Happy Birthday Me!

So like I said, on Saturday night I went out drinking to celebrate my 22nd birthday. However, Sunday was my real birthday, and this was the night of my enormous Nigella-based feast. (How else would you expect me to celebrate?). I went a bit nuts with the food, because I forgot how many people I invited, and kinda just kept telling my friends to “come, come and eat, it’ll be so fun!”. I was a bit paranoid that I wouldn't have enough food, so kept adding more.

The whole menu was…

2 roast chickens, with a mushroom and breadcrumb stuffing
Onion Sauce
Roast Potatoes
Beef sausages
A large rump steak (what the hell, it was already marinated and in the freezer, so why not)
Proper English Trifle
Hazelnut Cake
Chocolate Raspberry Pudding Cake

So in addition to the trifle and hazelnut cake, which I’d made in advance, I added the following 3 recipes to my list.

349. English roast chicken with all the trimmings – plus some
350. Onion sauce
351. Chocolate raspberry pudding cake

The first thing I made in the afternoon, was the stuffing for the chickens. Nigella’s recipe include bacon, but a few of my mates don’t eat pork, so I left it out. What you do for the stuffing is cook onion (and bacon, if you’re including it) in oil, then set it aside, and cook finely chopped mushrooms in the same pan. Once everything’s cooked down and fragrant, you mix the onions and the mushrooms with breadcrumbs, parsley and thyme.


stuffing

2 of my mates, An and Jess, were spending the day with me, so whilst I was making the stuffing, I delegated the task of peeling 2 kilos of potatoes to them. I then parboiled them in readiness for roasting later that night.

Next thing to do was the chocolate raspberry pudding cake. This can’t be made in advance because it needs to be served warm. And although microwaving the finished cake back to warmth it is an option, it’s easy enough to be made on the night of your dinner itself. To start, melt butter, raspberry liqueur, sugar, dark chocolate, and coffee in a pan until smooth and combined. Next, beat this liquid into sifted flour and cocoa, followed by two eggs. A warning: this mixture is extremely tasty, so don’t be too pedantic about scraping it into your cake tin.


choc raspberry pudding cake mixture

Speaking of which, you pour half the mixture into a lined and greased springform cake tin, cover with raspberries (I used cheaper frozen berries to no detrimental effect), and then the rest of the cake mixture.


choc raspberry pudding cake raw, in tin

Then it needs to be baked for 45 minutes. Now, another word of warning – the mixture is extremely runny, and Nigella advises not to panic or to add more flour. But that’s not the problem. The problem, for me, using my Nigella Lawson Living Kitchen 23cm springform cake tin, was that the bugger leaked on me!! Cake mix was dripping through the sides of the tin and onto the floor of my oven. Luckily, crisis was averted when I shoved a baking tray directly underneath to catch all the drips. And after about 10 minutes in the oven, the cake had firmed up enough to stop dripping, so not too much mixture was lost. Phew!

I should add here, that all the time I was cooking, it was my parents who were cleaning up the house and making it presentable for company. Thank-you!

As soon as the cake was done, I shoved the stuffed chickens into the oven.


raw chickens

The trifle needs some finishing touches a couple of hours before you eat it. You cover it with whipped cream, and a caramel made by boiling orange juice with sugar, and some flaked almonds.

And I started on the onion sauce. It’s a béchamel sauce, with the water used to boil some onions added, as well as the chopped boiled onions themselves. It was at about this point that my friends started arriving.

Here’s Bonnie helping out with the sauce.


Bonnie - "I'm cooking"


roasted chickens

Aren’t they gorgeous? I shoved the potatoes in the oven as soon as the chickens came out. I think roast chickens are such a great food for entertaining - they're easy, delicious, and impressive. Every one of my guests commented on the warm and inviting smell of roast chickens as they entered my house.

And while the potatoes were in the oven, I grilled a steak and some sausages.


why not add a steak?

As might have been expected, my dinner was running a bit late - people started arriving at 7, but we only ate at about 8:30. Sorry guys! At least they had Big Brother to keep them entertained.

I delegated the task of chopping the chickens to my mum - she's an expert.


The key to remaining goddess-like


chicken inside


Chicken chopped up Hainanese style

My mum very cleverly chopped up the chickens into small pieces so we all could get some. Only my Malaysian mates realised this though.

Georgina: Hey, it looks like Hainan chicken rice!
Mark: Yeah! Your mum rocks, she chopped the chickens Chinese-style! Where's the rice and the soup and the cucumber?

Here's the spread.


the spread


Onion sauce - it looks like a vast bowl, but trust me, it gets eaten!

Toni: Can I get the recipe for this sauce?


Sausages


Stuffing


Roast potatoes - not quite as brown as I would have liked, because I pulled them out of the oven slightly early. But we were hungry, dammit!


It's a buffet!

I can't believe it, almost ALL the food got eaten. This hardly ever happens with Nigella-portions. I think we had, like, 3 pieces of chicken, 2 potatoes and half a sausage left at the end of this meat-and-carb orgy. I see now that I forgot to add any vegetables, but no-one seemed to mind. I was pretty stuffed at the end of the meal though.

And here are the desserts. I really loved how they all looked together, similar in shape, yet different in colour, taste, and presentation. In fact, it kinda reminded me of my days working at that buffet restaurant, but without the creepy co-workers.


3 desserts


finished whole choc raspberry pudding cake


hazelnut cake, finished


finished proper English trifle


Inside of choc raspberry pudding cake

The raspberries look fab, glinting red inside the dark cake. But I'd suggest using more raspberries than you think you need - they seemed to become a bit sparser after baking.

This is my dessert plate below, but don't worry, even I wasn't able to finish the whole thing.


one big plate

All the desserts were delicious! We cut the cakes into teensy-weensy pieces so we could all share them and try some of everything. The hazelnut cake was gorgeous, nutty and fragrant, and my dad particularly loved it. He had 3 pieces. The chocolate cake was also beautiful - deep and rich and chocolatey. The trifle went down particularly well, especially amongst my Jewish, challah-loving friends, who were really excited at the prospect of a challah-based dessert. It wasn't too alcoholic, too rich, or too sweet. It was just right, a big bowl of cream-and-berry-swathed deliciousness.


Friends

What a lovely way to celebrate my birthday!

I love a good sausage

234. Pasta Sauce with Sausage (Feeding Babies and Small Children)

The idea for this sauce is that children love sausages, so logically, they should love a pasta sauce made out of sausages.

I'm not quite sure why I haven't made this one already; I always seem to be searching through How to Eat for tasty, quick, midweek meals. And this one certainly fits the bill.

Basically what you do is get some sausages, remove their skins, and cook them in a pasta sauce. You're supposed to use proper butcher's sausages, but because 2nd of January was still a public holiday, Rendinas was closed. We went to Safeway and got supermarket ones, which might sound ghastly to English readers, but were fine. I still stand my viewpoint that meat in Australian supermarkets is vastly superior to meat in English supermarkets. Proper English butcher's sausages however, I'm told, cannot be beat. If I ever just mention the word "sausage" to my friend Liam...

My friend Liam: Oh my GOD Sarah, you have to have proper breakfast sausages at a B&B in England... they're fucking awesome!! I've never had anything that good in Australia. I don't know what it is, but Australian butchers just can't do it!

At this point he usually sheds a tear or two.

Anyway, because I love to make grown men cry... Here's a picture of our supermarket sausages.

Sausages in packet


Skinned sausages - attractive

You know the typical tomato sauce - there at least a dozen versions of it in How to Eat - whizz up onions, carrots, garlic and celery in a food processor, cook until soft, then add the meat and brown it, then add a tin of tomatoes and simmer until cooked.


Here it is! 400g of pasta in the largest Living Kitchen serving plate. Enough for 3 of us, with leftovers to take to work.


one bowl

Easy peasy. And delicious! We all loved it, and I could easily include this in my repertoire of mideweek meals. I got many jealous looks from my co-workers today as they were eating their minging chicken sandwiches and I had a nice steaming bowl of spaghetti.

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!