Christmas with Differences

Christmas Eve was an epic day by any stretch; it started with a chicken dinner, included an important delivery, trips to three different bars in two different towns with lots of wonderful people and ended with me dropping through the front door before hitting the sack in the early hours of Christmas Day morning.

However as the daylight emerged on what was an unseasonably mild Christmas Day, despite the heavy rain, disaster struck as after a day of revelry I was left without an appetite, much energy and was nursing a large hangover. It was still worth it though after such a good day.

Eventually I forced myself out of bed at around midday on Christmas Day thankful that my parents were not due over, to have their first Christmas day meal away from their own house in thirty-five years, until at least 5pm.

By 3pm I had consumed four pints of water, a vitamin tablet (that well-known hangover cure) and some dip. Even though I was feeling nowhere near tip-top condition I knew I needed to start cooking the Christmas Dinner.

The music of choice had to be some of the most mellow and subdued in my collection bearing in mind I still had a sore head so I plumped for Cat Stevens' 1970 folk-rock classic Tea for the Tillerman with its laid back acoustic guitars and stately strings.

I first took three white potatoes and took any bad bits out of them with the point of my potato peeler before peeling them and washing them. I then cut them horizontally into circular shapes about one centimetre deep and two to three centimetres across. My plan was to roast the potatoes and I realised it was important to get them right by cutting them into the size pieces that I did as if they are too large they will not cook quickly enough, whereas if they are cut to small they burn in the oven.

I put the potatoes in a high sided baking tray covered with sunflower and cooked them for half an hour on gas mark 5 before turning them and cooking them on gas mark 7 for a further half an hour.

While the potatoes were cooking I prepared the sprouts by removing the leaves on the outer layers that had begun to blacken and I then cut the bottom centimetre or so off each sprout and used my knife to make a cross shape in the bottom of each sprout. I boiled the sprouts steadily with three sliced, toppped and tailed and peeled carrots I had prepared previously and once these vegetables were ready, which I was able to check by prodding some with a fork, I drained them and kept them warm in a covered pan.

The stuffing mix was prepared by putting it in a glass, greased ovenproof dish and, using an old trick handed down from family members, mixing it with a beaten egg as well as the amount of boiled water directed on the packet.

Also prepared at this time were a vegetarian answer to pigs in blankets. I made these by kneading together eight ounces of plain flour and four ounces of margarine with some dried sage and using a small amount of milk to bind the ingredients together to form a pastry. I then rolled it out and wrapped pieces of the pastry around six vegetarian sausages that were on a greased baking tray.

After putting the stuffing mix and sausages to one side, as they were not going in the oven until it was time to turn the potatoes, I took a white onion and diced it before frying it with three Quorn chicken fillets. After the onions began to become translucent and the Quorn began to go brown I added half a pint of vegetable stock with some flour mixed in and let this stew gently on the hob until everything else was ready.

When the potatoes had been turned I put the sausages and stuffing into the oven with them and cranked the temperature up to gas mark 7. I then cooked all these items for half an hour.

While the potatoes, stuffing and sausages were going through their final stage of cooking I made a white sauce using three ounces of margarine, a heaped wooden spoon of cornflour and mixing this the melted margarine in a pan. After this was done I added about a quarter of a pint of milk and stirred this in on the hob on a high heat until I had a thick sauce for covering the sprouts with.

It's fair to say that Christmas Dinner can be quite a stressful dinner to cook and one of the reasons for this is with it being Christmas there is so much pressure to get it right and make it memorable. Another reason is that as there so many different ingredients being used and elements to the meal it is a real challenge to get everything ready at the same time.

If someone had been watching me on Christmas Eve, particularly towards the end of the night, they may have laughed at the thought of me preparing Christmas Dinner singlehandedly but somehow I was able to get everything ready at the same time as my parents and I were able to sit down not long after half 5 to a meal that was also my first Christmas Dinner in my first home.

I should point out the reason it was a vegetarian dinner was a result of my mum being a vegetarian and my dad just doing what he's told. Still it did not lose much for the lack of meat as the vegetables were the same as those you'd have with a traditional Christmas Dinner while the pigs in blankets and the mock chicken in gravy had a welcome rich robustness that was a perfect meat substitute.

It was also a pleasant change for me as I had over the course of December eaten no less than three traditional Christmas Dinners. Certainly this meal and its location helped make this a different but wonderful Christmas Day. It was a Christmas Day that marked time at the end of a year of ups and downs, triumph, some sadness, much great achievement and the promise of something exciting and new in 2016...

The Quorn Chicken Fillet on this helping is slightly obscured by the sprouts, carrots, potatoes, stuffing white sauce and my take on Pigs in Blankets

Golden Salmon, Golden Sunshine

If you ask most people in the world of work what the hardest working week of the year is many I'm sure will say it is the last full week prior to the Christmas Holidays. The week just gone was of course just that week and although I had only been at work for four days of it I ended it exhausted. Part of the reason was the need to do things before Christmas simply because of the fact it is coming up to Christmas, while the short days at this time of year drain your batteries especially if you are going to work in the dark and then coming home in the dark too.

Yesterday morning, having finally beaten the migraine from hell that had clobbered me the day before, I rolled out of bed, got my hair cut for the holiday season and then had a wander in the rain with my dog to post the last round of Christmas Cards.

When I got home I elected to have a proper cooked dinner due to me having only enough energy the previous night to bung an instant meal into the oven. As the weather was mild I decided to have Salmon as it is a meal that reminds me of sunny summer days when the sun never seems to stop shining.

I prepared the salmon fillets I was to use by laying them out on a baking tray covered in foil and sprinkling them with paprika before covering them with sunflower oil. I then put them to one side while I prepared a butternut squash and a red onion.

The butternut squash has become popular in cooking over the last ten or fifteen years. It's vegetable I can never remember from childhood meals in 1980s and 1990s and I first encountered it one summer in 2002 when I was back from uni visiting my parents' house. It's not the easiest to prepare and the best way to do it is top and tail it and then use a knife or sharp potato peeler to peel it. After it's been peeled you are best cutting the ball shaped bit off, splitting that in two and scraping out the seeds and orange-coloured pith from it while the rest of the squash is best if diced into cubes.

Once the squash was suitably cubed I finely sliced a red onion and fried the squash pieces for around twenty minutes in white pepper and sunflower oil. Once this had been done I placed the onion pieces in foil next to the salmon and put the orange squash cubes onto the salmon itself and arranged them on it to look like golden scales.

Next I folded the edges of the foil over the salmon and other ingredients to form a parcel and I cooked them in the oven at gas mark 5 for 25 minutes. While the salmon was cooking I prepared the side dish which today was a peeled white potato sliced thinly width-ways and boiled until fairly soft with some peas.

When the salmon was ready I served it with the potatoes and peas and some mayonaisse which I spiced up by mixing dried dill into it and putting it on the squash. The unseasonably mild weather meant that I could sit in my conservatory to have the meal and the freshness of the salmon, a freshness you only get if you oven cook it rather than grill it, coupled with the slighlt al-dente texture of the squash made this a dish that served to revitalise me after a long week.

Salmon is golden: at least it is as shown here when covered in butternut squash pieces

Winterstew

It was Saturday in mid-November the weekend after bonfire weekend and I had spent the morning having a good session of snooker. The next day I was due to drive down to the midlands to catch up with some family I had not seen for five years.

The weather was generating some gale force winds not dissimilar to those in 1987 that caused more than a few problems for this country. This said I knew it was going to be a challenging drive if the weather kept up so I decided to cook something suitably fortifying by making a beef stew.

The ingredients were as follows:

15 ounces of diced beef.
1 diced onion.
Half a red cabbage thinly sliced.
1 diced onion.
1 diced potato.
8 ounces of lentils.
Tablespoon of tomato puree.
Half a teaspoon of black pepper.
1 pint of Banks Bitter.
Half a pint of vegetable stock.

The first job was to warm up some rape seed oil in my wok. I then added the beef and fried it lightly until it was brown on all sides. I also added all the vegetables and fried them for about five minutes. Next I added the tomato puree and stirred it into the food with the black pepper being added and stirred in at the same time.

After that I poured in a pint of Banks' Best Bitter which is suitable for this dish as it is an ale with a nut brown colour with sufficient bitterness to offset the taste of the beef. After roughly half the bitter had been absorbed I then added the vegetable stock and the lentils and warmed the food through for five minutes.

After that I added the stew to a high sided glass baking dish that I had put plenty of rapeseed oil in the bottom of. I then covered the top of the dish with cooking foil and stewed in the oven at gasmark three for three hours.

As I put the dish full of food in the oven the closing part of Joni Mitchell's 1994 effort "Turbulent Indigo" began to play. This record is one of her better latter day records and although it isn't quite up there with classics from the seventies like "Court and Spark" and of course "Blue" it is still a very good record with songs such as "Sunny Sunday" and the anthem to futility "Sex Kills".

After the stew had been in the oven for two of the three hours I took it out briefly to remove the foil and then put it back in the oven for the final hour of cooking.

Although it takes a long time to cook this dish is worth the wait and although, obviously, the beer gives a distinct bitterness to it the rich and succlent beef with the softened cabbage, potatoes and lentils make this meal a winner. It certainly did the job of filling me with energy for the challenging drive I undertook the next day.

Freshly Stewed; the perfect fortification against the high, chilly winds of winter.

Spicy Mince

The last Tuesday in November was a cold damp day that followed on immediately after a freezing, fraught, tiring and wet meeting in the bar of a local hotel the night before. By the end of the meeting almost all the participants looked in need of some tea and sympathy.

I was still pretty tired the following day so much so that I had an afternoon nap as the combination of chairing the meeting and several months' working hard in the exciting and enjoyable day job finally caught up on me. By the time I woke up the weak winter daylight had given way to an unatural dusk illuminated by the streetlights and an electric full moon.

I pushed myself to my feet and decided that tea needed to consist of something that wasn't too demanding to make. I settled on a traditional dish with a modern twist; mince and mash which in Scotland is known as, which my Scottish Grandad will confirm too, mince and tatties. The twist I put on the dish involved some different flavourings from usual in the ingredients and using vegetarian mince instead of traditional mince.

As I was off work the soundtrack was an album that was mellow, atmospheric and introspective rather than energetic and agressive and I chose Camel's well-played 1978 live offering "A Live Record".

I first prepared the potatoes by peeling and then slicing them into small squares. I then simmered them lightly in a pan of water on the hob until they were soft enough to mash with some dried sage and melted margarine.

While the potatoes were simmering I prepared the mince mixture. I first topped and tailed a large white onion and then diced it up. I put it in my trusty wok and fried it with around twelve ounces of quorn mince and two carrots that I had earlier sliced up into very small cubes to ensure they cooked more quickly.

The oil I fried the ingredients in was a rapeseed oil which I find gives earthy traditional English dishes like this one a better taste than if they are fried in olive oil. The flavourings that I added at this point were a small pinch of powdered mustard, half a teaspoon of liquid mustard, a hint of black pepper and a tablespoon of Barbecue Sauce. After frying the mince mixture lightly for about fifteen minutes, by which time the onions began to go translucent, I added a teaspoon of dried sage and half a pint of vegetable stock.

Once the stock was added I simmered vigorously the mixture for about twenty minutes until a lot of the stock had been absorbed and the carrots had softened. Once the carrots were in this state the dish was ready to serve.

I added some of the mince mixture to a plate that already had on it the potatoes which were now mashed with a mixture of melted margarine and dried sage.

The taste was one that made this usually bland meal something different as the Barbecue Sauce and two types of mustard gave the dish a smokey and mature taste that the mince would have otherwise lacked while the sage in the potatoes lent a warm richness to the meal.

It may look traditional but the taste of this dish gives it a flavour that makes it more interesting than your average mince a mash dish 

Raisin Cake for Charity

On Sunday I spent the morning enjoying the unseasonably warm mid-autumn sun by taking a route on my walk that encompassed landmarks that in some ways marked time since certain events which they were associated with took place in my life. For a change I had no dog as my dog was holed up at the home of my parents recovering from being spayed. I have to say I felt strange without a dog so I instead concentrated on taking some photos on my new phone of the places that I passed that have meant things to me over the last fifteen years or so.

One picture was of the sun creeping through a clearing in the local wood, a clearing where I remember standing in December fifteen years previously with my previous dog and thinking hard about where I was going to study at university the following year. Another photo I took was of my old local pub that's now closed and bordered up, a pub that I first went into almost fifteen years ago to the day and one where I have spent some of the best nights of my life in with lots of wonderful people.

When I got back home my thoughts turned to the present and also to the upcoming Children in Need charity bake off that my employer was organising for the following week. I had promised colleagues I would make something in support of this cause and so I settled on an old recipe for raisin cake.

There are two ways to make cake mix. The first involves stirring together your margarine and sugar as the first thing you do in your preparaton while the second, which is sometimes called the "rubbed in" method has you putting the flour and margarine in the same bowl and manipulating them together with your hands until the flour and margarine has become like golden breadcrumbs.

It was this second method I used for this recipe by taking 225 grams of self-raising flour and rubbing them together with 110 grams of margarine until I had my golden breadcrumbs in the bowl.

Providing the soundtrack was Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come's 1973 record "Journey". Brown is best known for his 1968 number one "Fire" and little else. However he has over the years produced a number of varied and innovative records that are in some cases vastly superior to those of his more popular peers. Journey is no exception with its blend of strong and passionate singing from Brown, powerful church organs that give the music an ethereal glow and engaging space rock lyrics. The album also has the distinction of being one of the first to use a drum machine which only adds to its unique and innovative character.

I now added 110 grams of sugar and 110 grams of raisins to the mixture and stirred them into the breadcrumbs. Also at this time I added two teaspoons worth of ginger to make the mixture have a real autumnal taste.

After this I added three wooden spoonfuls of milk and an egg before stirring them into all the other ingredients until I had a bowl filled with a paste that smelled of ginger and contained plenty of raisins. I poured it into a greased cake tin and used a butter knife to spread it out evenly in the tin. I cooked the mixture on gas mark 4, alternatively if you have an electric oven, 180 degrees or 170 degrees for a fan oven.

After an hour I removed the cake from the oven and as I have no skewers in my new house I instead used the point of a bottle opener to check if the cake was done by pushing it into the cake. I saw that just a small amount of sponge came off the bottle opener when I withdrew it from the cake so I knew it was ready.

I turned the cake out onto a tray and once it had cooled I wrapped it in foil and put it in the freezer until the following Tuesday night when I defrosted it in time for taking work on the Wednesday.

The taste was excelent as the ginger gave the cake a real kick tastewise. In fact my employer's cashier, who has a notorious sweet tooth, declared it to be the best of the cakes put on offer by his colleagues for the Children in Need which in itself was a succcess raising a lot of money for a worthy cause.

Freshly out of the oven and ready to put into the deep freeze for the following week.

Love and the Italian Winter

The second weekend in October was one where it was time to wind down after a hectic four weeks that included a birthday drink for a friend, a trip to Southport for a black tie event and several random encounters.

After wandering with the dog in the Autumn sun I decided to have a go at a new recipe which, with one eye on the clocks changing soon, had many ingredients contained in it that are associated with wintertime.

I listened to Tangerine Dream's groundbreaking offering Cyclone while preparing the vegetables for what was to become an Italian Winter Vegetable Risotto. Cyclone is groundbreaking, at least for Tangerine Dream, as it was their first album to feature vocals and is all the better and more interesting for this development.

The ingredients for the risotto were as follows:

4 diced and peeled carrotts.
1 diced and peeled white potato.
1 diced and peeled red onion.
2 garlic cloves finely sliced.
half a diced red pepper.
8 ounces of risotto rice.
8 ounces of diced baby corn.
Half a pint of red wine.
Half a pint of chicken stock.
Chorizo slices.

I took the vegetables save the baby corn pieces and fried them lightly in my wok while stirring them constantly for about fifteen minutes until they began to brown slightly. I then added the risotto rice and the baby corn and stirred them constantly too for about ten minutes until the rice began to become translucent.

The next step was to add into the wok half a pint of red wine and simmer it while once again stirring the contents of the wok continuously for about twenty minutes. After the wine had been absorbed by the food I then added half a pint of chicken stock and stirred and simmered this into the food for another twenty minutes until I had a rich mixture that wasn't overly runny.

I served the risotto after adding some slices of fresh chorizo to it right at the end of cooking. I even, as can be seen from the picture below, put one on top of a serving of risotto to decorate it.

I don't usually use winter vegetables in risotto as I find them a little bland and I usually prefer summery risottos like lemon and rocket for example. However this risotto was an exception to the rule as the wine and stock and made it rich and the chorizo and pepper gave a much needed edge to the slight stodge of the carrott and potatoes. Definitely a meal to give one some energy on a winter evening.

Thai Tea

The Friday before last had seen the end to a very busy but exciting week at work and the Friday evening afforded me the opportunity to catch up with old friend of mine who I worked with a few years previously. He has a taste for Far Eastern food down in no small part to the fact that his wife is Chinese.

This said I decided to make a Thai Curry as it was something that after a long day at work was quick to prepare but also very substantial.

I first took half a cauliflower and cut it up into several fairly small pieces about the size of the flowerhead of a dandelion. I next warmed some olive oil in the bottom of my wok on the hob and then added the cauliflower to it with two teaspoons of Thai Red Curry powder and two teaspoons of ground coriander. As I always say the way to get the best out of your spices is to apply them early in the cooking process and this meal was no exception. I stirred the cauliflower for around ten minutes until it started to soften a little and it was totally coated in the spices.

It was then time to add about eight ounces of cubed butternut squash and frozen quorn pieces. You can vary the recipe at this point by choosing to add some cubes of Tofu or alternatively some pieces of chicken. After stirring the quorn pieces and butternut squash cubes for five minutes I added the juice of one whole lime and also to bring out the sweet flavours in the curry three tablespoons of dark soy sauce.

The trick with this part of the preparation of the meal was to ensure the cauliflower, squash and quorn pieces softened without at the same time burning them too much. The best way to do this is to apply a medium heat to the wok and keep stirring the ingredients constantly.

After the food began to soften I added half a pint of chicken stock and simmered the food moderately while stirring it until it had absorbed a lot of the stock. I also added some frozen peas to the wok and started to simmer some noodles in another pan of water.

To help ensure that the food was soft enough to be edible and rich I added a tin of coconut milk to the wok and again simmered the until it had absorbed about half of the milk. Doing this also helped mean the mixture wasn't too runny when I served it.

Around the same as the contents of the wok were ready the noodles had also been simmering for enough time to be ready to serve. This said I shared out the noodles in two bowls and then added the curry mixture to the bowls as well. I also pulled out a mandatory bowl of prawn crackers to dip into the curry.

The sweetness of the soy sauce served to make sure the spices were flavoursome but not unecessarily overpowering while the milk lent a richness to this curry to make it substantial. In all the dish was a success and my friend ate all of his share quickly.