185: Christmas pudding, p361

Finally made the Christmas pudding! Like the Christmas cake, this is the first time I've made my own Christmas pudding - and the first time I've steamed a pudding. I didn't have a suitable basin to use, so I ordered one from the wonderful Lakeland, but it only just arrived - the terrible weather having messed up deliveries over the past couple of weeks. Better late than never! I'm hoping it doesn't affect the pudding too much, not having so long to keep before Christmas. I'm probably going to save it for the day after New Year's Day when lots of the family are coming down to visit us - so made during 2010 but not actually consumed this year :) 

Easy peasy to make, but I halved the recipe - which called for 2x 1.5L pudding basins. Lakeland do a 1L and a 2L basin, so I decided that ordering the 2L and halving the recipe would be okay. One very shiny, scrubbed 50p tucked in the pudding, and it's currently bubbling away steaming for 3.5hrs in the biggest pan I've got. Fingers tightly crossed!

 **UPDATE 02/01/11: Absolutely spot on - definitely a recipe to repeat! Verdict from the massed family was that it was one of the best Christmas puddings they'd ever had :) And it also set light rather pleasingly (see below)...

151: Blackberry and apple pie, p343

Rats. I can't make pastry. This is a well documented fact. Here. And here. And here. And many other places, no doubt. But I keep trying. This time it was all going well, until I retrieved the pastry from the fridge and found it had turned into a rock solid, dry lump. It was not going to become malleable in time to be able to bake the pie and leave to get to my parents' in time for lunch, so I cheated and used the emergency jus rol. The shame. No, I don't care. Pastry and me are not meant to be. It's a good thing really, if I could make the stuff, I'd eat it all the time...

Good pie though! Unusually for a Nigel pud, I didn't find this overly sweet, which was nice, even though some of the apples I used were quite sweet already. Of course my sister thought it wasn't quite sweet enough - but ho hum, I liked it. Not rocket science, no real deviations from the basics of such a pie, so an easy one to tick off, pastry-making excluded...

138: Cabbage with orange and juniper, p385, and 139: Potatoes with duck fat and garlic, p377

A Christmassy veggie side and potatoes to go with the pork served for dinner tonight. I made a full batch of the cabbage, foolishly, using a whole (small) red cabbage. I'm going to be eating it all week, since T almost certainly won't... Enough to serve 12 as a side, not 6, but anyhow... :)

The juniper berries weren't too overwhelming which was a good thing and the lemon and orange juice added a lovely citrusy zing which stopped the cabbage being too dull. Not sure about the function of the celery, didn't really add much, but the apple was a good thing and onion always is.

I cheated with the potatoes. The recipe says duck fat, and I used goose fat. Well, I needed it earlier in the year for a recipe, and bought a jar, which has been sitting untouched in the fridge ever since. I didn't really want to go out and buy another jar, this time of duck fat, which would also sit untouched in the fridge... so I cheated... duck/goose, how different can the fat taste? Is that cheating too much?? The garlic knocked your socks off - only one clove, but still, immediate repetitions all through dinner, curious! I wasn't sure about sauteeing the potatoes in so much fat, they took forever to cook and then suddenly started to brown which was a bit alarming, and I had to drain them on kitchen towel before serving. But they were rather tasty...

So the pork was served with the red cabbage and sauteed potatoes, with some gently sauteed baby courgettes on the side, and delicious gloopy winey oniony gravy. Yum! Finished off the strawberry water ice, and some more of the melon sorbet for pudding.

117: Bramley apple shortcake, p124

Yummy! I made pastry!! Hot paws are not conducive to pastry making, which is a terrible shame as I love love love pastry. Actually it's probably a good thing I can't make it very well... or I'd eat it all the time...

This was a very short shortcrust pastry, and I tried really hard... but it still ended up being placed in the bottom of the pie tin and over the top of the filling in multiple pieces. Added a very homemade 'rustic' look, I like to think... Only a pic (to follow) of the outside for this one as I took it to a family party and we had to leave early as hubby had an opera to get to, at Glyndebourne, so had to leave it there and in the rush, although I tried a bit of it quickly, completely forgot to take a picture of it cut. Ho hum. But I can report that it was really rather good - not too sweet, not too sour, not too sloppy. Hate it when the filling makes the pastry too soggy and thought that might happen with this as I made the pie last night - but no, it didn't, success! And even grumpy uncle, who doesn't do complements, said it wasn't bad at all. And then had a second piece :)

58: English apple cake, p306

Yummy yummy, what a good recipe to do first on my return from Sikkim. The end of the trip ended up being so busy and with so little shopping time that I couldn't get any Indian sweeties to bring home for work, so I decided to bake a Nigel cake and take in some real Sikkimese 'Temi' tea to have a proper little tea party for our team. This cake mix made a very small amount of batter, which is always worrying, hardly filling a quarter of the tin, and then the cinnamon/lemon apples piled on top before baking. The cake didn't rise very much but wasn't heavy at all, and the fruit slightly sunk in but stayed towards to the top, which was really rather nice. I don't like too much cinnamon in things like this, I like cinnamon but find it very strong and overpowering in lots of recipes, becoming rather sickly...  But the amount in this recipe was perfect, very light and delicate. All in all, a lovely light, not too sweet, definitely not sickly, moist cake - perfect for teatime! And it vanished very quickly at work...

37: A salad of fennel, winter leaves and Parmesan, p7, and 38: Fennel, watercress and pear salad, p303

Another bunch of wretched fennel recipes out of the way... and a surprise! These weren't too bad at all - pretty good in fact!

The first one, with croutons and Parmesan, was the best - the dressing was delicious, even though I forgot to add the lemon juice :( and T really liked it, even though it was quite Parmesany - success! I've never made, or liked, croutons before but these were very quick, I used only the tiniest bit of oil so they were essentially just toasted rather than fried, and they really added something. The combination of the leaves and crunchy (very thinly chopped) fennel, crispy bread, and creamy dressing was lovely. And it used the tarragon vinegar! A whole tbsp of it!

Like.

Second salad was good, but not as good as the first one. Couldn't find any pears (it is February...) so used Nigel's suggested substitute of a sharp apple, and again, it balanced out the aniseedy flavour of the fennel really well. The dressing wasn't as good as the first salad, but was super simple, just lime juice and olive oil.

Went well with the pork chops in the next post...