WHAT are you cooking for Christmas? It is interesting to listen
to people's plans, and compare them with - to my mind - the dreary
inevitability and panic of "turkey and all the trimmings". Jenny is
looking forward to a red-cabbage salad enriched with Stilton and
walnuts. Owen is planning to cook duck for his family on their
newly acquired Rayburn. Mary is making clementine cake - the one
you make with stewed, pureéd clementines, and ground almonds. John
is cooking mushrooms in a cream sauce.
The vegetarian/fishy Christmas always seems to be less stressful
than the carnivorous one, and I like beautiful dishes that can be
made in advance, and do not require precision timing and 24-hour
kitchen work.
John's Mushrooms in cream could be a starter,
or part of a main meal, but these are quantities for an hors
d'oeuvre for 4.
140 ml (¼ pt)
double cream
225g (8 oz) button mushrooms
112g (4 oz) wild mushrooms
25-55g (1-2 oz) butter
2 teaspoons English mustard
1 tablespoons vinegar
4 tablespoons passata
4 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
a dash of Soy sauce
1 teaspoon honey
a grating of fresh ginger to taste
Fry the mushrooms gently in the butter. Add the rest of the
ingredients, leaving the cream until you are just ready to serve,
adding it and bringing the sauce up to heat again without boiling.
Serve this with plenty of fine bread to soak up the sauce.
Roasted stuffed vegetables is a benign version
of the medieval affair of stuffing birds like swans and geese with
ever smaller birds, down to tiny larks. It also looks much
prettier.
1 red pepper per person
half a fennel bulb per person
passata
mixed peppercorns
coriander seeds
olive oil
garlic
sea salt
Slice the fennel into manageable wedges that will fit inside the
peppers, reserving the tough stalks for making soup or stock. Steam
the fennel wedges until just tender. Cut the red peppers in half
lengthways, keeping the stalk intact but getting rid of the seeds.
Pour a little passata into each pepper, and then stuff them with a
couple of fennel wedges, root-end fitting in at the stalk end of
the pepper. Crush the garlic, salt, and spices, and sprinkle them
on top. Drizzle oil over them, and bake them in a hot oven for
about hour.
A huge bird or joint of meat feeds our atavistic desire for
sacrifice as well as our stomachs; so a vegetarian Christmas dinner
should also have a centrepiece dish which everyone will share. Puff
pastry can be wrapped around any number of things, and brushed with
beaten egg to make an impressive, golden entrance. This
Cheese, bean, and broccoli plait is not an
expensive dish for four to six people, apart from the bought
puff-pastry. It looks beautiful, and can be prepared in advance and
left, uncooked, in the fridge until about 45 minutes before you
want to eat it. Experiment with other vegetables, and perhaps
chopped hazelnuts for the filling.
225g (8 oz) puff pastry
1 broccoli head
1 leek
1 tin butter beans
280ml (½ pt) milk
55g (2 oz) flour
55g (2 oz) butter
55g-80g (2-3 oz) Cheddar cheese,
grated
1 egg, beaten
Cut the broccoli into florets, and wash and chop the leeks into
small rounds. Steam them both until tender. Make a sauce with the
flour, butter, and milk, and stir in the cheese, cooking it until
thickened. Drain the butter beans, and add them and the green
vegetables. Taste and season well.
Roll out the pastry to a rectangle about 6mm (¼ in.) thick, or
according to the directions on the packet, and place it on a baking
sheet. Make a series of parallel diagonal cuts into the two long
sides of the rectangle, cutting about a quarter of the way into
each side. Place your vegetable mixture along the centre of the
pastry, and fold the pastry ends up and over. Then plait or weave
the side diagonal strips to cover each other until the vegetables
are completely covered by the pastry. Brush the plait with beaten
egg. Keep this in the fridge if you make it in advance. Otherwise,
bake it straight away in a hot oven (200°C/400°F/Gas 6) until the
pastry is golden.
You can do the same trick with salmon. This recipe for
Salmon en croute sandwiches two fillets
together with spinach; so the result is rather beautiful when
sliced at the table. For 4-6 people you need:
1 block of puff pastry
2×450g (2×1 lb) pieces of skinned salmon
fillet
225g (8 oz) fresh spinach
112g (4 oz) cream cheese
1 egg, beaten
salt and pepper
Steam the spinach until just wilted, chop it, and stir it into
the cream cheese when it is cool. Roll out the pastry, and place it
on a baking sheet. Place one fillet in the centre, and spread the
spinach mixture on top. Cover this with the other piece of fillet.
Season well, and seal up the pastry all round with beaten egg,
brushing the outside well with beaten egg, too. Bake in a hot oven
(200°C/400°F/Gas 6) for about 45 minutes. Serve hot with steamed
winter vegetables, and eat any leftovers cold with salad.
For vegetables, I will certainly be cooking Orange
carrots - prepared by frying carrot batons in butter and
orange juice until just al dente, and finishing them with
a little honey, salt, and pepper.
I'll also be cooking Spanish glazed onions.
Peel and cut the onions into wedges, and simmer in water until
tender. Drain them (reserving the water for stock) and add a
generous amount of butter, and a teaspoon or so of honey. Toss them
about over a high heat until they are sweet and golden. Season and
serve
Jenny's red-cabbage slaw with Stilton and walnuts can be adapted
to make a Christmas potato salad that will feed a
number of people, and is sustaining enough to be a good lunch dish
with a green salad and/or a rich winter soup.
900g (2 lb) potato
garlic cloves
225g (8 oz) walnuts, very lightly toasted
225g (8 oz) Stilton, diced
celery, diced
8 tablespoons olive oil
Wash and cut the potatoes into even-sized chunks, or use new
potatoes. Simmer them until tender. If you wish, cool and skin the
potatoes. Blend together 112g (4 oz) walnuts with 2-3 garlic cloves
and olive oil to make a paste. Assemble the salad by tossing the
potatoes with the paste, and the rest of the walnuts, chopped, and
the Stilton, celery, and plenty of sea salt and pepper. Garnish
with the inner celery leaves.