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Dec 9

A Christmas extravaganza!

I love the rituals and traditions of Christmas. Nothing makes me feel more festive than spending a lazy afternoon getting the boxes of decorations out of the loft, carefully unpacking the clouds of tissue paper to unveil the glitter and sparkles within. In the space of an afternoon my flat morphs into a winter wonderland, decked with hundreds of fairy lights to lighten up the winter gloom.

There is invariably a lot of hosting at this time of year, so this week I’m focussing on little things to have with drinks – the obligatory Christmas canapés. Whilst there are lots of beautiful little selections of canapés in the supermarkets, if you are feeling weary of reheating endless cellophane-wrapped packets, then maybe add some of these for some homemade sparkle. Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the traditional flavours of smoked salmon, sprouts, mince pies, brandy cream… so i’ve incorporated these flavours to make some suitably seasonal snacks.

The quickest and easiest recipe is the Salmon Ceviche, full of fresh, zingy citrus flavours, which needs no more than 15 minutes preparation and then will sit happily in the in the fridge for a few hours waiting to be served.

Needing a little bit more preparation and some pastry based fiddling are the Sprout Spring Rolls. I am an unashamed lover of sprouts, but even people who profess not to like sprouts like these. This idea originally came from my endlessly creative sister, who came up with this fantastic recipe, now firmly part of my Christmas repertoire. They take about 25 mins to prepare and need 15-20 minutes in the oven.

If you want a bigger centrepiece then I suggest this Bacon and Camembert Wreath. The bread has bacon jam twisted through the dough and a whole Camembert baked in the middle for dunking. The bread needs to be started 2.5 hours before you want to eat it, but is happy left to its own devices to prove whilst you do any last minute party prep.

There are always mince pies in the cake tin in December, but as a new little addition, I made Chocolate Brandy Cream Profiterole Puddings – a chocolate choux bun filled with boozy cream and dunked cutely in white chocolate to make them look like mini Christmas puddings. Its the sort of foody campness you can only get away with at Christmas!

So I hope you enjoy some of these. Its the time of year to feed and be fed, so make plenty, ready to be washed down with all that mulled wine and champagne!

Finally, thanks to the lovely 12C, who seem to enjoy me perpetually experimenting on them and happily ate all of the above last weekend!

 

 

Dec 9

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Sprout spring rolls

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Christmas isn’t Christmas without sprouts. Its not often you find sprouts in canapés, so these are quirky but lovely. Read more

Dec 9

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Bacon and camembert wreath

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This cheesy bacon bread makes a pretty centrepiece and provides a useful source of carbs to soak up all the alcohol! You need one of those camemberts that come in the little round wooden boxes for this.

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Dec 9

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Chocolate brandy cream profiterole puddings

Chocolate brand cream profiterole puddings

If there is any time of the year when you can go overboard with glitter and kitsch, its Christmas. So why make regular profiteroles when you can make them look like tiny Christmas puddings and cover them in edible glitter? You know you want to.

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Dec 9

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Christmas salmon ceviche

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This fresh and zingy salmon dish makes a change from the regular smoked salmon canape and is just as easy. Please just note that the salmon is raw and so this dish might not be suitable for everyone. Be sure to buy super-fresh salmon from your fishmonger.

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Nov 16

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Tomato, rosemary and caramelised garlic bread

Tomato, rosemary and caramelised garlic bread

Bread and cheese. It pretty much speaks for itself. One of the simplest and most delicious meals you can make,  seemingly infinite in variety. All you need for a fantastic meal is just to be a bit selective about the component parts and thats about it – maybe a beautiful crisp baguette alongside some runny camembert or strong slivers of cheddar with a chunk of sourdough.

Bread is such an easy thing to make for lunch on one of those days where you are around and about at home. You just need to start about 3 hours before you will want to eat and then be available to attend to it for 5 minutes or so every hour. Read more

Nov 1

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Salmon, dill and fennel cakes, mixed greens, fennel salad

Salmon, dill and fennel cakes

Salmon is a rare treat for me. I only ever cook it when my husband is away as he not only refuses to eat salmon, but complains profusely about the cooking smell too. I enjoy having something that I only cook especially for me, it seems to add to the pleasure; a solitary, illicit supper.

Northern lights!I was in northern Norway last weekend, hoping to see the northern lights. We were lucky that they obliged us, dancing briefly but mesmerisingly across the starry skies. The stars themselves were also fabulous, with the milky way in full view, an unfamiliar sight for us city dwellers! I ate a lot of fish whilst I was there, although none of it salmon. Every dish I ordered seemed to come with a tangle of fennel shavings on the top.  I wouldn’t normally choose fennel as I don’t like aniseed flavours, but eating it like this was really enjoyable, adding subtle flavour, freshness and crunch, so I thought I’d try it myself with some salmon cakes.

This is a quick and light supper dish. You could make it more substantial by adding some noodles or rice maybe, but I like it as it is, with just green vegetables in a little light broth. Read more

Oct 11

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Autumn apple cake with maple pecan crumble

autumn apple cake with maple pecan crumble

Maple syrup is one of my quintessential autumn ingredients. It’s probably just the pictures of golden leaves on every bottle that’s created this connection, but when the leaves start to fall, I suddenly start drizzling maple syrup over fruit for breakfast, sloshing it into squash soups and adorning cakes with maple cream cheese icings.

Whilst I was in Vancouver earlier this year I duly stocked up on all things maple syrup. My suitcase arrived home with a stash of maple syrup crystals, maple butter and maples candies, all of which have been patiently sitting in my cupboard awaiting their moment in the limelight. I almost feel like I must apologise in advance for this recipe, I know how annoying it is to come across specialist ingredients in a recipe. But I think with a little substitution here and a little google there, you can probably get away without a trip to Canada.

This is a lovely moist apple cake topped with a crunchy pecan crumble. It’s a multi-tasking cake, one to serve up warm for pudding, with custard or ice cream, or as a stolen slice with a cup of tea in the afternoon. Read more

Sep 16

Grilled beetroot salad with pumpkin seed pesto and goats milk yogurt dressing

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Making a salad can often feel like a slapdash affair; a few fresh ingredients quickly tossed together, fast food at its healthy best. So it was nice to spend a little extra time over the weekend to make this salad, packed with the sort of sweet, earthy flavours that I start to crave when the autumn comes.

Unless you are eating it raw, beetroot will never be a fast food. And whilst I do use those pre-cooked, vacuum-packed beetroots from time to time, they can be a little bit watery, losing some of their fabulous rich flavour and colour. Much better to cook your own, although this takes time. I’m amazed by the number of recipes that insist you can roast a beetroot in 30-40 minutes. The only time I roasted some beetroots, I was amazed at the length of time they took to cook, taunting me from the depths of the oven as they remained hard as nails for hours on end, disregarding my every effort to hurry them along. I’ve not roasted a beetroot since. But for this recipe I wanted the dense, sweet flesh that only roasting seems to yield, so I decided to experiment with simmering them and then grilling them to get that sweet caramelised flavour in a fraction of the time. Its still not exactly quick, but it does save on oven-induced torment.

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Sep 11

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Plum and hazelnut praline crumble

Lightly crushed hazelnuts

Summer is slowly slipping through my grasp. The leaves are starting to turn golden on the trees across the road and the nights are suddenly creeping in. As I came out of the tube at 8pm the other evening, I was surprised to find that it was already dark. It was a particularly cool evening, beset with thick drizzle and my flip flops suddenly felt rather foolish. So I trudged home with cold, damp toes and did the only sensible thing – made a crumble to cheer myself up.

I had a lovely, large punnet of English Victoria plums in the fridge and a packet of hazelnuts in the cupboard, perfect for an impromptu warm pudding. As I set about crushing the hazelnuts for the topping, I had the sudden inspiration that I could caramelise them first, thinking that a handful of hazelnut praline would add some extra crunch and a richer flavour to the finished dish. Read more

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