Home Made Ice Cream

I've been clearing the freezer of any remnants of last year's soft fruit crop, ready for this year's surplus (she said hopefully), and I've also had rather too many eggs. Since my depleted poultry numbers post fox, I've not been selling eggs at the gate, but I still have a generous supply for the house and friends, but just lately a rather too "excellent sufficiency"! And since there's only so many omelettes a person can eat, I thought a good way of using up both surpluses would be ice cream.

Let me say straight away that I think an ice cream maker is not a luxury but a necessity here. You can do it without, but it's a real faff, and ice cream makers are not all that expensive. I have a Magimix le Glacier, which lives in the freezer so that it's always ready for use, I think it cost me about £20 a few years ago. You can get expensive electric ones that have their own freezing capability, but they're for real ice cream fanatics and cost loads.  But is is nice to be able to enjoy something so luxurious, and yet knowing that it's full of good stuff, because you made it yourself.

Most ice cream recipes are based on a cooked egg custard, which is fine, but I have discovered that you can make it much quicker without making the custard first. This is based on a Ben and Jerry's recipe (and they should know) from a little book of  their recipes I've had for some years and which uses uncooked eggs. (Throw up hands in horror) So obviously only use it where you know your eggs are good and fresh, such as from your own birds, for example. Although I must say, you'd have to cook a dodgy egg a lot more than making custard with it to make it safe to eat, so use good fresh free range eggs and make your own ice cream, mayonnaise and so on, with an unfurrowed brow.

3 large eggs (I use duck eggs, because I have a lot of them)

6 oz/150gr caster sugar

3/4 pint/450ml double cream

1/4 pint/150ml full fat milk

Your chosen flavouring, I made

1.Vanilla using seeds from 1 vanilla pod plus 1 teasp vanilla essence

and

 2.Strawberry by using up some strawberry puree in the freezer ( never throw away strawbs that have gone a bit mushy, whizz them in the blender with caster sugar and lemon juice and freeze)

Beat the eggs and sugar with a mixer, until light and fluffy. Gradually pour in the cream still beating and finally the milk. Add your chosen flavouring to taste, bearing in mind that ice cream needs to be more strongly flavoured and sweeter than you would normally do to allow for the freezing effect.

Transfer to your ice cream maker and churn following the maker's instructions.

Et Voila.

Ben and Jerry's little book also has a very good Hot Chocolate Fudge Sauce recipe, which I will share with you another day (if you're very, very good)

Cupcakes, Fairy Cakes, or Buns?

I've recently bought one of these

the stand that is, not the cakes, - these were made by Claire for little Brown's 2nd birthday last weekend. And very delicious they were, obviously I had to try a couple in the interests of research....

 In fact, I've bought three of them, one each for my daughter and step-daughter, and one for me. We all like cooking, and I think they're quite a nice way of showing your little cakes off to advantage. There's a bit of a trend for having individual cupcakes instead of one large cake as a celebration cake at weddings and birthdays, and this would be ideal for such an occasion. They come in various sizes, this one is a 23er, but you can leave off the lower tier if you want to.

One of the first things I learned to cook as a young girl were Butterfly Cakes, little fairy cakes topped with butter cream and with the halved lids perched on top at a jaunty wing-like angle. I say fairy cakes, but I notice a current trend to refer to these little cakes as Cupcakes, I'm thinking that must be the American equivalent, and I also notice that they're tending to be a lot bigger than the ones I made as a child, another not altogether unwelcome trend if you're a fan of cake. And who isn't.  I can't help thinking though that some of the "cupcakes" I've seen illustrated would have served as dessert for a family of four in the old days. Just goes to show that not everything gets worse.

If you look on Amazon you will find literally dozens of books of recipes for cupcakes, which is quite amazing really, since, give or take a few additions, the basic idea is sponge cake baked in individual cases and decorated however you like. So call them Cupcakes if you're modern, or Fairy Cakes if you're posh, or, if you're from Yorkshire, more prosaically Buns, it all comes down to a fairly basic recipe and the rest is up to your imagination and patience. I fall back on my usual all in one sponge cake recipe, which I rehearse below -

All in one Sponge

4 eggs
1 pack 8oz/250g of butter at room temperature
8 ounces/250g of self raising flour
1 rounded teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon of cornflour
8 ounces/250g of caster sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
about 2 tablespoons milk

Put everything in food processor and switch on till blended. That's it. You might want to mix it without the milk first and then add as much milk as you think you need to get a soft, smooth, but not too runny mixture. Depends on the size of your eggs really.

Spoon into little cake cases or larger muffin cases or mini muffin cases, about 2/3rds full, and bake until golden.And when cold decorate with fondant, butter icing, glace icing, or whatever you like.

Rhubarb Crumble

I've picked some rhubarb at last, despite my earlier disparaging remarks, and as there's already quite a lot of it, I feel I should be using some, if only in the interests of seasonality. Crumble is always a winner in our household, and the sourest fruits seem to make the best crumble - Bramley apples, blackcurrants, and of course rhubarb.

I always try to keep a bag of crumble mix in the freezer, - it's just as easy to make a big bagful if you have a food processor, so that provided you have some fruit, frozen or fresh, or even tinned, you always have the makings of a quick pudding, without all the washing up and fiddling about.  

This is my standard crumble mix:

1 lb/500g plain flour

8oz/250g butter

6oz/150g demarara sugar

4oz/125g porridge oats

Whizz the flour and butter in the processor to breadcrumb stage. Add the sugar and oats and pulse minimally to just mix in. Tip into a plastic bag and keep in the freezer.  To use, simply place your chosen fruit in a dish with enough sugar to sweeten, and top with the required amount of  frozen crumble, according to who's eating it. In our house, if  John's coming round, it's hold the fruit, heavy on the crumble for example. 

Bake in a medium oven for about half an hour, depending on the size of your dish of course.

Best with cream, or custard, although some weird people like it with ice cream. There's no accounting for taste.

Venison Stew with Cheese Crusted Dumplings

I remembered I had said I would do a post on Sussex Pond Pudding when I was talking about lemons last week, and I had indeed put together the makings of some suet crust pastry when I found myself hi jacked by a venison stew which came out of the oven just crying out for dumplings. So I'm afraid the Sussex Pond Pudding will have to wait for another day. I will do it though because I like it and I haven't made it for years.

The venison in this recipe was just some offcuts I had saved in the freezer from a very large joint of venison we had in the autumn, almost any cut would do, or you could use some stewing beef. It's quite a simple stew, but I think the dumplings just make it extra warming for a winter's supper. Perfect for night like tonight when I see we have yet another dose of freezing wet sleety stuff from on high. What a winter this has been.

1 pound/500g venison, or stewing beef

1 tablespoon flour

1 large onion

1 stick celery

1 large garlic clove

a few glugs of red wine about a third of a bottle if you can wrestle that much away from your husband

sprig thyme

Chop up the onion garlic and celery and fry in a little dripping or olive oil for a minute or two then add the floured venison and continue to cook until nicely browned. Add the wine and allow to bubble fiercely enough to drown out the howls of complaint about a waste of good wine...

Season well, transfer to a casserole and cook in a moderate oven for, depending on the cut of meat,about an hour, until the meat seems tender when prodded. Meanwhile make your dumplings and set aside until ready.

For the dumplings
4 oz/100g Self raising flour
2oz/50g Shredded suet
level teaspoon baking powder
salt pepper
pinch mixed herbs

Mix everything together in a bowl and add enough cold water to make a pliable but not sticky dough. Don't knead or handle the dough too much. Form into golf ball sized balls and drop onto the top of the casserole,

replace the lid and return to the oven for half an hour if you like your dumplings soft and fluffy, when they will have puffed up and be nestling snugly on top of the casserole like this -

If you like them with a crusty top, take off the lid after 10 minutes, brush with beaten egg and sprinkle with a little grated cheese. Return to oven without lid to brown.

Serve with root mash and green veg of choice.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Generally speaking, I'm not the greatest fan of some of America's contributions to our diet, like MacDonalds and Coca Cola, but there are many notable exceptions, and one such is the American Cookie. The British baked item of choice for enjoying with a cup of tea has traditionally been a rather harder more solid type of thing, I'm thinking Chocolate Hobnobs, Ginger Nuts, Shortbread, and so on, whereas the American effort is more  likely to be in the form of the chewy, slightly soft Cookie; chocolate chip, oatmeal and raisin etc. I love them - they really are quite addictive. So fond have I become of this style of biscuit, or cookie, that I find my old Gingernuts are now transformed out of all recognition. In fact they can no longer really be called Gingernuts, more of a Gingerbend, or possibly Gingerdroop, - 

I'm still using the recipe I've always used but I just bake them slightly less and I find in this way I am able to consume even more of them  than I did before.

I'm not sure that this is a good thing.

However, there is a slight problem with this style of baked goods if you live in the UK, in that if you leave a tin of biscuits, say Jammy Dodgers or something, out with the lid off, they do go a bit soft and lose their crispness, (rather in the style of an old British Rail cafe, stale hard sandwiches and stale soft biscuits) And so if you offer your freshly baked bendable cookie to an unsuspecting visitor they might just think that you're trying to fob them off with some elderly specimens that have been hanging around the larder for a bit too long, so be sure to announce in ringing tones as you're pouring the tea,

              "Do try one of my American style cookies, and yes, they are supposed to be like that."

I've tried quite a few different recipes and I now stick to my old gingernut recipe for the basic idea, and just change the ingredients for say, chocolate chip, or other variations. I don't really like unneccessary complication, and I find this simple method gives reliable results. But do take care not to overbake them or you'll get crisp biscuits instead of chewy cookies.

Ginger Bendies (or Gingernuts if you bake them long enough)

This is Delia's recipe, it's very quick and easy, I've been using it for years, but as I say, I now underbake them and get a softer chewier result.

2 oz/50g butter
4oz/100g Self raising flour
1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2oz/50g granulated sugar
2 tablespoons Golden syrup

The easiest way to do this is definately in the Kitchenaid/Kenwood. Just put the first five ingredients into the bowl and use the paddle on a medium/slow speed to breadcrumb stage. Then with the motor still running add the golden syrup (use hot spoon to measure it out more easily) and mix briefly until a rough dough forms. (Obviously you can easily do this by hand as I did for many years - just rub the fat into the flour to breadcrumb stage, add other ingredients and form into a dough.)

Form into walnut sized balls on a baking sheet and press down lightly like this

and bake for 10 minutes on the bottom shelf of the Aga with the plain cold shelf above, gas 4 Electric 175C. Take them out before you think they are ready, they will be puffy and palely golden, and will start to collapse as soon as you take them out, but don't worry that's all part of the plan. If you want crispy gingernuts, leave them a minute or two longer. Allow to firm up for a minute, then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2ounces/50g  butter

4oz/100g Self Raising Flour

1 teaspoon Bicarbonate of Soda

2oz/50g Granulated Sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla essence, or seeds of half a vanilla pod

6oz/150g chopped up chocolate**

2 tablespoons Golden Syrup

Using the same method as above, put the first four ingredients in the mixer bowl and use the paddle on medium /slow speed to breadcrumb stage. Then with the motor still running add the remaining ingredients and mix briefly until a rough dough forms.

Form into golfball sized blobs on a baking sheet and bake on the bottom rung of the Aga roasting oven with the plain cold sheet just above. For gas about 4, electric 175C /350F  for 10 minutes. Take them out before you think they are done. This will ensure that you get the chewyness, as opposed the crunchiness that we are looking for. They will be puffy, and palely golden, and will start to collapse as soon as you take them out. Don't worry, that's how they should be.

 Leave a few minutes to firm up then transfer to a wire cooling rack.

**You may think this is rather a lot of chocolate for a dozen cookies, in fact rather more chocolate chip than cookie, but in my book, if you're having a treat, you don't want to be fishing around wondering where the next bit of chocolate is do you?

Oranges and Lemons

One of the most annoying things about supermarkets is they way they have robbed us of our sense of seasonality. The tired old pile of courgettes sits there month in month out, the price hardly changing to reflect their journey from the other side of the world this month, and there, just the same in September when they are in season here and should be almost free. Same for strawberries.  Don't get me wrong, I love the convenience of supermarkets as much as the next shopper, but there's a price to be  paid, sometimes I think it's more than I want to  pay. Anyway, that concludes this weeks Reith lecture on Seasonality.
I was actually thinking about oranges and how when I was small they used to be considered in season in winter, which I suppose makes sense really considering they are of course imported from hot places. But then they were quite a luxury, and not the bogof  bags of cheap satsumas of today. My dad served in the Palestine Police during the British Protectorate in 1946, and I can still remember him showing us children the amazing photos of him standing next to a mountain of oranges that was bigger than he was! We could hardly believe it. Tangerines were still special enough to get one in your Christmas stocking in the fifties.

So anyway, apart from marmalade, there's lots of other lovely citrussy recipes well worth making at home. As it's still too early in the year for any home grown fruit, citrussy things like Lemon Curd, and puddings like Sussex Pond pudding are definately worth having a bash at, mostly because you can't buy them. Or at least you can't buy anything like the quality that you can make. Proper lemon curd is the most delicious and wholesome thing if you make it yourself, being mostly fresh eggs, butter, and lemons - (ok and a bit of sugar) but nothing like the commercial stuff. And Sussex Pond pudding, being a suet pudding, is completely unobtainable unless you make it yourself. I think the reason suet puddings have gone out of fashion is not that they are too fattening, (no worse than any other pudding really) but they don't lend themselves to freezing, chilling, canning or any other method of preservation, and so are never seen. If you want one, you have to make it, and you have to make it on the day you want to eat it. So I'll try to make one tomorrow and post the photos.

But for today, Lemon Curd

2 oz/50g butter
2 eggs and 2 egg yolks
2 lemons
6 oz 150g caster sugar

Zest the lemons with your fine blade microplane grater (they're expensive but brilliant).

Squeeze the juice and put into a saucepan with the zest, and all other ingredients.

Stir over a gentle heat until the sugar dissolves. Continue stirring over the lowest heat until thickened. Don't overheat, or you'll get lemon scrambled eggs, which is not great. Use a double boiler if you're nervous.

Pot into small sterilized jars and cover.

Store in the fridge for up to three weeks.

Having said that, when I made this I used the handy/lazy Aga method, which involves virtually no stirring at all. You just put the sugar, butter and lemon in a pyrex jug or a  preserving jar, and leave it in the simmering oven for an hour to dissolve.

Then you take it out, add the eggs and beat for a minute,

and put it back in the simmering oven for another hour by which time it will have thickened and set, all by itself. Magic.

Uses - makes simple things special -

Lemon curd tarts - use a rich shortcrust pastry or any trimmings you have leftover when making anything pastry based. You'll never throw pastry offcuts away again! Bake in a moderate oven, like shortbread,  ie don't overbrown the pastry or boil the curd.

Cake filling - All in one sponge cake, filled with lemon curd and whipped cream, or mascarpone.

Delicious for tea, just spread on a doorstep of home made buttered bread.

It's Marmalade Time Again!

The sour oranges from Seville are the best for making marmalade, that wonderful staple of the English breakfast table. They are only in season for a short time though, around January. I noticed this year that Waitrose are stocking organic seville oranges at £2.20 a kilo, which is only slightly more than the ordinary kind which I have seen in Tesco's at £2.00 kg. As I understand citrus fruit is quite heavily sprayed, it seems like a bargain, so stock up now while you have the opportunity, and you can have a whole year's supply of marmalade in the larder. If you don't have the time to make it straight away, and it's not the kind of thing you can just dash off in a spare ten minutes,the fruit keeps well in the freezer, just put whole fruit in plastic bags and freeze to use at a later time.

There are as many recipes for marmalade as I've had hot dinners, (and that's quite a few) but over the years I've found this is the easiest, and most reliable. It's particularly useful for Aga owners, in that you can leave the fruit to cook in the bottom oven overnight, but it's easily adapted to ordinary cookers.

I generally make two styles of marmalade, as I find that consumers fall into two distinct camps. The ones who like fine shreds in a light orange fruity marmalade, generally women,  and those who like big chunks in an altogether darker preserve, usually men. So I call them Ladies Breakfast Marmalade, and Gentleman's Oxford Style Marmalade respectively. However, I'm not sexist about it and you can actually eat whichever you like, with no sinister hormonal effects.

Ladies Breakfast Marmalade
should yield around 10lbs
3 lbs/1.5kg seville oranges (or any mixture of other citrus if you prefer)
2 lemons
6lbs/3kg granulated sugar
4 pints/2.5litres water

Place the whole fruits in the water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Cover and simmer very gently until soft. This can be acheived in the slow oven of the Aga overnight (be sure to put a plate on top of the fruit to avoid unsightly browing), or on the hob on a very slow simmer for a couple of hours or so, until the skins are very soft.  Leave until cool enough to handle, then halve the fruit and scoop the insides out with a soup spoon back into the saucepan, and set the peels aside. Place the saucepan back on the heat to simmer gently while you deal with the peel.

Cut each half in half again, and then taking several skins together slice the peel as thinly as you can. It should be quite soft and easy to cut.

When you have finished all the peel, remove the saucepan from the heat and pour the contents through a sieve, into a roomy preserving pan, pressing the pulp with a wooden spoon. Discard the contents of the sieve, and add the sliced peel, and the sugar to the pan and return to the heat. Stir over gentle heat until all the sugar is dissolved and you can feel no grittiness with your spoon.

Now you can turn up the heat and boil the marmalade to setting point. You can discern this by use of a jam thermometer, which will register around 220F/105C, or by the old fashioned cold plate method.

Place a small plate in the freezer for a few minutes, and when you are ready to test, drop a small spoonfull onto the plate. If, after a minute or two you can push the marmalade with your finger and it forms a wrinkly skin, then it's ready. It's difficult to be exact, but it  shouldn't really take much more than ten or fifteen minutes, sometimes less.

Turn off the heat and stir in a knob of butter, which helps disperse scum. You will need to allow the marmalade to cool a little before potting, so that all the peel doesn't rise to the tops of the jars. Ten minutes or so should do it. Make sure your jars are clean and sterile by putting them in the oven for ten minutes or on a hot dishwasher cycle. Cover straight away with cellophane covers, or even better, screw tops.

Gentleman's Oxford Style Marmalade

Make exactly as above but slice the peel in chunkier bits, and when adding the sugar include  two good tablespoons of black treacle, or blackstrap molasses.

Don'f forget the pretty labels.

Italian Lamb Stew

I found some unspecified "stewing lamb" on special offer in Waitrose, looked like sliced shoulder to me, and it was english, so I thought it would be a good candidate for this nice rich, stew. I think it cost just over £2 and was ample for two of us. I'm not sure how authentically Italian it is, but I've always known it as such, probably from the days when anything with tomatoes in it was "Italian". Anyway it's certainly tasty and easy to do, especially if you have a supply of home made tomato sauce in the freezer as I recommended back in September.

1 lb/500g stewing lamb

1 onion

2 carrots

2 garlic cloves chopped

sprig of thyme

half pint/250g tomato sauce from your stash in the freezer, otherwise use passata

1 tin of butter beans

Brown the lamb in some olive oil, add the roughly chopped onions, garlic  and carrots, and continue to fry for a few minutes. Pour over the tomato sauce, add the thyme, season well and put in medium oven until the lamb is tender and falling away from the bone.Add a spot of water if it gets a bit dry.  Timing will depend on the cut, but allow about an hour for shoulder. Add the drained butter beans and return to the oven to heat through. Check seasoning and sprinkle generously with parsley before serving with a green veg, kale or brocolli perhaps. Once prepared it will sit happily in a low oven until you're ready to serve.

Breaking News - Jerusalem Artichokes are delicious!

Jerusalem Artichokes. I admit it, I was wrong. Jerusalem Artichoke soup is delicious. I hadn't bothered with it before because frankly I couldn't believe that something so unprepossessing could turn out so delicious. But thanks largely to my friends at Downsizer I have to admit that this is really lovely, easy, and cheap (well it is for me because I've got bucketfuls of them, as you may remember from this photo last week

Anyway, here's the recipe, should you find yourself with similar bucketfuls, or maybe just a few slightly cleaner specimens in your veg box, (they are, as James Martin always says, bang in season now)

large knob of butter

1 Onion chopped

3 pounds/1.5kg of Jerusalem Artichokes

2pints/1 litreof chicken stock

half pint/250ml  of milk

salt, pepper

grating of nutmeg

swirl of cream

Melt the butter in a frying pan

yes, I know you know what melting butter looks like, but I thought this picture looked rather delicious......

Anyway, add the chopped onion, and the peeled and roughly chopped artichokes and fry gently without browning for a few minutes.

Add the chicken stock, cover, and simmer until soft, I think it took about 20-30 minutes. Add the milk, then tip everything into the food processor, or blender, and blend until smooth. Return to saucepan, season with salt, pepper and a little nutmeg, and ladle into bowls and stir in a little cream, in a swirly cheffy sort of way. This is a lovely homespun soup, but good enough for a dinner party too. Do try it.

Treacle Pudding with Clotted Cream (and by the way will you marry me)

Really we should be on a diet by now, and working off the Christmas excesses and all that, but all this ice and snow is not conducive to salads, and "health foods". A girl need something to keep the cold out, other than a Damart thermal vest. So here we go with the Treacle Sponge. But definately lettuce tomorrow. No really.

Ingredients for 4 large or 6 small helpings (what am I talking about, who has a small helping of Treacle Sponge)
6oz/125g self raising flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
4oz/125g soft butter
4oz/125g sugar - half caster, half soft light brown
2 large eggs
golden syrup about half a standard jar or tin depending on how much you like

Whizz everything except the syrup in the food processor until blended. You may need a spot of milk to get a nice soft consistency.
Grease a 2 pint/1 litre pudding basin (preferably the plastic kind that comes with a snap on lid).

Pour a good amount of syrup into the bottom of the basin, the amount will depend on the shape of your basin, but you do want a good inch/couple of cm depth.

 Spoon your sponge mix lightly on top. Snap on your plastic lid, or if you've lost it like me, you will have to make a foil or greaseproof paper lid and tie it on with string in the old fashioned way. Fiddly, but still works fine. Place the pudding basin in a saucepan of boiling water, so that the water comes about half way up the side of the basin and simmer gently for an hour and a half or so. Put a lid on the saucepan so you don't turn the kitchen into a sauna, and keep an eye on the water level, topping it up occasionally from the kettle if it needs it. Timing isn't crucial, and you can leave it steaming until you're  ready. If you have an Aga you can just put it in the bottom oven and leave it there for hours, until you are ready to serve and it will come to no harm.

Turn your pudding out onto a deep dish and have more warmed syrup on hand to pour over. Serve with  clotted cream.

So few people cook old fashioned steamed puddings any more, that if you learn the really very slight art of cooking one, you will find yourself in the useful position of pleasing all of the people all of the time.Pretty well everyone loves treacle pudding, especially men.  Indeed, should you be hoping someone will ask you to marry them, this is probably the best encouragement you could give them and if it doesn't ellicit the diamond ring/one knee scenario, you probably need to move on, girlfriend.

January Recipe Braised Pheasant in a Rich Red Wine Sauce

I'm lucky enough to have a regular supply of pheasants from Sid, and this is a lovely way of cooking them, at this time of year, when it's minus two outside, and something rich and warming is called for. It's so cold in the mornings  at the moment,  I have to break the ice on the waterers for the chickens and ducks and also for the horses in the adjacent field.

Game is seasonal, and early in the season, in Autumn, we have them plain roasted, but later on, ie round about now, they seem best done in a rich winey sauce, with the addition of a little fruitiness in the form of prunes. Don't be put off by the idea of prunes, by the way, they cook to a melting softness and add a real richness to the sauce. Tell people it's plums if it makes them feel better. Chestnuts are another seasonal option you might like to consider here as well.

This amount will serve four people, or, since it freezes excellently, two people twice. (It's always lovely to have a home cooked meal in the freezer that you can just bung in the oven when you come home tired and/or frozen)

2 pheasants

1 large onion chopped

2 large carrots chopped

3 sticks celery chopped

4 cloves garlic

large glass  red wine or stock

about 15 ready to eat stoned prunes

a handful of pre cooked chestnuts (optional)

a few sprigs of thyme

Brown the pheasants in olive oil in a frying pan for a few minutes until they have taken on some colour. Remove to a snugly fitting casserole.

Fry the chopped vegetables in some more olive oil, for a couple of minutes and tip into the casserole along with the prunes, thyme and chestnuts if using.

Add the red wine or stock to the frying pan and bring to the boil. Pour over the pheasants and vegetables. Season generously with black pepper and salt.

Cover and cook in a low oven until tender. If your pheasants are young and tender they will be done in an hour, but if they are older they will come to no harm if you leave them for two. Test for doneness by pulling the leg to see if it comes away reasonably easily. You don't want to cook it to rags, but you don't have to worry about dryness so much as you do when you're roasting them. Leave the lid off for the last half hour to allow browning.

Serve with mash and a green veg like kale or purple sprouting brocolli.

Florentines - recipe for luxurious little chocolate biscuits

Florentines are very expensive little biscuits to buy, and if you make them yourself they are frankly only as good as the ingredients you use, so you have to shell out for quality stuff. But having said that, a little goes a long way with this recipe,and once you've got the idea with them you can make yourself a large enough supply to keep a batch in the freezer and stll have some spare to take along with you when you're invited to friends houses around Christmas and New Year and need something luxurious other than wine to take along.

As I said this is the time to shell out on decent ingredients, don't waste your time and money on cheap chocolate, and ancient dried peel. I recommend Waitrose Italian candied peel, and a good 70% dark chocolate. I buy ready flaked almonds, as I don't have the patience to do them myself,  but get them from a source with a good turnover like Julian Graves, as the surface area of exposed nut means that they go stale quite quickly. You're supposed to have a little candied angelica in the mix, but I find it's quite difficult to find these days so I bought a tub of coloured glace cherries also from Julian Graves, as some of them are green and this gives the necessary hint of green-ness to the end product.

You will need

8 oz caster sugar

1oz flour

2oz butter

half a pint double cream

4oz candied peel

8oz flaked almonds

4oz pot red and green glace cherries, chopped

200g dark chocolate

Melt the butter and sugar together gently in a heavy saucepan. Stir in the flour to make a smooth paste. Stir in the cream and cook over a low heat for a minute, then remove from the heat and stir in the candied peel,almonds and cherries.

Drop teaspoonfuls on to a baking sheet lined with baking parchment or Bake-o-Glide, and bake in the middle of the Aga, Gas 5 or 6 for about 10 minutes, until golden round the edges, but keep an eye on them as they catch quickly and burn. They will still be soft when you take them out, so let them set for a minute or two, then transfer to a wire tray to cool and firm up.

When the little biscuits are cold, melt your chocolate in your chosen way, I put it on the Aga before I start and it's just about ready when I need it later. Holding the biscuits carefully at the edges, coat them generously with the dark chocolate and using a fork, mark them with the traditional wavy lines before it sets.

You can make lots with this amount, especially if you keep them small. You may find you need more than 200g of chocolate depending on how generous you are with your coating. And you could do some with milk, or white chocolate if that's what you fancy.

They freeze very well and take virtually no time to defrost, which means that very handily you can take a couple out, put the kettle on and they'll be ready to eat by the time it boils. All too convenient for the weak of will I fear.

And now for something completely different...

Round about now, you just get a bit bored with all the trad festive fare and in need of something rather fresher tasting... try this delicious lemon tart - rich and luxurious but tart and refreshing as well. Just the thing for a jaded post christmas  palette

 For the crust

This is a very good use for my luxury almond pastry if you used it for mince pies and have some leftover or you can use a pack of ready rolled shortcrust from the supermarket if you're feeling too cooked-out from Christmas to be bothered.

Roll out and line an 8" deep metal flan tin. Because the filling for this tart is delicate and only lightly cooked, you really need to bake the pastry blind, which is not something I normally do, as it's a fiddle faddle, but in this case it's worth the extra effort. Just line the tin with pastry as normal, cover with a sheet of greaseproof paper and weigh it down with dried peas or beans, and bake for about 20 minutes, until firm but not browned. Remove beans and paper and allow to cool.

For the filling you will need

4 lemons, grated zest and juice

4 eggs

8oz 200gr caster sugar

 half pint/300g pot of double cream

Beat the eggs and sugar until pale and creamy, add the lemon zest and juice, and the double cream.  Pour into the flan case and bake for 40 mins in a slow oven, the bottom oven of the Aga or gas 3 until set but not coloured. Cool in the tin and chill in the fridge before serving.

Mince Pies

I've already given my  mincemeat recipe, and my favourite sweet shortcrust pastry recipe, so I'm not suggesting that you Dear Reader need any extra prattling on from me to just marry the two together to make the mince pies. Not at all. But I just thought I would give a recipe for a really luxurious sweet pastry that you could use, since let's face it, mince pies are a bit of a fiddle faddle, and you might as well gild the lily a bit if you're going to the trouble of making them. Mind you, from what I've encountered so far this year in the way of packet mince pies, you'd be better off donating them to the local cricket club for bowling practice than considering eating them. That's probably a bit unfair of me - you can get some quite nice mince pies if you shop around, but if you heard Delia on Woman's Hour on radio 4 in the week, she reckoned that home made mince pies cost about 9p each and decent bought ones anything from 30p to over a £1 each! And they still won't be as nice or as free from "stuff" as yours.

Luxury Sweet Shortcrust Pastry
8oz/250g flour
2oz/50g ground almonds
6oz/150g butter
2ox/50g caster or icing sugar
grated rind of 1 large or 2 small oranges
1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk

Put everything except the egg into the food processor and whizz to breadcrumb stage. At this stage I normally tip the mix out into a large bowl and add the egg by hand. This is because I have a Magimix processor that clumps the bottom layer into a, well a clump really, at the bottom of the bowl. If you have a processor with sloping sides it probably won't do that, but the point is you need to handle the dough as little as possible, and you certainly don't want to beat it to death with a Magimix blade. Anyway, beat the whole egg and yolk together and mix in quickly to form a smooth dough. This is a very rich dough and it's a good idea to rest it in the fridge for half an hour or so to firm up if you can.

Roll out and use to line bun tins in usual way, and fill with your lovely home made mincemeat. Should make a dozen and a half or more if you don't make them too big.

You'll notice from here that my mince pies are cooked in little bun cases. This is because my bun tin is a very ancient tinny thing, and I find the cases ensure that I can get the MPs out of the tin in quick order and onto the cooling rack so the tin's ready for the next lot (there's always a next lot), without having to hang about waiting for cooling down. Also any leaked mincemeat doesn't get so easily welded onto the tray. I might treat myself to a nice non stick one for next year.

In the interests of research my daughter Sarah is trying a frangipane topping on her mince pies, (she has a bit of an almond thing going on at the moment) and hopefully she will post a report on how she gets on with that and  the supply of mincemeat she took home with her this weekend, as it does sound rather delicious. And Claire down in Cornwall seems to be making MPs for the whole county, our little grandson can't be eating them all can he?

Somethings still growing out there...!

I've been so busy with Christmassy stuff lately, that I've hardy had chance to get into the garden, so just to show that, somewhat surprisingly there's still lovely stuff growing out there (amongst the weeds and the mud), here's a couple of carrots, a turnip, and a rather overgrown, forked parsnip. Well nobody's perfect.

But it does represent the makings of a lovely vegetable soup, as I happen to have a big jug of chicken stock in the fridge just waiting for these. Simmered with a couple of chopped onions and a potato, a handful of parsley and served with a hunk of home made bread, lunch is covered for the next few busy days.

Mulled Wine

If you've ever been offered a glass of generic mulled wine at a pre Christmas bash, you will recognize the mouth puckering horrible-ness of the commercial product. I'm convinced most people say they don't like Mulled Wine because they've had the misfortune to be aquainted with the ready made stuff which Mr Supermarket makes with the cheapest rough old plonk, too rough probably to go in a bottle on its own, and whose taste is masked with tongue stripping artificial citrus and spice flavouring.

So get your own cheap plonk - nothing wrong with using an ordinary red wine for mulling, I used Tesco's Sicilian red wine,for our village do,  at around £3.30 a bottle it's full flavour makes an excellent mulled wine and is even ok for everyday vin ordinaire type drinking as long as you're not Jancis Robinson. Not the kind of stuff you'd want to offer your friends coming round for dinner, but still ok for Keith Floyd style casseroles (that's one for me and one for the pot, and then maybe another one for me). And a bottle of economy own brand dark rum. I know I seem to be always recomending economy options, - I make no apology for this, it's not that I'm mean you understand, I love a really good red wine, and will enjoy several over Christmas, but I don't believe in splashing out in a situation where most people just can't tell the difference. If you are Oz Clark, then go ahead and use your Chateau Lafitte Rothschild and your matured Jamaica Rum, but I really don't think the rest of us will mind.

Mulled Wine

1 bottle red wine

2-3fl oz / 50 -75ml dark rum

2 cinnamon sticks broken into pieces

10 allspice berries

10 cloves

1 star anise

about a half inch/1 cm of fresh grated ginger

a good grating of nutmeg

zest of half an orange and half a lemon (peeled off with a potato peeler not grated)

2 oz/60g sugar or up to 3oz/90g if you prefer

Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and heat gently until warm enough. Warm enough means warm enough to be a hot drink, but not boiling, as you'll be boiling off the alcohol which you really don't want to do. It's a good idea to heat it gently once and then leave it for an hour or two with the spices in if you can, to get a really good flavour, and then gently re-warm it when you're ready to drink. Pour it through a sieve into a warm jug and serve with your warm mince pies, preferably standing round the village Christmas tree singing Jingle Bells. And think how much money you could have saved Oz and Jancis.

This is a very bad picture of our village christmas tree, I will go out tomorrow and try to get a better one.

And finally it's quite a good idea to have non alcoholic mulled "wine" as an additional option for children, and drivers, which can be easily made from a bottle of Ribena (don't use the low sugar version for this) diluted with hot water, and with a slice or two of orange and a cinnamon stick.

Sweet Treats for Christmas

Apologies for the lack of postings this week, I've been occupied, like almost everyone else, with Christmassy things entailing much baking of these,

and some of these

and also some of these

I realize these last ones are indistinguishable from a heap of rubbish from my terrible photograph, but they are in fact Christmas Wreaths, adapted from a recipe of Nigella's. If you want to see a picture of what they really look like, have a look at Nigella's Christmas, where you will find a sensible photo. I was making treats to eat at our village Christmas tree lights switching on ceremony last night, and although I made a good stack of mince pies, I know from past experience that small children often don't care for dried fruit generally and mince pies in particular, so I made these treats as an alternative. And very succesful they were too, allowing adults to consume generous amounts of Mulled Wine and mince pies, while they, the children got stuck into the Christmas Cupcakes, Gingerbread Christmas biscuits, and the aforementioned Christmas Wreaths, extracting extravagant sugar fuelled promises along the way from Santa who made his welcome appearance to switch on the lights. Fortunately for the health of the residents, other more sensible people brought some lovely savoury items to counteract the sugary overload of my offerings.

Christmas Cupcakes

I used an 8:8:4 recipe for all in one sponge for these. By which I mean 8 oz SR flour,butter and sugar and 4 eggs ( you see how simple this old imperial measurement is - far easier to remember than metric where the number of eggs, ie 4 bears no relation to the amount of other ingredients ie 250 grams, stop me before I start ranting again....).

Anyway, this amount made around fifty odd cupcakes, so you may like to halve the amounts unless you are considering entertaining the whole neghbourhood's offspring, or you could make larger ones using American style muffin cases instead of little bun cases. You can do the maths. You will need a spot of milk to make the mixture soft enough,and a teaspoon of vanilla essence and be sure to make them small enough to allow for the topping to cover them completely after they have risen.

The topping is royal icing, very easy to make if you have an electric mixer. Just beat 3 egg whites with a 500g packet of icing sugar for about five minutes until the mixture holds soft peaks. I use fresh egg whites because I have an abundance of eggs available to me, but I have used a packet of instant royal icing in the past and it works just as well. I always add a teaspoon of glycerin to the icing to stop it going rock hard, although you should not attempt to keep these little cakes more than a day anyway as they dry out too much. I'm amazed that Christmas Sprinkles for cakes are not available everywhere, at least not in the seasonal red and green colours I like - Tesco's missing an opportunity here - so you have to send off for them, either from Wilton, the US baking supplies people, or sometimes on Ebay. I've also made a lovely discovery that you can buy edible glitter for sprinkling on your cakes to give them that special magical touch - I got mine from the cake decorating department at Hobbycraft. It comes in a tiny pot that will probably last me forever, it looks just like ordinary glitter, but you can eat it without poisoning yourself. Lovely!

As for the little Christmas Wreaths, they are again based again on Nigella's idea

 ( strikes me this picture is almost as bad as mine!)

but I've messed about with the recipe a bit while still keeping to her lovely idea.

6 oz 150g butter

1 200g bag of marshmallows

1 200g bag of caramel toffees

half a teaspoon almond essence

half a teaspoon vanilla essence

 200g cornflakes

Melt the first three ingredients gently together, then bring to a full boil for a minute, then remove from the heat and stir in the essences and the cornflakes crunching them up quite a bit as you go with your wooden spoon. Leave until cool enough to handle and then form into balls, squash down and make a hole in the middle to form a wreath shape decorate with christmas sprinkles and leave to cool. Add little ribbon bows when cool if you like.

Make sure Santa gets some Mulled Wine, recipe tomorrow.