Stripped down home made Christmas pt 1

Thought I'd ressurect the blog for a bit. Trying to make Christmas this year as far away from excessive commercialism and greed as possilbe. Partly because I'm poor and partly because I think there's something rather tasteless and vulgar about gaudy excess when times are this hard. Mainly it's because in my head when I imagine Christmas it's all full of dark reds, clementines, evergreens, gingerbread on the tree, and almondy mince pies and glazed ham on the table. This year I'm finally in charge of Christmas and I'm going to attempt to make it as close to that as possible. I thought I'd keep track of what happens here. 

First up - chutney and fruit cake. I was going to put the recipe here but I see it's the last thing I wrote about before. It's basically the same recipes - the chutney has plums, onion, tomato, apricots and sultanas in it. 1.75kg in total. Then add ginger, chilli, peppercorns, 250g brown sugar and 300ml of cider vinegar and let it bubble on the stove for a couple of hours until reduced and a bit jam like.

For the fruit cake I used a normal farmhouse fruit cake recipe but added more fruit - there was sultanas, apricots, figs, and dried cranberries and I also added in a good slug of brandy and some vanilla extract. Smells amazing. I think this is a good alternative to christmas cake especially if you are not bothered about icing. I really don't like royal icing. It'll taste really good in 3 weeks time and much less hassle than a traditional Christmas cake. 

Decorations! 

I'm going to string some cranberries and popcorn together to make garlands for the tree but at the moment I am making lots of little red pompoms to make into a garland to decorate the fireplace with. 

It was inspired by this blog here http://smallbirdblog.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/felted-garland/ but I wanted to use stuff I already had. Found some red wool that I'd been wondering what to do with and thought I could do something similar with pom poms. This is what they look like so far. I'd like to do 20 at least.

 

A couple of old favourites

My favourite Pork Fillet recipe - I confess I nicked it from my favourite chef, the beautiful James Martin.

Open out the pork fillet by cutting down the middle lengthways about 3/4 of the way through, and then slice into each side so tht you can butterfly it. Spread plum chutney along the middle and then lay pieces of mozzerella along it. Roll the fillet up and secure it in place by tying it with string. Fry in a medium hot pan to brown it, and then finish it in the oven. Along side the fillet you can roast cherry tomatoes. i serve it with either mash or fried potatoes.

Roast Chicken.

A very simple one as my brother was round for lunch and he gets upset if any components of the Roast Dinner are changed. The chicken was an excellent one so I chopped a lemon in half and put both halves in the cavity, and a couple of rashers of bacon on the breast (it would have been fine without but I love eating the bacon afterwards). I seasoned it with pepper and then roasted in for about 20 minutes at gas mark 8 before lowering the temperature to about 4 and letting it cook for a further hour or so (depending on size of chicken). Yorkshire pudding, roast potatoes, mashed sweet potatoes, cabbage with bacon and finally some steamed leeks. Followed by a rather less than satisfactory bought apple pie with some excellent ice cream.

Soupy soup

I made a soup last week that was mainly roast beetroot. It was unfortunately quite a violent shade of magenta and I hadn't processed it enough. This time I went for simplicity. Leek and potato. Nothing else.

Leek and Potato Soup

Finely slice 2 and a half leeks. Peel and chop 2 large potatoes into chunks of about 1 - 2cm. Fry them in a fairly large saucepan over a medium heat in some olive oil or butter for about 5 minutes. Chop a couple of sticks of celery in half and add to the saucepan. The celery is optional - I only used it as it is a good stock vegetable and I had some that needed using up. Pour in 1 pint of chicken or vegetable stock (for want of anything else I used a chicken stock cube), cover and bring to the boil. Cook for about half an hour, or until the potato is soft. Remove the celery. Either leave to cool a little and process in a food processor / liquidiser or you can get straight in there with a hand held blender. Process until smooth. If you want you could add some cream.

If I hadn't been making chutney as well I would have made some cheese scones to go with it. They only take 20 minutes from weighing the flour to taking them out of the oven.

As for the chutney, I used plums and a little onion and apricot. It needs to keep for at least a few weeks before tasting so I have no idea if it's any good. I didn't weigh anything out and I checked a couple of other recipes to make sure the proportions were about right.

Spicy Plum Chutney

8 quite large dark purple plums.
Handful of dried apricots (left over from the cake - I would have used more if I had them)
2 medium onions
About 120g brown sugar
About 175ml cider vinegar
Ground ginger - about a teaspoon
1/2 teaspoon chilli - to taste really.
Black pepper


Chop the fruit and onion very finely and put in a large, heavy based saucepan along with all the other ingredients. Bring to the boil, uncovered, and simmer for 1 -2 hours till thick. Bottle in sterilized jars whilst still warm and store for a couple of months.

New favourite cake

8 0z mixture of dates, dried apricots, dried figs - chopped
1teaspoon bicarb of soda
pinch of salt
1/2 pint hot water
10 oz wholemeal self raising flour
4 oz softened butter
2 oz chopped walnuts
1 piece preserved stem ginger - chopped
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
4 oz demerara (or soft brown) sugar
1 egg beaten

• Put dried fruit into a large bowl with the hot water, bicarb of soda, and salt. Leave to cool whilst you get on with the rest.
• Tip flour into another bowl and rub in the butter.
• Stir in the ginger, sugar and walnuts.
• Add dry ingredients to the water and fruit.
• Beat in egg.
• Pour into a lined 1kg loaf tin and bake at gas mark 4 (180 deg C) for 1 - 1.25 hours.

As with all fruit cakes it will keep for ages and ages if you keep it wrapped up.