Christmas Pudding, sort of Delia Smith

My daughter asked me to blog all about Christmas, so that she can do it exactly like I do.  Sweet!  But hardly likely to happen!

I guess this is my recipe now that I have made all the additions, but it did start out as a Delia Smith recipe from her wonderful web site.  She has the best cookery web site around with recipes that really work, and a wonderful style that lets you know she loves cooking and is not just in it for the money.  You can access it by clicking here, but only if you have an hour to spare!  Its impossible not to get dragged in to marvel at the lovely photos and recipes.  All Delia's recipes work, and she is especially good for Christmas recipes when you want old fashioned recipes for the nostalgic Christmas season.  So her pudding recipe is a good place to start.

I added dates and apricots and changed her barley wine for Guinness.  It would not be Christmas if there wasn't Guinness in the pudding, half for the recipe and half for the chef!  That's me.  Hic!  Its best to start the day before and leave the mixture overnight to soak up the liquid.  This makes one 2lb pudding for Christmas and one nearly full 1lb pudding to eat before Christmas if you like, or to keep till New Year.  I cook it fully and re-heat it in the microwave, coz i just can't be doing with an extra saucepan on the hob that day.

Christmas Pudding

4oz/110g shredded suet, (beef or vegetarian) or frozen butter grated

2oz/50g self-raising flour

4oz/110g white breadcrumbs

1 teaspoon mixed spice

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon of nutmeg

8oz/225g soft dark brown sugar

20oz/565g mixed dried fruit, any combination you like

2oz/50g chopped dates

2oz/50g chopped dried apricots

1oz/25g flaked almonds (or any other nut you fancy)

1 small Bramley apple, pealed and grated

grated zest of half an orange and half a lemon

5 fl oz/150 ml Guinness

Tablespoon of whiskey

2 large eggs

Take you largest bowl or a clean washing up basin and add everything one by one, ticking off your list to make sure you have not forgotten anything.  Mix everything together very thoroughly.  Invite everyone to have a stir and take a wish.  The mixture will be quite sloppy.  Cover the bowl and leave overnight.  You have enough work done today!

The next day, it will be less sloppy, and the liquid will have soaked into the breadcrumbs and dried fruit.

Fill your 2lb pudding bowl first, to almost the top and press down lightly.  Tip with a circle of silicone paper and seal with cling film.  Put the plastic lid on top and pop into your steamer, or directly into a pot with an upturned plate at the bottom.  The plate will keep the pudding off the direct heat, and fill the saucepan to half full with boiling water from the kettle and steam for 8 hours for the large one and 41/2 to 5 hours for the smaller one.

Watch the water does not boil away and keep topping it up as necessary. Then your pudding will be ready for Christmas day.  Store in a cool, dry place, away from light. 

Christmas Mince Pies

Making the mince

You have to take a long run at Christmas to be relaxed and produce great food over almost a full week to a house full of people.  Its all good fun and adds to my enjoyment, but it does not happen by accident that the house is full of good thing to eat and there are wonderful smells coming from the kitchen where the oven is rarely turned off.  

I like to start by making the mince for the pies, the pudding and the cake by the end of November, early December.  Today I mixed the mince for the pies.  This is based on a recipe from the original Myrtel Allen book, "The Ballymaloe Cookbook", one of the first books I owned and I have made almost every recipe from it.  Yes, Darina Allen was a great cook and now, Rachel Allen too, but it all started with Myrtle and her gentle writing and encouragement that two good free range eggs boiled, served with homemade brown bread was a far better supper than anything reheated from the supermarket.  

I have added a few extra bits to her recipe, as I like a few glistening red cherries in there too, I like a few toffeeish dates, and a handful of nuts, but it is her addition of a tablespoon of orange marmalade that turns a bowlfull of dry ingredients into a beautiful moist mass of juicy fruity lovelyness.  I don't know why a tablespoon of one ingredient can do this, but it does.  I like packing it away into a few jars and looking at it in the back of the cupboard in the smug knowledge that I can whip up a dozen mince pies at twenty minutes notice.  This recipe will make about 30 pies, enough for my family over Christmas.  

Christmas Mince

1 lemon, rind and juice

1 cooking apple grated into the juice

1lb/450g dried mixed fruit, any combination you like

2oz/55g chopped candied peel

2oz/55g flaked almonds

2oz/55g chopped cherries

2oz/55g chopped dates or apricots

1lb/450g moist brown sugar

8oz/225g chopped suet (I used Atora vegetable suet)

3fl oz/90ml whiskey or brandy or any spirit over 40% proof

1 tablespoon of orange marmalade

Mix everything into a bowl and stir thoroughly.  When it is very well mixed, put it into jars (mine filled 3x12oz jam jars) and cover closely.  Make sure you pack it down tightly.  When you are ready to use it, tip it out into a large bowl and stir well again. 

It makes a lovely present too if you want to give any of it away!
...............

So, this is what I did with it over Christmas.  I was busy and did not have time to make individual pies, so I made one large pie in a rectangular tin to cut into slices.  I often do this with mince pies as I like more filling and less pastry.

I added a layer of apple, a sliced Brambley, to add a fresh zing to the mince.

 When it was cooked and sliced, it looked like this

The sweet pastry is the same as from the Lemon and Lime pie recipe here.  It was lovely, rich, biscuity and very Christmassy!  I does not need to be baked blind, just rolled out and filled.

Nature Wedding Cake

Back to Nature Wedding Cake

So, we, Sorcha and I, were heading off to Vancouver for Cian and Lynnes Ring Ceremony, with a very basic idea for a cake in our minds.  Sure, it would be allright on the day and we would be inspired when we got there.  We slept easily on the plane over.  We had a couple of days to spare before the ceremony and there would be nothing else to do!

Yikes!  Wake up!  Lynne’s “simple” “back to nature” wedding involved making everything from scratch, foraging, borrowing, washing every plate and glass in one sink and a million other tasks I have barely wiped from my mind.  Thankfully it also involved champagne, Barry’s tea and lots of time together with her friends.  What was scraped was time in the hot tub and lazy morning sleep ins, but, well, I have to admit it, it was all FUN.

Cian’s all time favourite cake is chocolate, so that was an easy decision, no messin’ there.  Just make a recipe that has chocolate in it, on top of it and with chocolate chips too if possible.  No worries!  Sorted!

I bought two deep tins, one 10inch/25cm one 8inch/20 cm.  Then I made the same amount of mixture in each tin to make one cake flatter and one cake taller to represent the shape of two cut logs.  I used

1lb/450g butter

1lb/450g castor sugar

8 eggs

1lb/450g plain flour

4oz120g cocao powder

4oz/120g chocolate chips

and the usual method of beat the butter with the sugar, add the eggs and some of the flour, fold in the rest of the flour and the chocolate chips.  For more detailed information, google “madeira cake”.

I made two types of butter cream, one large amount of chocolate butter cream and one smaller amount of white chocolate butter cream.  Both butter creams had melted chocolate of the correct colour added in.  This helped stabalise it and made it easier to mold to the correct shape. I used dowels to stop one cake collapsing into the other and balanced the top cake at the back of the bottom one.  I piped melted chocolate to represent the rings of the tree and Sorcha  added the decorations of blueberries, blackberries and mint leaves, having much more patience than me with the final decorating details.

We were rather pleased with ourself, but the stunning display cake stand that Brad Siebler made was so amazing and set it off so well, that it was, well, “the icing on the cake!”

Oh!  A great deal of help came from Sorcha, especially the decorating. In fact, that is her hand getting the bark effect on the icing.  She has endless patience for the finer details.  X 

Fish en Papillote

Steamed Fish en Papillote

I was asked to create a low fat menu for a friend celebrating a big “0” birthday, but who did not want a heavy menu.  At first, she was reluctant to celebrate at all until we convinced her that it IS possible to have a lovely meal and not break the calorie bank, and goodness knows, even the top models drink Champagne, so why not just a little glass?!

Party on!  I decided to do an Asian themed fish “en papillote” which is simply a nice mixture of fish steam-cooked with aromatics in a paper bag, broken open at the table to a burst of steam and, if I get it right, a polite round of applause for the chef.  (“Thank you, thank you, sure it was no trouble at all!”)

If you have never tried this method before, then watch this video which explains it all.  It is important to make sure you have a good seal to keep in all the juices.  If you are not confidant that you have, then a good tip is to encase your paper bag in tinfoil too, to be sure, to be sure.  But tinfoil alone would be too fragile, and those precious juices might leak out, in case you are thinking you spotted a short cut!

I picked lemongrass, ginger and lime to be my flavourings, but there are lots of choices.  Sliced courgettes, fennel and dill would be lovely too, or tomatoes red pepper and basil would also work.  I was asked to avoid coriander, or I would have added some too.  And don’t forget a sprinkle of salt, preferably sea salt and ground black pepper.

On a trial run, I added a tablespoon of water, but it was not needed, so I left it out and it was all the better for it.

Here it what it looked like going in to the oven.  This is the trial run, I did not chop the lemongrass the second time and added it bashed, but whole for easier removal.  I also added a whole uncooked prawn for the dinner party.   I used monkfish, salmon and sea bass with a prawn on top, but I can imagine this working well for almost any type of fish.   

 I cooked the fish for 15 minutes at 180c when there were only two in the oven, but increased the cooking time to  20 mins at 180c when I was cooking 8 portions.  I served it with rice and steamed pac choi with shallots and garlic.  

Homemade burgers

Homemade Burgers

Cheap, simple and so tasty, homemade burgers are the business.  The ultimate comfort food, the best sandwich, washed down with a cold, cold beer, happiness at your finger tips.

The ingredients are as simple or as complicated as you want to make them, mince, onion, an egg, flavourings and some binder like breadcrumbs (or not, depending on how much of a purest you are).  That’s it.  A pound of mince will make 4 burgers, 4 x quarter pounders!  See, even the maths are easy peasy!  As there was only 2 of us for dinner, we ate two and froze two, so tucked away in the freezer is a simple supper for some busy evening.  I did not have burger buns in the freezer, but found two breakfast English muffins and they turned out to be just perfect.  I know, only in MY freezer!

Fionnuala’s Saturday Burger Dinner, Beer optional

450g/1lb beef mince

1 medium onion, finely chopped

About 50g/2oz dried breadcrumbs or two slices of bread made into crumbs.*

One egg

Level teaspoon of dried mixed herbs or fresh if you are growning your own

Salt and lots of pepper

Some fixings

A burger bun or similar (don't forget to toast it)

Cheese that melts well, I used cheddar

Some sliced onion

Lettuce (gottta get your 5 a day!)

Sliced tomato

Ketchup and/or Mayonaise or a mix of both (advanced class only)

*I cheat and always have this in my house

In a large bowl, add all the burger ingredients.  Then, clean hands in, squish all the ingredients together until well combined. 

Divide the mixture into 4 equal parts and pat down into a burger shape.  It is best not to make them too fat or they will not cook evenly.  Fry in a little oil for about four or five minutes each side until the juices run clear.  Do not squeeze all the juices out while testing as then your burger will be dry and horrible.  While the burger is doing its final cooking add some cheese on top and allow it to melt slowly.

By now, you should have your fixings out and ready to go.  I like oven chips with this, so they should be ready by now, and let everyone build their own burger. 

As the oven is on, why not add some  slices of bacon on a tray to crisp up.  Goodness knows you need the calories!

Your burger should look something like mine, if not, you will have to try again next week.

Raspberry Lemon and Frangipane Tart

I know, Yum, right?  Could there be a better mix of  ingredients that spell SUMMER??  This was my show off tart at a friends birthday.  The recipe is here

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1880/raspberry-lemon-and-frangipane-tart

but I really made this to (show off) no,  to celebrate a friends birthday.  This will make you drool

The amount of washing it creates will make you faint.  Was it worth it ?  Yes!  My friend said, "Look at all the work you went to, sitting up those raspberries!"  If only she knew!  That took five seconds.

I did not get a great picture of a cut slice, but my friends don't hang about.  Spoons aloft, I had to take a quick snap.  

Here is my report as I went through the steps

Well, half way! There are lots of parts to this recipe. So far, I have the pastry chilling. It is drier than my usual recipe and looks as if it will be hard to roll out. But it is sitting in the fridge at the moment, awaiting the next layers.

Next, I have made the lemon cream. This is cooling with the cling film lid on it. It has both cornflour and plain flour in it and I might have prefered cornflour on its own as it seems to have an 'floury' taste to it at the moment. However, no panic, as it will be cooked again.

Also, the frangipane layer is made and sitting awaiting the piping bag. All this done and I am only half way!!!!

Now to the washing up. I seem to have used every dish and bowl in the house.

The next day.....

The pastry was incredibly difficult to roll out, so short, it just became a heap of crumbs when I tried. So I went for my other method of rolling it into a log and slicing off coin sized pieces and placing them on the tin and pressing them together. I saw Matt Tebbutt do this and I think Jamie Oliver also and though I had never tried this myself before, it worked very well here. There was no way of rolling this pastry out any other way. All in all I prefer my own biscuit pastry recipe and would not try this one again.

The filling were easy to do as described and cooked beautifully together. I did lower the temperature for the last five minutes of cooking.

The topping went on well and it was only as I was placing the raspberries that I realised I had misread the recipe and only bought 2 x 150g of raspberries and not the 5 stated in the recipe. So I was a bit short on raspberries! I thought I did not have enough to make the jam topping and the warm jam would drop down and melt into the cream, so I sprinkled chocolate over the tart and it looked divine. Good save!

The taste was fantastic, everybody raved about it. Biscuit, lemon, almonds, cream and raspberries, how could it go wrong? I would make it again but with a different biscuit pastry recipe.

Cold plates

No cooking at all, at all!

Sometimes you just don’t need to cook to have some lovely food in front of you.  When I feel like this I turn to the fantastic pig.  I think I could live without other meats, if I was left on a desert island with a pig and a few sharp knives!!!

Maybe I need a few more courses before I can produce all the lovely food that a pig has to offer, sausages, rashers, pate, hams.  Thankfully in the mean time there is the English Market in Cork and some wonderful artisan producers.  On the Pig’s Back, Iagos and the ABC bread company sell most of what was in front of me tonight.

Just because you are not cooking, does not mean that you can just shove it on the table any old way.  I recently bought some wooden table mats just for this purpose, and Yes Cian, I was practicing for a dinner party!  This is not a complicated presentation, but I think  it looks well.  The addition of some chutney, made last year from these recipes complimented everything and nothing more to do but open a nice bottle of red.  Pretty darn fantastic, even thought I say so myself 

Student Chicken

Chicken in Tomato Sauce with Pasta

I could give this a fancy name, but I want to stress how easy this recipe is.  This is my contribution to student cooking, fast, easy, good for you and cheap!  All the ingredients are available in Lidl or Aldi, it’s a step up from adding bottle sauce to cooked chicken but above all it tastes so much better and you will feel like a pro.  Ok, you need to act like a grown up and buy some store cupboard ingredients like oregano and basil and hopefully a block of parmesan, but these will last for ages and you will have something to look at on your shelves on Thursday nights, before you head back to Mammy at the weekend. 

For two people (you know that makes sense!)

2 chicken breasts or 4/5 legs or thighs, skin off

1 portion of bacon bits (half that pack of smoked bacon bits you get in Aldi or Lidl)(optional, but do it anyway)

A little oil for frying

1 meduim onion, chopped

2 cloves of garlic, crushed and finely chopped

1 small red pepper, cut into pieces, no seeds

8 to 10 mushrooms sliced

1 can of tomatoes, chopped if they are not chopped already

1 tablespoon of tomato puree, (buy the tube not the small cans and you can store it in the fridge)

Teaspoon of dried oregano

Pinch of dried Basil

1 chicken stock cube

To serve,

100g pasta per person, cooked in boiling water

Some grated parmesan

Cut the chicken into small pieces so they will cook evenly and quickly.  Fry the bacon pieces in a little oil over medium heat, and then add the chicken pieces.  Turn them over so that they brown on all sides.  After a minute or two add the chopped onion, garlic, red pepper and mushrooms.  Turn everything over in the oil and continue cooking until the vegetables begin to collapse. 

Add the tin of tomatoes, the puree, the chicken stock cube and about half a can of water.  Finally add the oregano and the basil, rubbing them through the palm of your hand to release the flavours and make you look more like Jamie Oliver.

You don’t need to add any more salt as there is quite a lot of salt in stock cubes, but feel free to add pepper if you like.  A pinch and I mean a pinch of chilli flakes are good too.  But that is for second year!

Serve over the cooked pasta with some grated parmesan on top.  Phone Mum and tell her what a healthy student you are!

(PS Clean your board, your knife and your hands with HOT water after chopping raw chicken.)