Abercrombie & Feast

And… it’s all over.  The gifts have been opened.  The candles have been burned.  The sweet potatoes have been eaten.  The wine (and wine, and wine…) has been drunk.

This was my first year making a whole Christmas lunch on my own.  I’m pretty pleased with my efforts, if I may say so.  The mashed potatoes were creamy, the turkey was moist, the cranberry relish was puckeringly tart. 

But, as good at it all tasted around 3pm on Christmas Day, my absolute favourite part about Christmas lunch is always the leftovers.  Is there anything better than having a fridge bursting with delicious leftovers, ready for you whenever you’d like??  And, the leftovers ALWAYS taste better the next day, don’t they? 

I mean, on Christmas Day, when you’ve been awake since dawn, hoisting a huge bird in and out of the oven, drunk half a bottle of champagne (who, me???)… can you really fully appreciate the sweet potato casserole?  In the midst of the madness can you really give your attention to the subtle flavour that the maple-cured bacon added to the Brussels sprouts? 

By Boxing Day, things have calmed down.  The food is still there, but you don’t have to make a huge effort to get it ready to eat.  This time, you can enjoy the food without the fuss.  I love it. 

This year, like most years, I made a lot of turkey sandwiches.  Thickly sliced wholegrain toast serves as the base of my Leftover Masterpiece.  It’s important to toast your bread… you want it to be firm, you’re about to load test it! 

Spread one slice of toast with your cranberry relish or sauce, and… this is KEY… spread the other slice with cream cheese.  Just do it, it’s good for you!  Then, slice up some of your turkey and toss it in a hot frying pan with a few scoops of your stuffing or dressing and a glug of the leftover gravy.  Give it a few mins to warm through and add this mixture to your sandwich.  Squish the whole thing down (this step is very important to the structural integrity of a fully loaded sandwich) and enjoy! 

I served these babies on 27 December, with a side-dish of fried mashed potato patties, and for me Christmas dinner was even better the second time around… and the third.

I am a little late with this post, aren’t I? 

I’m sure you’re like, “Who needs Christmas goody recipes, lady??  My holly jolly goodies have been baked for WEEKS.  Slacker.”  Wow.  You’re kind of angry and well-prepared.  Here… look at my tree and breathe deeply. 

Yet, no matter how tardy I am, I urge you to give these ever so merry recipes a go in the next few days.  Actually, the gingerbread could be made any old time… it’s not really Christmas specific.  But it’s goooooood.  And the Christmas pudding truffles?  Too cute, too easy, too tasty.  I brought them to my work Christmas party and they were gone in a flash!

Christmas pudding truffles
adapted from Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen

For the truffles
125g best-quality dark chocolate, finely chopped
350g leftover, or freshly cooked and cooled, Christmas pudding
60ml sherry or port
2 tablespoons golden syrup

For the topping:
100g white chocolate, finely chopped
red glacé cherries

Line a baking sheet (that will fit in the fridge) with parchment paper or baking paper and set it to one side while you make the truffles.

Melt the dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl suspended above a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave according to the manufacturer’s guidelines.

Crumble the cold Christmas pudding into a bowl, add the sherry and golden syrup and stir briskly till all is incorporated.  A strong wooden spoon is good for this. 

Pour the melted dark chocolate into the pudding mixture and stir again: this will make the mixture much more cohesive.  If you feel your mixture is still too wet to form small balls, crumble in a bit more of the pudding.  Mine was a bit wet, so I added a tiny bit more pudding and it was much better. 

Now, get ready to roll!  To make this step easier, put on a pair of those disposable vinyl gloves sold in hardware stores and supermarkets, pinch out small lumps of mixture and roll so that you have little rounds about the size of a chocolate truffle. You should get about 30 out of this mixture; fight the impatient urge to make these balls larger as you go.

As you roll the balls place them on the sheet covered with parchment paper, or put them into small candy cups.  Cover with clingfilm and slot into the fridge to firm up.

To decorate, melt the white chocolate either in a heatproof bowl suspended over a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave according to the manufacturer’s guidelines, then let it cool for about 5 minutes, to make it easier to work with, while you chop the red cherries into small pieces (to evoke berries.)

Using a teaspoon, drip a little of the melted but slightly cooled white chocolate on each bonbon, then arrange the pieces of cherry on top.

Ultimate gingerbread
adapted from jamieoliver.com

400g shop-bought shortbread
170g coarse demerara sugar
3 level teaspoons ground ginger
40g mixed peel, chopped
40g crystallized ginger, chopped
70g plain flour
a pinch of baking powder
40g golden syrup
40g treacle
70g unsalted butter

Preheat the oven to 170ºC/325ºF/gas 3 and find a baking tray about 20x35cm.  If you don’t have a tray this size (and I don’t) you can use a pie plate or a loose-bottom tart pan.  

Put the shortbread, sugar and 2 teaspoons of the ground ginger in a food processor and whiz until you have crumbs. Remove 100g of the mix and keep this to one side.

Add the remaining teaspoon of ginger to the processor, along with the mixed peel, crystallized ginger, flour and baking powder, and pulse until well mixed.

Melt the syrup, treacle and butter together in a saucepan big enough to hold all the ingredients.

When melted, add the mixture from the food processor and stir with a wooden spoon until everything is thoroughly mixed together. Tip into the baking tray and spread out evenly. Press the mixture down into the tray, using your fingers or something flat and clean like a potato masher or a spatula. When the mix is a flat, dense and even layer, pop the tray in the preheated oven for7 minutes.

Take the tray out of the oven and sprinkle the hot gingerbread with the reserved crumbs, pressing them down really well with a potato masher or spatula. Place the mixture back into the oven for a further 3-4 minutes or until the crumbs are slightly golden.  Don’t over cook. 

Carefully cut into good-sized pieces with a sharp knife, and leave to cool in the tray before eating.

I’m baaaaaack!

Please forgive me for the extra long break from my beloved blog. There were a variety of really boring reasons that I wasn’t here for the past few weeks (The flu!  Christmas season crazy schedule!  Lots of takeaway!), but I’m back now.

And don’t worry, the story I have for you today is going to make it all worth it.  You’re all going to ask me to go away again, just to see if I can come back with something this cool a second time (spoiler- I can’t).

I won’t keep you in suspense any longer.  Here we go.

I spent last Saturday helping to prep and cook in the kitchen of a Michelin starred restaurant.

I KNOW!  How cool is that???  It was my Christmas present from The Greatest Husband of All Time, and I loved every single minute of it.

I have to apologise for the lack of pictures.  Andy sent me off on Saturday with a fully charged and ready to go camera in my bag- but I got so busy and so wrapped up in what I was seeing that I totally forgot about the camera until I was on the train home at the end of a long day.  I felt like a total loser.

I can’t give you a minute by minute account (as much as I’d like to!), because we could be here until next Saturday.  So, I’ll hit a few of the highlights for you:

• I was the only woman in the kitchen all day.  There were waitresses in and out, but the cooks and chefs were all men in their late 20’s or early 30’s (I’m guessing on the ages.)  The “F” word was used a lot, which was fine with me as I have been known to drop an “F” bomb myself from time to time and I’m not really precious about that kind of thing.

• This restaurant makes EVERYTHING in house.  Even the crackers for the cheese are made in by the chefs in the kitchen.  I got to help with the bread-making first thing in the morning (pre-9am.)  I was thrilled to get my hands into the smooth, elastic dough so early in the morning.  I’ve never worked with dough that wonderful- mine is always a slightly sticky mess.  The chef encouraged me to not be so afraid of yeast.  We’ll see how that goes.

• You eat with your eyes.  The kitchen staff were fastidious.  They wouldn’t put together a plate of food without first wiping (the already clean!) plate down twice.  The final platings looked like art.  I spent most of my day in the larder section, slightly away from the heat and scariness of the big ovens and ranges.  Twice the chef in that section had to put together dishes “on the fly” for customers who couldn’t eat a certain ingredient, or who were waiting too long for their meals.  He just whipped up dishes that would take me days of thinking and planning… and my versions would still not be as lovely as the plates he sent out.  This was true of everyone in the kitchen.  These guys were artists.

• Quality matters.  I got to work with hand-dived scallops, foie gras, salmon, braised oxtail and other beautiful, very high quality ingredients.  Everything that went on the plate was considered and expertly cooked.  The chefs all treated the ingredients with a lot of respect, which was obvious when you tasted the food.

• The food was awesome!  Part of the package was a lunch for me, prepared by the chefs.  I had sea bream that was perfectly cooked, served with potatoes and bacon and yum yum yum.  It was lovely.  As were the rolls that I had helped with, which came out of the oven half way through my lunch and were served to me still hot.  Heaven.

• The kitchen crew were SO nice!  I know that I must have been all kinds of annoying and in the way whilst the guys tried to do their job quickly, neatly and well… but they never stopped being kind, explaining what they were doing, asking me to put little garnishes on the plates, letting me taste sauces and generally being as welcoming as possible.  It made me think, would I be as friendly to someone who came along for the day just to “watch me do my job?”  I think I might just view them as an annoyance, and I’m sure I was one(!), but they never made me feel like I was in the way… unless I was actually in the way, then they asked me nicely to scoot.

• I was exhausted at the end of the day!  I didn’t even stay all the way through dinner service, but when I sat down on the train at 9pm I was totally knackered.  It is hard work!  On your feet all day, moving around at a fast pace, concentrating and doing small, precise work.  I was worn. out.

Those are just a few quick observations that I made during my day in the kitchen.  I really did have a wonderful time.  I always say that I’d rather have an experience than a gift… take me on a walk, to dinner, to a concert, to a museum, to France…anything.  This was honestly one of the best “experiences” I’ve ever had.

And, as I told Andy, I am going to be COMPLETELY insufferable now. Don’t even think of questioning the food I make… I’ve cooked in a Michelin starred restaurant!  “There’ll be no living with her now.”