The Joys of Christmas

Joy Number One

Oh, first joy of joys: spiced apple breakfast pancakes, served with damson compote, various homemade jams and quince Champagne cocktails!

The apples used were a tart eating apple, pilfered (with permission) from our neighbour, who also attended our Christmas breakfast. The damsons were our own, dug from the depths of our freezer, after they were picked last autumn. As you may remember, I have already commented on our dire (read: non-existent) damson harvest this year.

The pancakes themselves were a spongy variety, the recipe for which was adapted from Nigella’s, How to be a Domestic Goddess.

Finally, the wonderful (I-could-get-used-to-this-at-breakfast-time) Champagne cocktails were made using the reduced quince poaching liquor leftover from making Joy Number Five, the quince, apple and cardamom crumble.

Joy Number Two

Simple and elegant crab pâté, served with smoked malted wholemeal bread and Alan’s truly amazing bread and butter pickle.

I can’t quite communicate how perfectly all the components of this starter dish worked together. The crab pâté was a recipe taken from my Ballymaloe Cookery Course cookbook, which required solely crab meat, butter, garlic, seasoning, parsley and lemon juice. The bread was a loaf I baked that morning, using my favourite Bacheldre Watermill flour, and sliced thinly – a thin slice per person. But the pickle: oh, the pickle! It’s one that my Dad’s friend, Alan, makes every year, which is, cryptically, a slightly sweet cucumber relish.

And it was all perfect. Just perfect.

Joy Number Three

Steamed venison suet pudding, served with root vegetable puree and sprouts.

As you may have gathered, this winter, for me, it’s all about the suet. Those lovely boys at D.W.Wall came up trumps again with the beef fat for the suet pastry (as well as the wonderful smoked bacon used in the filling), and the venison was purchased from our local produce market.

The recipe was another I had lovely cut out and haphazardly pasted into one of my bulging recipe files, and it seems, was originally written by Gordon Ramsey and featured in The Times. It appealed to me not only for its use of both venison and suet, but also because it featured the use of raspberry vinegar. My mum made a cupboardful of raspberry condiments this year, but unfortunately vinegar wasn’t one of them. However, the raspberry vodka I found seemed to work rather well.

Joy Number Four

Smoked fish pie with stargazey prawn, for my non-venison-eating sister.

An individual pie, again, so simple in its list of ingredients: smoked fish, béchamel, seasoning, a hard boiled egg (a Christmas present from our chickens) with a topping of mashed potato and a single prawn, head poking up to the sky.

The recipe is one from Fergus Henderson, featured in his Nose to Tail Eating. The wee astrological crustacean was my own addition.

Joy Number Five

Quince, apple and cardamom crumble.

Now this pudding was all about me, me, me. But that’s by no means an apology. I love fruit puddings; anything with apple always gets my vote, and I’ve been unashamedly gushing about all things quince for quite a while now. But, in my defence (should any be needed), I promise that the preparing of this will ensure that your whole household will smell like Mrs Claus’ pantry for a whole afternoon. And not only that – it will also make damn sure that everyone within said household will get into the festive spirit, whether they want to, or not.

The poaching method used for preparing the quince was taken from David Lebovitz and is officially my new preparation method of choice. Instead of his use of vanilla, I used a 3-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped into fat slices.

The fail-safe method for preparing the crumble mixture is Nigella’s, featured in How to Eat. And I twiddle with it, as I always do, adding different sugars and spices as I feel the need. But her ratio of fat to flour and sugar always comes good, so I stick to it.

For the filling: (NB – these quantities make enough for two crumble fillings. But when has that ever been a bad thing?)

Quince – 2

Fresh ginger – 3-inch piece, peeled and chopped into fat slices

Water – 600ml

Caster sugar – 65g

Unwaxed lemons – 1, cut in half

Apples – 3

Light muscovado sugar – 1.5 tbsp

Unsalted butter – a small knob

For the crumble: (NB – these quantities make enough for a single crumble topping. Double up if you’re baking two at once.)

Self-raising flour – 120g

Unsalted butter - 90g, cold and diced into smallish cubes

Salt – a pinch

Light muscovado sugar – 3 tbsp

Vanilla sugar – 1.5 tbsp

Caster sugar – 1.5 tbsp

Cardamom – the seeds from 2 to 3 pods, ground

Ground ginger – 1/2 tsp

Please refer to David Lebovitz for his quince poaching method, replacing the vanilla with the fresh ginger stipulated above. The ingredients I have listed will make a third of the amount that he advises, but cooking times shouldn’t vary (at least, mine still needed the full hour’s poaching). Allow the quince to cool in their poaching liquid while you prepare the apples.

Peel, core and cut the apples into eighths, then chop these into bite-sized chunks. Over a medium heat, melt the small knob of butter in a pan and when it begins to bubble, add the prepared apples, light muscovado sugar and 3 or 4 tbsp of the quince poaching liquid. Allow the apples to soften very slightly, turning them in the pan as you go.

Once they have begun to soften, tip them into a baking dish (or distribute them evenly between two, since the fillings I list make enough for two crumbles). Drain the quince (reserving the liquid and doing something wonderful with it, such as reducing it over a high heat, allowing it to cool and adding a couple of inches’ worth to the bottom of champagne glasses before topping up the rest of the glass with some good bubbly stuff), chop it into pieces the same size as the apples, and add these to the same baking dish/es. Drizzle a couple or three tbsp of the reserved poaching liquid over the top of the fruit.

To prepare the crumble topping, tip the flour and salt into a mixing bowl and add the cold, diced butter. Rub the flour into the fat until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs and then stir in the sugars and spices. Place the mixture in the fridge until you need it.

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees Celsius/gas mark 5. When you are ready to bake your Christmassy crumble, sprinkle the cold crumble mixture over the top of the fruit in the baking dish and place in the oven for 25 to 35 minutes, until browned on top. Serve with vanilla ice cream or thick double cream.

Each crumble should feed four people, generously.

Joy Number Six

Gooey chocolate and cardamom puddings. For my choccy-choccy-too-choc sister.

Now, I can’t vouch for the success of this pudding, other than it looked the part. My sister certainly seemed to make positive sounding “mmpff” noises to all my questions concerning the prevalence of cardamom, but I can’t quite be sure she was actually listening.

Quince and Cardamom Breakfast Buns

As some of you will know (those of you who have read my Banana and Peanut Butter Muffins post, anyway), I often tire of my far too regular, yet sadly unbeatable, muesli + yoghurt + fruit breakfasts. I know that, as a freelancer, I could spend far longer than five minutes in the kitchen in the mornings, and concoct whatever my tired and aching body wanted for breakfast that day.

But I don’t.

Perhaps it’s the idea of lone, self-indulgence that stops me; the guilt that I would be eating homemade pikelets and jam (or the like), when my other half has had to wolf a bowl of cereal and rush out the door before the sun has even come up. Plus, if I were to indulge in decadent breakfasts every day, that would surely take all of the fun out weekend breakfasts. (Which are what weekends are all about, correct?)

So, to last weekend’s breakfast.

This one had actually had some prior thought, since I had decided to make it my (very first) entry to this month’s Sugar High Friday (SHF) (hosted by Pastrygirl Anita at Dessert First), the theme of which is Spices. And for those of you with a somewhat delicate disposition, who would immediately dismiss the thought of anything more than black peppered scrambled eggs as too spicy for breakfast, please allow me to convert you to the sweet, sticky and spice-ridden side of the road.

This year has seen a blossoming love affair between me and the quince. In previous years, I had bought a couple, felt their funny, furry skin and sniffed their perfumed bottoms and then cruelly left them to rot in the fruitbowl. A crime, I know. But this year, with a teensy bit more time on my hands, I seem to have gone a little quince-crazy. And my favourite spice pairing of the moment for anything quince related, has to be cardamom, so naturally, these were the two elements I wanted to incorporate into this month’s SHF entry.

The recipe itself is a teeny adaptation of a Nigel Slater recipe from the January 2004 Observer. His version uses dried apricots and apricot jam and I’m assuming (having not attempted the original) that his would be a little more scant in the filling department than mine. But hey, more filling means more quince, and that’s what I like.

Ah, but since the quince is a tricky fruit, you may want to do a little cooking in advance for your weekend breakfast. I actually made these on Thursday evening and before they had had their final rise, I popped them, tray and all, into a freezer bag, sealed it and slid them into the freezer, where they stayed until I went to bed on Friday night. Then they were whipped out, placed somewhere warm and left to defrost and rise overnight beneath a clean tea towel.

Believe you me, I felt smug the next morning, when all I had to do was pre-heat the oven, anoint my beautiful buns with sugar and bake them. All done within an hour of getting out of bed too, which meant that my stomach hadn’t been alerted to the fact it was empty and therefore hadn’t started to get angry.

Anyway, to the recipe. Makes 6.

For the dough:

Strong white flour – 300g

Salt – ¼ tsp

Unsalted butter – 50g, cut into small pieces

Dried yeast – 1⅓ tsp

Caster sugar – 20g

Small eggs – 1, lightly beaten (or about 2/3 of a large egg)

Milk – 150ml, warmed

For the filling:

Quinces – 2 medium

Lemon juice – ½ a lemon’s worth

Caster sugar – 20g

Rosewater – 2 tbsp

Quince jam – 3 tbsp

Cardamom – seeds from 4 green pods, finely ground

To finish:

Demerara sugar – ½ tbsp

Quince jam – 2 tbsp

First, prepare your quinces. I’m sure there are 101 ways to prepare a quince and if you have your own, favoured method, then by all means stick to it. This is my way.

Clean the quinces thoroughly and place them in a large pan of water with the lemon juice. Cover the pan, bring to the boil and simmer the quinces gently for half an hour. (I do this so that I’m less likely to lose a finger when trying to chop them.) Remove from the pan and when cool, peel, core and dice the quinces fairly finely (scant 1cm cubes is about right).

Place the cubed quince into a wide, shallow pan, add the rosewater, caster sugar and 2 tbsp of water, then bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Allow to simmer until there is little or no liquid left and the cubes of quince are tender. If necessary, drain and chop a bit more finely, and leave on one side to cool.

Grease and line a 24cm round baking tin/tray.

Sieve the flour and salt into a large mixing bowl and then (my favourite bit) rub the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles coarse breadcrumbs. Stir in the yeast and caster sugar, then beat the egg into the milk and pour it into the dry ingredients.

Using a wooden spoon or your preferred implement, stir until all the ingredients come together. Then lift the dough out of the bowl onto a floured surface and knead (and this is a wonderful, satisfying dough to knead) for a scant 5 minutes, until very smooth and springy.

Rinse the mixing bowl in warm water (to give the bowl a bit of added heat), dry very well and place the dough back into it. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave somewhere warm for an hour, until it has doubled in size. (I managed to perch my bowl on top of the radiator and then wedged it in place with an armchair. An airing cupboard or a sunny draught-free ledge would be just as good.)

While the dough is rising, mix together the cubed quince, quince jam and ground cardamom seeds.

When the dough has had it’s time, punch it down (again, terribly satisfying) and roll out to a squarish rectangle, about 25cm x 20 cm. Spread the quince filling all over the dough, leaving a couple of centimetres worth of space along one long edge. Dab this edge with water and begin rolling from the opposite long edge into a sausage, pressing the wet edge to seal.

Cut the sausage into 6 equal slices and place them into your tin, so that they are almost touching. If like me, you are planning to freeze these ahead of the weekend, then do as I did: bag them, place them into the freezer and remember to take them out the night before you want them for breakfast. The next morning, preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius/gas mark 7 and when it’s heated, sprinkle your buns with Demerara and bake for 30-35 minutes, until golden.

If, however, you want to bake them now, now, NOW, then after you have placed the buns into your tin, cover them again with the tea towel and return to their warm spot for 20 to 30 minutes. Then proceed as above with oven-heating, sugar-sprinkling and baking.

Once you have removed the buns from the oven (so to speak), heat the quince jam in a small pan with a tbsp of water and bring to the boil. Use a pastry brush to paint all over the tops of the buns and, if you can, allow them to cool for half an hour or so. (They definitely taste best when slightly warm.)

Gently pull your chosen bun away from its quincey chums and eat, licking your sticky, spiced fingers as you go.

Chocolate, Cardamom and Quince Tart

I’d say yesterday evening was fairly successful, all things considered.

In total, eight of our friends managed to squeeze themselves through our front door to arrange themselves on the most uncomfortable chairs and/or settee in the whole of Switzerland. Most even voiced that they were happy to be there. I think the food and wine helped.

Since this was the first party-esque gathering we had managed so far in our 10½ months of being en Suisse, I had decided to do something easy on the eater. Something that would be happy to take a backseat in the way the evening panned out, that could be eaten in stages and revisited at will while conversation did its own thing. Mezze seemed like the perfect choice.

And as good and as well received as it all was, I don’t want to go into too much detail about the recipes, the ingredient-gathering and the cooking. Suffice to say, my morning was spent visiting bustling grocery shops and a Syrian café, while my afternoon was something of a kitchen-wrecking blur, but one which yielded pretty good results come eventide.

There was the obligatory hoummus, minty cucumber yoghurt (both made so often, they no longer require a cookbook trawl), some baba ganoush, meatballs and tabbouleh made to Claudia Roden recipes and yoghurt-topped beetroot and squash-filled fatayer pastries, both taken from Sam & Sam Clark’s Moro cookbook. I had notions of baking some flatbread too, but in the end, shop-bought pitta (tarted with sumac and nigella, and baked) had to do.

What I was rather pleased with and which I’m more than happy to gush about, was the dessert: a Chocolate, Cardamom and Quince Tart.

The original idea came, again, from my well-loved (read: food-stained and tattered) Moro cookbook, in which there is a recipe for a Chocolate and Apricot Tart. Although this in itself sounded like it would make an idyllic ending to our Middle Eastern feast, I decided to take a good idea and fiddle a little.

A week earlier, I had made a few jars of beautiful, pink quince jam, which were now perched at the top of my kitchen shelves, gleaming quietly. The quince has traditional associations with Middle Eastern cooking, and knowing that my jam wasn’t overly-sweet, I decided to make this a feature of my tart. And I must credit Tartelette with the addition of almond and cardamom to the pastry base, since I stumbled upon her Quince Tartlets some time ago and thought the combination sounded perfect. I must also confess, I did get a teeny bit cardamom-happy and ended up sprinkling more into the chocolate filling, but with very pleasing results.

So here it is. This managed to bring a smile to the faces of eight guests and their two semi-capable hosts. Normally though, I think it would feed a little less (say, 8 or so).

Pastry

Plain flour – 100g

Ground almonds – 40g

Cardamom – seeds from 3 pods, ground

Icing sugar – 30g

Butter – 75g, cold and cut into small pieces

Egg yolks – 1

Filling

Quince jam – 180g

Unsalted butter – 135g

Dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids, if you please) – 110g, broken into pieces

Eggs – 2, large

Caster sugar – 45g

Cardamom – seeds from 3 pods, ground

To make the pastry, sift together the flour and icing sugar in a bowl, then stir in the ground almonds. Add the butter, get your hands in the bowl (why on earth would you want to use a processor for the best part of pastry making?) and rub between your fingers until the mixture feels like coarse sand. Add the egg yolk and mix with a fork until the pastry comes together a little bit, then finish off the process with your hands and pat into a flattened ball. (If the mixture doesn’t initially look like it’s coming together when you are stirring, add a tiny splash of iced water.)

Wrap the pastry in cling-film and place in the fridge for at least an hour. (When I made this, I left it in the fridge overnight to make the pastry-making process a little less troublesome.)

Once the pastry has had its chilling time, remove from the fridge and roll out to a thickness of 3mm to 5mm. Lift this over the top of a 24cm tart tin and gently ease it into place. Prick the base lightly all over with a fork and pop it back into the fridge for another half an hour. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 210 degrees Celsius/gas mark 7.

Scrunch up enough baking paper to line the pastry case and add baking beans or dried pulses, before sitting the tin on a baking sheet and placing in the oven for 10 minutes, or until the edges are light brown. Remove from the oven and carefully hoist the baking paper and beans out of the pastry case, and lower the heat to 180 degrees Celsius/gas mark 4. Cover the edges of the tart case with foil to prevent them from burning and return the case back to the oven for a further 10 minutes or so, until the base is also light brown. Remove and leave to cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on at this temperature.

To make the filling, heat the quince jam in a pan over a low heat until it liquefies a little and then pour this carefully into your cooled pastry case, smoothing out to the edges. Leave this to cool for a while you attend to the rest.

Place the butter and chocolate in a bain-marie and heat until melted and then remove to one side. In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs and caster sugar until pale, light and a little frothy. Stir the ground cardamom into the melted chocolate mixture and fold this into the whisked eggs and sugar, before pouring into the pastry case.

Place the tart back on the baking sheet and bake in the middle of the oven for 20 to 25 minutes, until the chocolate filling has lightly risen and appears to crack slightly (it will sink upon cooling).

We ate this, unadorned, at room temperature. You may want to offer something creamy to go with it, but make sure whatever it is has a little tang (some sharp yoghurt, or crème fraîche, perhaps) to offset the tart’s wonderful richness.