem is that if you are serious about making a life change, then it needs to encompass all areas of your life. Last year was the first post-heart attack Christmas, and we were nearly 20 for dinner. No-one sitting at the table guessed that Christmas dinner was well within our rules, with, I think, the sole exception of the brandy butter. It took lots of research, and the usual amount of planning, but I really wanted to make our traditional Christmas dinner fit into our new way of eating, and without anyone feeling deprived.
Just one problem … I didn’t have a blog this time last year, I didn’t write anything down - and now I can’t remember exactly how I did it. So I’m going to have to do all that research all over again.
I expect we started with smoked salmon, probably on bread, and sprinkled with coarse black pepper and lemon zest. This year, I’m not going to bother with the bread, I’ll just fold the salmon onto cocktail sticks. Less filling, prettier, less conventional. All those fish oils really are good for the brain, for the heart, and for the taste buds.
Next – well, turkey, obviously, cooked upside down so that the juices run into the breast. Also a baked ham (easy to cut off the fat if you need to). There’ll have been cranberry sauce, bread sauce made with skimmed milk which is no problem whatsoever if you flavour it well with bay and nutmeg and cloves. Roast potatoes, clearly, and then lots and lots of veg – carrots, red cabbage, Brussels sprouts, leeks, roasted onions (probably cooked in their skins, so that they steam, because all you have to do to prepare them is cut a little bit off the bottom so that they stand up straight), maybe some roast garlic. The key thing in a low fat diet is to regard the meat as an accompaniment to the vegetables, that way you get the balance right on the plate. I don’t think I did sausages, because, hey, isn’t there enough here already? I know I made a stuffing, it’s just that I can’t remember what it was; it will have been a departure from the normal sausage-based stuffing, because sausages are right off our menu, being pretty full of saturated fat. There are two options here, one is to say, it’s Christmas, I’m buying the very best sausages I can find (almost certainly at Henley farmers’ market, where you can buy them from the man who kept the pigs and then made the sausages) and we will eat them; the other is to research a really good stuffing recipe. I may end up doing both.
I remember very clearly that I decided not to make a Christmas pudding. None of us is very keen on Christmas pudding, so it wasn’t a big issue. I tried to move away from this particular tradition, but various guests said it wouldn’t be Christmas without a plum pudding. So I stood in the supermarket for a very long time, reading all the ingredients of all the puddings, until I found one which had a low fat content and a good lot of fruit. I made sure there were lots of little bowls of nuts and fresh dates dotted about the table, and that there were mandarins within reach of everyone. This year it will be easier, because I’m not cooking on the 25th itself, so I’m going to make a pudding which is a cross between meringue and Christmas cake. Recipe to follow when I’ve experimented with it. Meringue and fruit is the perfect low fat pudding, because the fat in an egg is all in the yolk; when you think of meringue and fruit, you tend to think summer berries, so Pavlova or Eton Mess. I am going to turn the whole thing on its head, and combine Christmassy soaked dried fruit with the meringue mix itself; it should cook into a gooey meringue. If it’s a disaster, I’ll just crumble it up into some fromage frais for a Christmas Mess!
We had cheese, too, the fantastically smelly Vacherin, which is made in the Alps from the milk which comes from the first spring grass which grows after the snow melts … if you’re not going to eat much cheese, you need to make it worth eating, and memorable. Cheese biscuits are a surprisingly fat-ridden product – we now use Matzos.
Here’s a recipe from Elizabeth David’s Christmas, which I bought last year to give my plans a boost (and which annoyingly began to fall apart the very first time I opened it, and which is now little more than a loose leaf folder of pages falling out). I didn’t do it, but it sounds ideal. It’s a great read, and full of unusual ideas, because ED didn’t enjoy Christmas, so didn’t feel the need to slavishly follow its traditions.
Rice and almond stuffing for turkey
1 teacup of risotto rice
60g sultanas
a big bunch of parsley
30g chopped onion
a strip of lemon peel
60g of shelled almonds (skin still on)
the turkey liver
60g butter (here I would use olive oil, judging the amount by eye)
juice of half a lemon
Cook the rice for 15 minutes in plenty of water. Soak the sultanas in warm water. Chop the parsley, onion and lemon peel, also the almonds. Lightly cook the liver in the oil, then chop it. Mix everything together, adding a little oil at the end.
ED says that the rice is flaky, light and dry when it emerges from the bird, because it isn’t bound with an egg. I would be very tempted to add an egg (probably just the white) to the mix, because it would make it much easier to serve and to eat.
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