The falling leaves… drift by my window…

Or not, as the case may be. Even though today was the day I designated for Nigella’s DEEPLY AUTUMNAL DINNER FOR 8, and it’s been bitingly cold for the past 3 weeks, today we were blessed with clear skies, bright sun, and unseasonable warmth. Dang.

DEEPLY AUTUMNAL DINNER FOR 8

344. Chestnut and pancetta salad
345. Roast venison fillet with apple purée and rosemary sauce
346. Quinces poached in Muscat

The venison is served with peas, and a potato and celeriac mash, whilst the quinces are served with lemon ice-cream.

This dinner is for 8 - I halved all quantities to feed myself, my parents, and my very good friend Frances.

So this afternoon, I poached the quinces. You peel, core and quarter them first, reserving the peel and trimmings (this will help the syrup thicken, you see). To make the syrup, boil up some muscat with water, sugar and spices. Then you put the peel and cores in an ovenproof dish, cover with the quince quarters, and pour the syrup over. They need 2.5 hours cooking, well covered, in a 160C oven.


raw quinces


In the oven - don't worry, I covered them with foil.

After cooking, they should look like… well… Nigella describes this point with the singularly most disgusting image I have ever read: “When you take them out, the quinces will be the colour of old-fashioned Elastoplast”.

EEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW. When I read that, all I could think of was manky old bandaids, all dirty and wet and peeling off injured fingers. How disgustingly munting.

Thank goodness, then, that they actually looked pretty good.



After they cool properly, they go a bit darker.


deeper and darker coloured

While they were cooking, I marinated the venison fillet. The marinade consists of red wine, celery, carrot, onion, juniper berries, peppercorns, thyme and bay leaves. You boil the whole lot up, let it cool, and dunk the venison in it.


marinating venison

I did this early in the afternoon, and then went to uni to hand in an assignment, (2 days late, whoops). But after I came home, there was still sooo much shit to do! I still had to make the rosemary sauce for the venison, the apple sauce, the mashed potato and celeriac, the peas, salad and syrup for the quinces! This is when I realized what a high-effort menu this really is.

I mean, 3 separate wine-based reductions? (In the venison marinade, rosemary sauce, and the quince syrup). Ahem!

Anyway, getting back to it… the rosemary sauce is pretty similar to the marinade, but with the addition of beef stock and some different vegetables. You boil it all up, reduce it, and then add some of the marinade before boiling it again.

The apple sauce involves simply peeling and coring apples, and cooking them until pulpy with butter, sugar, cloves and lemon juice. Maybe I could have just used a SPC jar of apple sauce…

For the venison, you take it out of the marinade, sear it all over, and then put it in the oven for 20 – 30 minutes. It needs to rest for about 30 minutes, so remember to factor that into your timings.

While it was cooking, I peeled, chopped and boiled the potatoes and celeriac for the mash.


Celeriac – what a funny looking vegetable!

It was at about this time that Frances, my dinner guest, arrived. And as a short digression, look at this lovely gift she bought me, prefaced with the comment, “I hope you appreciate the joke”. (I did).


elderflower cordial

You can get it at freakin’ Ikea!!! So yeah, I really didn’t need to get my elderflower elderflower concentrate shipped from Tasmania. D’oh.

I was so tired by this stage, and I hadn’t even made the peas yet. Dammit.

Me: Frances, you don’t really want peas tonight, do you?
Frances: Ooh, I love peas!

Ok, ok. I boiled some peas.

The last thing I made was the salad, which involved frying up pancetta until crisp, then tossing in some chestnuts (thawed frozen, saved from Christmas) and warming it through. Then you toss it through lettuce with a Dijon mustard and vinegar dressing. Boom boom, done.

I didn’t bother serving the salad as a first course, but just plonked everything down on the table together.


pile of mash


venison slices


peas and sauce


chestnut pancetta salad


applesauce


applesauce and meat

This menu, despite all the work, was great! I loved the unusual tastes of everything. The highlight of the menu, for me, was the salad - the mealy and sweet chestnuts contrasted fabulously against the salty pancetta. The flavour of the venison was very unusual but not unpleasant, and was lovely and tender. But that mash was really delicious! There was heaps leftover (as expected), and I’m very excited about eating it for lunch tomorrow with leftover rosemary sauce. And even though I nearly gave up on the peas, I'm glad I made them because they really enhanced the menu, visually and taste-wise. (Imagine how brown everything would have been without them!)

And here’s dessert. To finish it off, you have to strain the liquid away and boil it until thickened, then pour it over the quinces. (See, that’s the 3rd wine-based reduction in this menu).


poached quinces

I served it with the lemon ice-cream, which worked out well, as Frances’ favourite flavour is lemon. Nigella recommends half a quince per person, but we were satisfied with a quarter each. This was a lovely dessert, and finished off the meal perfectly.


quince and ice-cream

Overall, I really enjoyed this menu. But if you were to make it for company, make sure you make it for people who you can count on to appreciate the time and effort and expense. (Like Frances, of course).

Leftover quinces are going to become breakfast, with yogurt. Woohoo!

Look, it's leftovers!

And so begins the post-Christmas culinary clean up. The massive plates of chunked turkey, chestnut stuffing, cranberry sauce, bread sauce and brussels sprouts in the fridge have been staring at us through their gladwrap, but thankfully Nigella has a solution which extends beyond microwaving them to a bad cover version of Christmas dinner. (Although, truth be told, I have done the microwave thang, and they haven't been too shabby as a quick meal, especially to take to work for my break).

224. Bubble & Squeak

I made this for my lunch on Boxing Day, and never having made or eaten it before, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I'd read references to bubble and squeak in cookbooks over the years, and had gotten the impression that it was a very British dish, a sort of mish-mash of random fried leftovers, most suited for a hangover breakfast.

In her instructions for Christmas bubble and squeak, Nigella says to chop and then fry leftover brussels sprouts with an onion and mashed potato, and to top it with a fried or poached egg and optionally some crispy bacon. We didn't have any mashed potatoes with our christmas dinner, but we did have some mashed potato stuffing left over from the roast goose, which provided the perfect amount of potato for a single serving bubble & squeak.

I followed Nigella's instructions, and topped it with a fried egg. (The idea of poaching eggs just gives me a headache, so I never bother).


Bubble and Squeak


Topped with a fried egg

I really liked it! By Boxing Day I was no longer hungover, but for whatever reason, it really it the spot. I'm a huge fan of cabbage, and the fried Brussels sprouts tasted deliciously of fried cabbage, with the chestnuts from the same original dish providing a lovely sweet and mealy contrast.


225. Ed Victor's Turkey Hash

I made Ed Victor's Turkey Hash on the 27th of December, for lunch for my parents and myself. After having made 224 recipes from How to Eat, (and numerous ones from Nigella's other books and columns), I immodestly say that I know a thing or two about Nigella recipes. And as such, I feel qulified to say that this recipe seems out of place in the Nigella opus. First off, it includes green peppers, which Nigella often writes that she never uses. Secondly, it has a pretty random combination of ingredients in there... that is, too random even for Nigella.

Pitted ripe black olives?... Toasted almonds?... Mixed together and added to the aforementioned green pepper, an onion, leftover turkey meat and stuffing, and then bound with beaten eggs and double cream? I wasn't exactly looking forward to the prospect.


cooking

After cooking and warming all those unattractive-sounding ingredients in a pan, Ed says to finish it off with grated parmesan on top and brown it under the griller... resulting in an equally unattractive-looking hash.


in pan

The smell, however, was most attractive. This is when I realised why the recipe was included in the book, despite declassé ingredients (pitted and sliced black olives in brine, from a jar, thank-you very much), and odd flavour combinations - it's delicious. And even in the 35 degree heat, (totally inappropriate for turkey, goose, stuffing, bubble & squeak, brussels sprouts, mince pies or hash of any description), we very much enjoyed the hash. It was kind of like a frittata-cum-Chinese-style-omelette, only with a lot more fillings.


With condiments

I have made Nigella's Masalan omelette (Nigella Bites) in the past, and remembered her suggesting HP sauce to go with. The hash smelled vaguely similar, so I went with HP sauce, and my dad went with Worcesteshire sauce. And since we had no reason to worry about culinary image or snobbery, I liberally drowned my serving in Crystal hot sauce.

Merry Christmas

This is going to be a long post. Perhaps the longest post I’ve done so far. However, I make no apologies for this, as it was a very long day. I hope you’ve all had wonderful Christmasses, and enjoy reading!

Before I start, I have to say that this is the first Christmas that we’ve spent at home in ages. For the past 8 years, we’ve spent Christmas and New Years in Malaysia at a beach resort, so the only Christmas “traditions” that we’ve developed have been lying on the beach all day, sipping cocktails, and then eating the supposedly traditional Christmas roasts at the buffet dinner.

This year, however, was different. My dad’s working in Melbourne for Christmas this year, so we’re at home, and it was time for us to establish some family Christmas traditions. In the Christmasses prior to our annual trips to Malaysia, we always used to host the Christmas lunch for extended family at our house. I remember the plastic Christmas tree, the smell of the tinsel, the bought roast chickens, and most importantly, the stress that my mother felt at being obliged to accommodate everyone, and the stress that my dad felt watching her run around like a headless chook for not very much appreciation. I wanted this Christmas to be different. I wanted the food to be fabulous, I wanted it to be a relaxed day and I wanted it to be fun! I knew it could be done, especially with Nigella’s Christmas section from How to Eat to guide me through the culinary part.

And here’s what I did.

Our big Christmas dinner was planned for the evening of the 25th. I know that a Christmas Eve dinner, or Christmas day lunch is more traditional, but my dad and my brother were working at both those times. I also decided to limit the numbers, for the sake of my sanity. So, it was just the four of us, plus my good friend An.

I went out with work friends on Christmas Eve. I never realized that Christmas Eve is a big night for going out. Logically this would be true; the next day is a public holiday, so of course people would go out partying the night before. We had a huge night, and after all the drinking, dancing, and other associated shenanigans, I didn’t get home until 6am. Whoops. I thought I’d be able to sleep in until I had to start cooking, but no… my dad woke me up at 10am for PRESENTS!

I had no idea we were even doing gifts. But from my parents I got a set of Living Kitchen serving platters, a set of mixing bowls, and Jamie Oliver’s new book, Jamie’s Italy. Woohoo!


Mixing bowls – they’re SO cute!

My dad left at 11am for work, and my mum went with him. Dan and I then watched a DVD of Only Fools and Horses, which I’d never seen before. It was awesome! That is SO becoming a Christmas day tradition!

So anyway, after lunch (truffle oil pasta), I started the cooking.

215. Lidgate’s Cranberry and Orange Stuffing
216. Turkey
217. Gravy
218. Roast Potatoes
219. Brussels Sprouts and Chestnuts
220. Bread Sauce
221. Cranberry Sauce
222. Brandy Butter
223. Iced Rum Sauce

I started off by setting up the kitchen – bringing out the boards and knives, setting up the food processor and filling the sink with water and detergent. I’m not usually this efficient, but I felt that if I were to make a Christmas dinner all by myself, and without a clipboard, that I would need my kitchen to be clean and well set up.


mise en place

The first recipe I made was the cranberry and orange stuffing, which is very simple. You simmer some cranberries (I used tinned because I couldn’t find any fresh or frozen, anywhere!) with some orange juice and zest, then stir in butter off the heat followed by breadcrumbs.

Daniel: Hey, what’s happening in the kitchen? It smells like cat!

Thanks Daniel. Well, with both stuffings made (I’d made the chestnut stuffing ages ago and frozen it), I had a bit of free time, so Dan took me out for pancakes. Ok, the “buying pancakes for Sarah” thing definitely needs to become a Christmas tradition!

After we came home, I made the sauces for the puddings, and got to break in my new mixing bowls!

The iced rum sauce “is a sort of rum-sodden and syrupy egg-nog with cream that’s kept in the freezer until about an hour before eating. You put it on the searing hot pudding and it melts on impact”, apparently. To make it, you mix some golden syrup, egg yolks and rum (I used Bundaberg Rum, go Aussie!), and then fold it into whipped double cream. I'll admit here that at this point in time, alcohol was the last thing I wanted to be around, and that the smell was totally turning me off. But, I persevered through this, through the brandy butter, and through the gravy, and by the time dinner came around I was fine.


egg in egg


rum sauce

You put it in the freezer and can forget about it until dinner. After this, I made the brandy butter (although prefer the term “hard sauce”), which is just butter beaten with icing sugar, ground almonds and brandy. I stored this one in the fridge.

It was 3:30 now, so time to deal with the turkey. Nigella says to stuff the neck end with the chestnut stuffing, and the other end with the cranberry one. I bought my turkey, a 5 kilo beauty, about a month ago, from Prahran Market at the same time as the goose, and froze it. I suppose the more conventional thing to do would have been to order one in advance, and pick up a fresh one closer to the day, but that seemed like way too much work. It's always a mission to go down to Prahran Market. And I was already there, so why not? I remember the butcher saying to me that he'd been freshly slaughtered that morning, and would keep in the fridge for a whole week, or in the freezer for month. He looked gorgeous and plump (the turkey that is, not the butcher), and I was extremely excited. I named my turkey Gordon.

I transferred Gordon from the freezer to the fridge 2 days before Christmas, and took him out shortly after waking up so that he could get to room temperature.


Defrosted turkey – look at our new roasting tray! We finally got around to buying a proper roasting tray that can go from oven to hob!



I then, as per Nigella’s advice, stuffed Gordon, then rubbed his breasts with goosefat, flipped him over and placed him in the oven.


Stuffed turkey, ready to be flipped over


Goosefat, which I rendered from last week's roast goose.

As a 5.5kg bird (including stuffing), it would take 2.5 hours in total, 200C for the first 30 minutes and 180C for the rest of the time.

There was a bit of cranberry stuffing left over (I halved quantities), and quite a lot of chestnut stuffing left over so I put them in buttered dishes, ready to bake.


cran stuffing

I then infused the milk with a clove-studded onion and some bay leaves for the bread sauce, and made the giblet stock for the gravy. I only realized at this point that you’re supposed to let the stock simmer for 2 hours, whoops. It was too late to do anything about it, so I just let it boil until I was ready to make the gravy. The giblet stock is water, turkey neck, heart and gizzard, an onion, some peppercorns, carrot and celery, boiled. Then I boiled the potatoes for the roast potatoes, shook them in the pan and sprinkled them with semolina.

You have to flip the bird over for the last half hour, to bronze the breast. This was a two-woman job. I held the pan still, and mum did the heavy-duty lifting.

An arrived at about 7pm, when Gordon was ready to come out of the oven.


Turkey

We covered him in foil, I turned up the heat in the oven, and I put the potatoes in for their hour of cooking. (In goosefat).

An: Are they going to take an hour to cook?
Me: Yup.
An: looking hopeful... You know, when we cook potatoes at home, they only take like 20 minutes.
Mum: Yeah, did you parboil the potatoes?
Me: Yup.
Mum: Then they’ll probably take less than an hour to cook.
Me: LOOK, people. Nigella SAYS an hour, they’re taking an hour!

Besides, the time when the potatoes are in the oven is the perfect amount of time to organize everything else.

I added the breadcrumbs to the infused milk for the bread sauce, and did the gravy.


juices

I put the roasting dish, sans-turkey, straight onto the hob, whisked in some 00 flour, and let it thicken up, with An on stirring duty, before adding the giblet stock and marsala, and letting it boil some more.

An

Then I cooked up the Brussels sprouts (they were frozen, sorry. You just can’t get Brussels sprouts here in Summer), drained them and tossed them through some chestnuts which I’d turned in butter in the meantime.

And I had to fry livers for the gravy, chop them up, and add them to the dish (with An still stirring, phew!) After cooking them for a couple of minutes, I whizzed them up in the blender, and it was ready.

And then I fried some chipolatas in a frying pan. I wasn’t intending to serve them, but I had them in the freezer, (bought last month in a fit of efficiency), and I know An loves his sausages.

Me: Oh my God, all these Christmas recipes are so bloody fiddly. This is so much work! There’s always something else to be thinking about.

And finally, the oven dinged, we took the potatoes out, and Mum started carving. While she was carving, I put our pudding in the steamer, and transferred the rum sauce from freezer to fridge.


A Fortnum and Mason's pudding, baby! It was $44.95 at David Jones. EEEEEK.


Sliced turkey, cranberry sauce, baked stuffing, gravy in blue jug


Brussels sprouts and chestnuts - new Living Kitchen serving plate!


Cranberry sauce


family shot


From left to right, bread sauce, Brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, chipolatas


chipolatas


Potatoes

Daniel: Sarah, these potatoes look superb.

And they were, indeed, superb. Here's a quote from the same roast potato recipe from Feast (Nigella's latest book), which perfectly describes this moment.

Boastfulness and vainglory are not attractive nor would I want to encourage them in you (or myself), but when you've cooked these and see them in all their golden glory on the table, I think you're allowed a quiet moment of silent pride.

my plate


An’s second helping. You want some meat with that gravy?

Everything was so perfect! And by that I mean that all the recipes turned out really well, with no duds (except maybe the cranberry stuffing). Go Nigella! As you can see, I'm not really the type to be faffing about with fancy table settings or centrepieces. For me, good food should be the focus of the meal.

The turkey wasn't too dry at all, and it went perfectly with the cranberry sauce, bread sauce and gravy. I'd never had bread sauce before, and it is absolutely awesome! Bread sauce, where have you been all my life!? The Brussels sprouts and chestnuts had a great contrast of flavour and colour, and were fine even though I'd made them from frozen. Chipolatas were a welcome addition. The cranberry stuffing that was cooked inside the turkey tasted nice, but I wouldn't bother trying the stuff I baked separately because it looks really dry. But the chestnut stuffing! The chestnut stuffing! It's so soft and mealy and fantastic. You can probably see that I was very careful about limiting portions of the non-turkey elements of the meal, which I think worked very well, because we weren't too stuffed afterwards.

I had a go at flambéeing the pudding, using vodka because Nigella says it burns for longer. Nigella says that Fanny (whoever that is,) boasts of keeping her pudding alight for 11 minutes at her spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall, but mine only went for about 30 seconds. And I was too chicken to carry it still alight over to the table, so I just waited until the fire subsided. By the way, my brother actually took a video of the flames. If anyone wants to see that, let me know and I'll hook you up.


pudding


sauces - brandy butter on the left, iced rum sauce on the right

The iced rum sauce didn't quite "melt on impact", but perhaps that's because the pudding wasn't searing hot. We preferred the iced rum sauce to the brandy butter, but both were good. That Fortnum and Mason's pudding was totally amazing; even An, who's not into Christmas pudding, liked it.


pudding


pudding and sauces

After this, we had coffee and tea, and kinda spread out on the couch whilst my parents very kindly did the washing up. I collapsed in bed at about 1:30. What a fabulous day!

Merry Christmas everybody!

"I love a really fruitful mopping-up exercise" (Lawson, p. 150)

After last night's dinner, not content with having finished a tub of cream and a packet of burghal, I decided to make turkey stuffing, thereby using up the tin of chestnut purée from Sunday night's Quickly-Scaled Mont Blanc, and my panko breadcrumbs from a dinner party in April. It might seem ridiculously early to be making things for Christmas, but I've already started seeing Christmas puddings and mince pies in the shops...

154. Lidgate's Chestnut Stuffing (Basics etc.)

This recipe is not a Nigella-creation, but rather comes from her butcher, Lidgate's in London. To start off, you cook shallots with bacon and butter, and add it to a mixture of tinned chestnut purée, eggs, breadcrumbs, whole vacuum-packed chestnuts, parsley and nutmeg. I used panko breadcrumbs, but didn't have enough to make up 200g, so I added... er... toast (Wonder White Bread, in the pink plastic packet), which I de-crusted, toasted and ripped up myself.

It makes a thick, sturdy mixture, for which a KitchenAid is the best option.



It made enough to fill a plastic container which previously held 1 kilo of muesli...



I snuck a little taste. It's good stuff. Now it's in the freezer, just waiting for Christmas and one very lucky turkey.

A lovely, light and lazy dinner

Today was my first day off work AND uni in absolutely ages, and I had a fantastically lazy day. Well, I'd just had 6 days straight of work, so I think I deserved it. The only plans I had made were to cook dinner for my family, as I knew we'd all be home for once. But I hadn't really planned what to cook.

I got up around midday, had the chilli, and decided to go to the movies with my brother. But before going to the film, I had a flick through How to Eat, chose what to make for dinner, and we went to the supermarket. I wanted to get some salmon escalopes, chives, cream and meringues. However, they were out of chives, so I got dill instead. Also, I've never seen fish "escalopes" before, but I assumed that it meant a very thin slice of fish. The girl at the fish counter misunderstood me when I asked her to slice the fish fillets in half - instead of cutting them into thin, thin slices, she just cut them across the middle into fat chunks. But she was so nice and sweet that I didn't want to say anything. And besides, I was in a hurry and didn't want to miss my film. So we just went home, stashed everything in the fridge and went to the cinema.
We saw The 40 Year Old Virgin. It was hilarious. After the film, we went to Max Brenner for some hot chocolates, came home around 7pm, and I started cooking.

150. Escalopes of salmon with warm balsamic vinaigrette
151. Quickly-scaled mont blanc

These recipes are both from the Fast Food chapter, but aren't paired together. I thought they went together well, and they were so easy to make.

I started off by doing the dessert, which just meant putting chestnut purée in some glasses, and topping it with a mixture of whipped cream, rum, sugar and crumbled meringues.


Tin of chestnut purée - $9.36 from The Essential Ingredient. I only used a couple of tablespoons of the stuff, so I want to use up the rest of it soon. Perhaps I'll make a turkey with chestnut stuffing!!


This is what the chestnut purée looks like - it's surprisingly solid stuff, I had to mash it up with a fork before spooning it into my glasses...

Once that was done (and see below for the pictures of the finished product), I could do the fish. To make the fat chunks of salmon into "escalopes", I sliced them with a super sharp knife into thin slices.


"Escalopes"

Then you just cook them briefly in a non-stick pan, cover with chives (or dill, in my case) and pour over a mixture of equal parts balsamic vinegar and olive oil which you've warmed through in a saucepan. I served it with a green salad (by which I mean all the random bits of lettuce slowly dying in my fridge).



The vinaigrette is fantastic with the salmon, as the acidity of the vinegar cuts through the "oily meatiness" of the fish. My mum used some bread to mop up all the juices, but the rest of us were happy just with the salad.

And onto dessert...

Check out these fab martini glasses! I got them for my birthday in April this year, but only took them out of the box today. And you know what, my friends who'd bought them for me had my name engraved on them! How sweet!


Quickly Scaled Mont Blanc

I only made two glasses of the stuff (wonderful though it was), because, in the interest of not becoming a-huge-fat-blog-with-a-crap-wardrobe-and-health-issues, I've decided that from now on, I'm going to restrict portion sizes, especially of desserts. We shared these glasses between the four of us, and even though we probably could have kept on eating had there been more, we were certainly satisfied.