The last project off my needles in 2019 was a Selbu hat in shades of grey. I’d ended up making more than a dozen of them through the Autumn, mostly knitted on my commute to and from work. They were super-quick to knit, and made brilliantly easy Christmas gifts for my nearest and dearest. If you want a go at making one, find the pattern here on Ravelry.
Sometime in the Autumn my nephew came to visit, and we had one of those blissful evenings on the terrace, with a log fire and a barbecue and more than our fair share of wine. There was probably amaretto too. And cheese, there’s nearly always cheese.
Anyway, on this occasion the conversation roamed around politics (inevitably still talking about Brexit) and work and food. Somehow, the next morning we had decided that the most fun thing to do at Christmas this year would be to shun the massive turkey, and instead go for Tiny Bites.
Let me explain – I’m a Big Fan of the Tiny Bites, or canapes as some of you might call them. I love the perfect morsel in miniature – flavours that zing, textures that excite and looks that delight. And if they are all uniformly set out on a serving platter (possibly even a slate, which I will allow for Tiny Bites, but NEVER for a proper meal) and brought to me by a wonderfully smiling human even better.
We shared our idea with the rest of the family, and The Inaugural Winter Festival of Tiny Bites was born, though not without some concern… Would there be enough to eat? Were we just creating the same meal as usual but cutting it up into tiny portions? What is Christmas without a plate piled high with roast turkey and ALL the trimmings? With hindsight, perhaps it’s bizarre that not once did any of us question if this was even possible, or if we were creating far too much extra work, for little extra fun.
Early in December we had pretty much rebranded it as a crowdsourced tasting menu, with family being the ‘crowd’, and we managed to have a planning session when we were all at home at Mum’s one weekend. It turns out that planning a crowdsourced tasting menu is a great use of all those planning techniques we’ve learned at work, and it’s far more fun applying the techniques to a Family Christmas than to most of the projects I’ve worked on! More on the planning another time, but needless to say, there were a lot of post-it notes and a killer excel spreadsheet.
And it turned out our plan was to produce an 18 course meal on Christmas Day, starting with The Partridge and the Pear and finishing with Cheese (subsequently renamed as The Baby Cheeses in a Manger).
As I write this in the early days of the new year, I can confirm that we had the most fun on Christmas Day, that the fear of ‘not enough’ was totally unfounded. And that Tiny Bites nearly broke us, though not in a bad way. We managed only 12 (only!) of the 18 courses before we were beaten by the Bites and had to take some time out. The time out lasted right through the evening, and the Bites were never resumed, though my nephew did provide Tiny Bites Style Breakfast the next morning.
I’ll come back to this extravaganza in coming weeks, with some of the recipes. In the meantime, here is the full menu:
Let me know if there’s anything you really want to read more about.
Is salted caramel still on trend? A couple of years ago it seemed to be everywhere. And I was happy. I love that combination of sweetness and saltiness. I adore peanut butter, adore it even more on hot buttered toast with marmite. Or incorporated into a sweet with chocolate and a biscuit base.
So, a simple salty, nutty caramel brittle is pretty much the perfect sweet to make. And it turns out it was pretty much the perfect home-made Christmas present to give to nephews too! (Although obviously not for you, if your nephews have nut allergies).
Salty nut brittle
I popped great big shards of this into kilner jars as Christmas present this year, and they went down a treat. If the shards had been smaller, I might have considered dipping them in chocolate to add to the sugar-salt-nut treatiness. It wasn’t required, but just imagine it enrobed with lush dark chocolate. Mmm.
For more recipes, go to my index here.
Cranberry sauce. It’s one of those things that just happens at Christmas. With turkey. And stuffing and all those other bits. It pretty much gets lost in amongst all that other stuff, doesn’t it? And if you bought the sauce from a jar, then that might be just as well. In fact, why did you bother? Was it overly sweet and not terribly tasty? Well, make a decision now that next year you’ll make your own. It really couldn’t be simpler. This sauce recipe is unashamedly inspired by a delicious recipe for Cranberry and Orange Preserve from Thane Prince. I’d made the preserve a week or so before Christmas, and then prettied up all the jars and given them away as presents (except for one, so I’ll have the tastiest yoghurt for breakfast). The Best Cranberry Sauce
This was delicious with the traditional Christmas roast, and all the trimmings, and would be equally tasty with almost any roast meat. Its tanginess will cut through any excess of fat that there might be, with roasted potatoes, and roasted veg and all that meat. And any leftovers will be perfect stirred into yoghurt, or made into a festive Eton Mess with meringue and cream. Or warmed on a plain sponge pudding. Or as the jam in a Victoria Sponge, with a sweetened mascarpone cream as well. I’d give you pictures of the sauce in its lovely Christmas-Day-Only silver sauceboats, but I was having too much fun cooking and eating to take any pictures on Christmas Day – sorry.
If you want to see other recipes you’ll find them all listed here. There’s even one for Cranberry Muffins, if you’ve still got some cranberries lurking in the bottom of your fridge. Or if, like me, you can’t resist buying them when they’re in season.
You’ll have heard of this recipe before, you may even have eaten it, and made it.
For me, it’s one of those go-to recipes when I’ve bought cream for something and then either forgotten what it was I bought it for, or just have loads left over. Or changed my mind. After all, what would be nicer than fillet steak with creamy potatoes? And brussels sprouts? OK, you might not all agree with the addition of the brussels as a side dish, but I’ve learned to love the wee critters. My spiced pickled red cabbage on the side would have created perfection on a plate, but I forgot it when I was serving up. I forgot to turn the oven off too. So, it could have been the second time in 24 hours the house nearly burned down.
Yes, it’s been an eventful time.
We were relaxing in front of the fire (with a cheese board and some vintage port) when we noticed a car drawing up outside (we live far from anywhere, but beside a road, so notice these things on the rare occasions they happen). Then there was a knock at the gable window, beside where I was sitting. I couldn’t see who it was in the dark blackness outside. The Captain went out to investigate and asked if I was cooking anything when he went through the kitchen… but no, I wasn’t. And then we discovered that the kind stranger had stopped to inform us our wheelie bin (right beside our boiler and the side of the house) was on fire. It was seriously on fire, with flames shooting out of it and 3/4 of the bin now melted away. It was cold and dark and windy, with a drizzly rain spattering down on us. The boys pulled out the hose (not melted by the heat of the fire) and we spent the next half hour making sure the bin had no chance of bursting into flame again.
We’ll never know for sure what caused the fire, but suspect it may have been our house guest who had lit a fire earlier in the evening and burned lots and lots and lots of paper. The next morning she asked if it had been because she’d put hot ash in the bin. As I say, we’ll never know for sure.
Anyway… the next evening I attempted (yet again) to use up some more of the ingredients I’d bought in for the Christmas season, and it was time to finish that enormous pot of cream. I much prefer savoury to sweet (despite the huge number of recipes for sweet homebaked goods on this site) so decided on Janssen’s Temptation, that delicious potato gratin dish, baked in the oven till it’s all oozingly unctuous.
Janssen’s Temptation
I know, I know, I’ve not been too precise on the quantities here, but since I only ever make it when I’m using up what’s left int he fridge, how would I really know?
Preheat oven to 220C/400F/GM6
And that’s it. Tastiness on a plate. You’d have photos if I hadn’t had cocktails.
I could give you a photo of the melted wheelie bin, but really, it would put you off all your meals in 2014.
Happy New Year everyone.
I love Christmas food.
Cranberry clementine muffins
Well, I love my sort of Christmas food – which is almost anything apart from traditional Christmas cake. I love warm and mellow Christmas spices; chestnuts thrown into all manner of leftover dishes just because you have them; turkey; glazed ham; mulled wine; spiced cider; and cranberries. I really love baking with fresh cranberries.
And I know it’s only just December, but I was in the wonderful Whole Foods Market in Giffnock again this weekend and they had ENORMOUS fresh juicy cranberries. I had to have them.
And I had to make muffins with them. I combined them with clementine zest and orange juice, for flavour. And a muffin batter which included extra bran and porridge oats to make them pretend they are somewhere further along that health spectrum than you might imagine. But then lots of melted butter to make sure they are still tastiness itself.
And now you can make them too. If you start now, they’ll be ready within an hour. Unless you have to go out and pick your own cranberries.
Cranberry & clementine muffins
Preheat oven to 375F / 200C / GM5-6. Prepare muffin tins, lining them with muffin cases. Makes about 12 regular muffins .
I’ve started.
I didn’t mean to. I prefer to wait till 20 December for my Christmas preparations, as is traditional in my family. But there are some things that need time to reach perfection. And anyway, I enjoy pottering about in the kitchen.
So yesterday I bought some fresh cranberries and a bottle of vodka. Last time I made cranberry vodka it was far too sweet, but was a perfect late night (after too much wine) shot. So I’m trying it again. And plum brandy (if only because I have brandy in the cupboard and our plum harvest in the freezer).
The cranberry vanilla vodka starts with layers of sugary syrup, and lighter alcohol
Cranberry Vanilla Vodka
250g cranberries
1/2 vanilla pod
160g caster sugar
1l vodka
You’ll need a kilner jar, larger than a 1l one. I think mine is probably 1.5l, but not entirely sure. Hey, it won’t really matter if your jar is too small, you just won’t be able to fit all the vodka in (so use slightly less fruit and sugar too).
Plum brandy
Follow the basic method for Cranberry Vanilla Vodka. I only had a 1l jar, so I layered plums and soft brown sugar till the jar was about half full. Then I added a star anise and about 1″ cinnamon stick, followed by some brandy. We’ll see how it turns out… I suspect I’ll wish I’d put more star anise in it.
Jars of alcoholic tastiness
Next weekend I will probably turn my hand to a Stollen. I’ve never made one before, but much prefer stollen to heavy fruitcake. Mind you, I do have a recipe for a Christmas Cake which lasts like a normal cake, but is made of nice light fruit, like apricots instead of all that horrid stuff you usually find in a fruitcake.
So, when Tesco builds a new store, they do all manner of strange discounts. We have a new Tesco in the valley and today there were bags and bags of broccoli for only 10p each, all marked ‘TEST’, but all looking like fresh and scrummy broccoli.
They also had enormous whole salmon reduced from £35 to £10. I think they were about 8lb weight. But since G’s sister had already bought a whole salmon earlier in the week and stuffed our freezer full of salmon steaks I resisted that particular temptation.
And grabbed the bags of broccoli. And a wedge of stilton. You see where I’m heading don’t you?
Broccoli and stilton soup
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 medium large potato, chopped into small chunks
about 1.5l veg stock
1 large head of broccoli, cut into small-ish chunks
about 100g stilton in chunks
Shewolfinthevalley 