Category: Christmas

We live next door to the local church and like to attend the ‘Christingle’ service. What’s not to love about a church service that combines live animals, children and fire? The adults do the Christmas story (with animals) but every child is given an orange with sweets on toothpicks and a candle. Then all the candles are lit…..we’ve never seen any accidents but there are usually some near misses and once or twice the smell of singed hair has floated through the church.

We stroll home and have soup and my world famous toasted cheese sandwiches after which we play a board game (preferably a new one), put on our Christmas pyjamas and work on the Christmas jigsaw. One of my sisters sends us a jigsaw puzzle every year – some of them so fiendishly difficult that I wonder if she really likes us or the puzzle is very sophisticated trolling.

Everyone puts out their Christmas stocking and then looks the other way while family members stuff things in them. This is still relatively new for me: I used to buy things for my own stocking, wrap them and then open them the next morning. (My period as a single mom).

Oh, rule in our house – you can have your stocking when you get up but no ‘big’ gifts until after breakfast. As we are all adults now, at least in chronological age, it can be 11 am before this condition is achieved. My youngest (23) still remembers the ‘old days’ when he had a giant Christmas stocking, designed to keep him occupied until at least 8 am. This was seldom achieved but good for him anyway.

Suggested menu below!

Christmas Eve Menu

Simple crudité – carrots, celery, raw cauliflower, raw broccoli, bell pepper strips, radishes

Corn chips

Hummus

Optional for the adults: oysters (on the shell if you like them) don’t eat ’em raw – try this recipe for simple baked oysters

Potato & carrot soup with grated cheddar cheese on top

World famous toasted cheese sandwiches (grilled cheese for you Americans)

This is an interesting menu to pair with wine. Personally, I’ll drink champagne with anything except Oreo cookies (don’t ask) and it’s highest and best use may well be with oysters. However, beer is also a good choice or a light red wine.

Prep Ahead Tips & Timing

1. Buy good quality sliced white bread and sliced cheese of your choice for the toasted cheese. It’s Christmas, everyone is busy, even I buy (some) bread this time of year. Look for good quality sliced cheese; cheddar, Swiss, Emmental are all good choices. Put the butter out to soften well ahead.
   
2. Prep your crudité the day before. Store in tightly sealed plastic bags with a damp piece of kitchen towel to keep them moist but crunchy.
   
3. Make the soup up to three days before. Grate your cheese for topping on the day.
   
4. Prep your oysters (either on crushed ice or pop them in the oven.
   
5. Get your soup warming, put out the crudité, chips and hummus.
   
6. Do your sandwiches up and serve everything.

Thanks for reading the blog, cooking the recipes and commenting. I hope your holidays are spent with people you love.

Toasted cheese sandwiches are part of our traditional Christmas Eve supper. Kids love them and served warm, adults can’t say no either. Two secrets to these world famous (just kidding) sandwiches; butter both sides of the bread and use a flat crepe pan or griddle for cooking.

Ingredients for this recipe are fairly obvious – bread, butter and sliced cheese. I serve these with soup and one sandwich each seems to be enough.

It’s okay to use good quality store bought white bread for this recipe. Might seem like heresy from someone who makes all her own bread but home made bread is denser and it’s difficult to get even slices. You want good quality white bread because it needs to carry a fair amount of butter without tearing.

Put good quality salted butter out to soften well before you’re planning to make the sandwiches. It’s Christmas so I like to use butter from Normandy ‘Isigny Ste Mere’; but any good quality salted makes a difference. Do not use margarine or ‘spread’. It’s a crime against sandwiches and you’re reading the wrong blog if you’re afraid of butter.

The eternal question for toasted cheese sandwiches: what type of cheese? If you’re feeding a crowd, then I recommend aged medium cheddar but most cheeses will do. If you’re feeding a few close friends (grown ups) it might be worth investing in some Comté or Jarlsberg. You can use hard or crumbly cheese if you want; grate it in advance and apply to the bottom half of the sandwiches once they’re on the pan.

Ingredients: sliced white bread, sliced or grated cheese of your choice and room temperature butter.

1. Put your pan on the heat to warm up. No need to apply butter or oil.
2. Put your oven on to warm, say 100C, prep an oven proof plate with a clean tea towel.
3. Butter both sides of each piece of bread. It’s a bit messy but absolutely worth it.
4. When the pan is hot, carefully place pre-buttered bread slices on the griddle and apply cheese to each slice. Place another pre-buttered bread slice on top of each. When the bottom is golden brown and toasted (3 to 4 minutes), flip each sandwich. The second side takes about half the time so keep an eye on it. The cheese might not be completely melted but don’t worry.
5. Transfer the sandwiches to the plate in the oven and cover them with the tea towel and leave them in gentle oven. They’ll be perfect by the time you’ve finished making all the sandwiches and are ready to serve up.

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Get busy toasting! Thank you for reading the blog, cooking the recipes, sharing and commenting. Tag me @mamadolson on Instagram and Twitter if you’re posting photos.

Merry Christmas.

Don’t know what to get your favourite cook for Christmas? Another cookbook never goes amiss because a cook never has too many books.

We all use the internet for recipes, techniques and inspiration for our cooking and our baking. I’m a big fan. The internet is also amazing for finding communities of bakers and cooks interested in your specialist subject.

There are times though that only a book will do. Even for cooking. Perhaps especially for cooking and baking. Bookmarks, browsing, page flipping, looking at pictures. And actually using them for cooking. With care, a beginner could use most of these cookbooks. Except for the Guy Savoy cookbook and the Tartine book – approach those with caution as I explain below.

No links here but all are easily found on your favourite book buying platform.

Le Cordon Bleu Complete Cooking Techniques

An amazing book that ups your game. If you have MasterChef envy or just you want to know how to skim the fat from your meat stock without letting it cool – this is the book for you. Full of tricks of the trade – it will show you an easy way to make your egg whites stronger (thus your souffle will never fall). It starts with a great section on equipment for your kitchen – with illustrations. And finishes with a glossary of terms from ‘al dente’ to ‘zest’. I get this book out when I feel like I’m getting the taste right but my presentation or finish needs help.

The Taste of Country Cooking

Edna Lewis, the genius behind this book, was the descendant of freed slaves and grew up in Freetown, Virginia. She moved to New York City as a young woman and became a famous chef. Her book is a hymn to country cooking, an inspiration to eat in season, to make your own food and to support local producers and farmers.

The book is arranged in seasonal menus with a good index at the back to find recipes. It starts with ‘ An Early Spring Dinner After Sheep Shearing’ (sheep shearing is not required) and ends with ‘A Dinner of Chicken and Dumplings and Warm Gingerbread’. I take this book down off the shelf to inspire me when I’m bored with my current cooking routine.

The New Basics Cookbook from the Silver Palate.

The Silver Palate claims to be the first gourmet take out food store in Manhattan. Not sure if that’s true but it appeared in the early 80s, followed by a couple of cookbooks and finally this one. I have them all and use them regularly. The pages are falling out of this one – I have thought about making it a looseleaf book but it’s just too much work to hole punch all the pages. It’s not a comprehensive cookbook but it’s full of fun and interesting recipes and fun twists on classics. Published long before gluten free, lactose intolerant and vegans became things – it’s a book for feasting not calorie counting. Joyful cooking.

Essentials of Italian Cooking

The Slow Food movement was founded by an Italian who was profoundly distressed by the slow disappearance of Italian regional cuisine (in Italy) and the attempt to open an McDonalds near the Spanish Steps in Rome. If Italian cuisine was being homogenised across Italy you can imagine what happened to Italian cuisine elsewhere in the world.

Marcella Hazan was a one woman rescue party for Italian food. Early in our relationship the Davinator said to me ‘I don’t like Italian food’. I said, ‘that’s fine’ and proceeded to start feeding him Marcella’s classic dishes. Without telling him they were Italian.

The book is fun reading if only for Marcella’s food snobbery as a counterbalance to my childhood spent eating SpaghettiOs. Her disdain for mass produced pasta, heavy handed use of garlic and Kraft grated parmesan (remember the bright green container?) is entertaining even if I disregard some of her absolute prohibitions. I also think (at least in the UK) it’s easier to get quality ingredients than when she wrote her books.

The book is a celebration of the regional cuisine of Italy; any complicated technique is well explained and illustrated. There is a fab section on basics that covers not only sauces and ingredients but stocks and cooking techniques for things as diverse as beans and anchovies. From crostini to zuppa including a fabulous section on Italian desserts – dive right in.

Guy Savoy – Simple French Recipes for the Home Cook

Guy Savoy is a famous French chef with a Michelin 3 star restaurant in Paris, another in Las Vegas and a chain of bistros. Guy’s in Paris is my favourite restaurant in the world. But the big money in cooking is not in the ultra fancy restaurants but in the cooking shows, the cookbooks and the chain of more reasonably priced restaurants. This book was one of Guy’s efforts expand his footprint.

This cookbook is not for the faint hearted. I call it ‘3 lies for the price of 1’. It’s not simple, it’s not really for ‘home cooks’ and I’m not sure it has recipes. It has lists of ingredients and an overview of cooking methods; but they make leaps of process that are a serious challenge to any but an expert cook. It took me 3 attempts to achieve the macaroni and cheese recipe. I have had to revert to other reference materials (see Cordon Bleu above and Julia Child below) to master recipes.

But once I had worked out the mac & cheese – it is absolutely amazing. As are the other recipes in the book. Worth the effort of practice for the impact. Take a deep breath and plunge in.

Artisan Sourdough Made Simple

This has slowly become my go to book for sourdough recipes. It makes a lot of sense and the recipes work. I found a sourdough sandwich bread recipe that the Davinator loves and an amazing brioche recipe. It’s a contest to see if I can make brioche rolls faster than the Davinator can eat them.

If you’re dipping your toes into sourdough – this is your book.

Tartine Bread

The Tartine mob may deserve credit for the artisan bread craze in San Francisco. The book describes their amazing journey and has lots of detailed descriptions of how to make sourdough bread. It’s beautifully written and has good photographs but it reminds of that joke about asking for directions in Ireland. A couple is lost. They stop and ask a farmer for directions to Ballymaloe. The farmer thinks for a few minutes, asks a couple of clarifying questions and says ‘Well, if I was trying to get to Ballymaloe, I wouldn’t be starting here’.

If you’re starting out as a sourdough baker – I wouldn’t start with Tartine. I do use it and it looks good on my shelf. But recommended not for beginners.

King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking

I use this book more than any other baking book I own, including the sourdough ones. The King Arthur team set out to making whole grain baked goods taste good. And they succeeded. There may be recipes in this book that don’t suit your taste buds (I realised I don’t like things made with cornmeal) but all the recipes work and they taste good. It’s an American book and they use both quantity and imperial weight (pounds and ounces). My sister Rachael bought this for me some years ago – it’s a perennial favourite and produces crowd pleasing bread, cookies, muffins and damn fine brownies.

The Art of French Cooking (Volume One) Julia Child

Julia Child changed cooking in America. There’s a lovely movie ‘Julie & Julia’ about a woman who decides to cook all 524 recipes in the The Art of French Cooking in a year and blogs about them that covers Julia’s story. We should all be so fortunate with our cooking blogs. This cookbook made me a much better cook. It’s hard to describe how in a paragraph.

Julia Child had an abundance of common sense about food and conveys difficult concepts in simple language. ‘Don’t crowd the mushrooms’ is a classic. If you are sautéing mushrooms and you put too many in the pan, you steam them you don’t brown them. So, if you want lovely golden brown mushrooms – DON’T CROWD THE MUSHROOMS. This is Julia.

If Julia says ‘do not let the cream come to a boil or it will separate and your potato dauphinoise will suffer’ you know it to be true. You follow her instructions and you produce food fit for the gods.

Delia Smith’s Christmas

This book was a gift and when I was perusing the bookshelf prior to writing this blog I was surprised by how much I use it doing the winter, not just at Christmas. Perhaps Christmas food is the ultimate comfort food for cold weather. If your weapon of choice at Christmas is turkey, goose, beef, ham or vegetarian – there is a recipe for you here. I swear by her roast beef instructions, the red cabbage recipe and the parmesan parsnips. There is also a great planning section with a countdown. Has saved me when I was too tired to do my own planning – I relied on Delia.

On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen

Cooking is a chemistry experiment – combining ingredients, processes, heat and cooling to change raw material into food. This book will explain (often in excruciating detail) what went wrong or right in the kitchen and why.

Chefs say ‘beat the egg whites in a copper bowl’. Science & Lore tells you why this is a good idea. (It does work better). I was trying to make white chocolate fudge (it’s a good story worthy of its own blog). First time – would not harden. Second time – hardened in the pan. Then I checked Science & Lore – and the third time I stirred the damned molten white chocolate mixture for twenty minutes (by hand) with the bowl sitting in a bigger bowl of ice water. And the fudge was perfect. Of course, I found the twenty minutes of stirring so annoying I never made the fudge again.

The perfect book for cooking nerds.

Thank you for reading the blog. And best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a healthy prosperous 2020 to all.

Food is love.  Make food and gift it at Christmas – it’s a gift of love.  

This blog is about making stollen, a lovely brioche type dough with fruit, nuts and marzipan.  It comes from Saxony in Germany and has brothers, sisters and cousins in many European food traditions.  Nobody has time to waste at Christmas, so I’ve worked on my recipe so that it has fewer separate process steps.  This recipe has more yeast to help the rich heavy dough rise.  

Stollen likes to age but the Davinator has proven that it can be eaten on the same day.  Thanks to Felicity Cloake of the Guardian who did a LOT of stollen research that I used in developing the recipe below. 

This recipe makes four 500 gram (one pound) loaves) that are a perfect size for gifting. To make a single large loaf, divide in half.  

Marzipan is one of those foods that divides people.  Marzipan is completely optional in this recipe.  And I’ve included two ways to roll it into the dough.  

Recipe

Ingredients

200g dried fruit; I use a mix of sultanas, cranberries and cherries. 
80 ml cooking brandy or dark rum 
320 ml semi-skim or whole milk
25g dried active yeast
300g unsalted butter, 50g to glaze later
850g plain flour, plus a bit extra
100g caster sugar
 12g salt
1 tsp ground nutmeg or other spice of your choice – but not cinnamon
4 egg yolks
50g mixed peel
50g flaked almonds
300g marzipan
Icing sugar (confectioners sugar) to glaze

Instructions

1.  Put the dried fruit to soak in the brandy.  Any dried fruit works but the individual pieces should be no larger than a sultana (raisin to Americans). Put a piece of plastic wrap over the top. 
2. Warm the milk to room temperature.  If you’re a mom, no hotter than a baby’s bottle.  You want the milk warm so that it doesn’t shock the yeast, but not so hot that it kills the yeast.  Add the yeast and one tablespoon of flour to the milk and stir well.  Cover with a shower cap or plastic wrap. 
3. Melt the butter.  Cover with a shower cap. 
4. Leave all three  bowls of ingredients for about 30 minutes.  Go wrap some presents or hang some ornaments on your Christmas tree. 
5. Combine flour, caster sugar, salt and spices in a large bowl.  I use nutmeg and I know that works.  You can experiment with other spices but avoid cinnamon.  Cinnamon is a yeast assassin.    Hence, the cinnamon roll was born (because the cinnamon is ON the dough not IN the dough).  
6. Add the milk and yeast mixture.  It should be foamy and smell yeasty now.   Stir it in.  Now add the butter and the egg yolks.   You will have a shaggy dough but it will come together. 
7. Prep a large bowl, oil lightly.  I use coconut based oil spray.  
8. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface.  Set a timer and knead for 10 minutes.  If you don’t use a timer, you will be tempted to cheat.  This activity is also known as the ‘stollen workout’. 
9. Put the kneaded dough into the oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap or a shower cap.  Leave to rise in a warm draft free place for 45 minutes.  The yeast to dough ratio is high so it should rise relatively quickly,  It won’t double in size but should be puffy. 
10. Drain the dried fruit.  Drink the leftover alcohol (if desired) but don’t put it in the dough.  Strong spirit is another yeast assassin.  
11. Put your dough out on a lightly floured surface.  Pat it into a big rectangle.  Spread your flaked almonds and peel on the dough.  Now spread the marinated fruit on top.  Roll it up and knead in the fruit, nuts and peel.   This is kneading to incorporate ingredients not to develop gluten so stop when they feel reasonably mixed in. I use candied ginger as well (Davinator favourite).  
12. Put the dough back in the bowl and let it rise for another 30 to 45 minutes.  
13. Get your marzipan ready.  You need four chunks of 75 grams.  Knead the marzipan (like its play dough or clay) until soft and pliable.  You can either have a roll of marzipan in the centre of your dough (traditional) or you can have a thin layer that is a sort of a spiral in the centre (less traditional but seems more attractive to people who have reservations about marzipan).  First method is to roll each chunk into a log about 8 to 10 inches long, say an inch in diameter.  Second method is to roll your  marzipan into a rectangle about 8 by 8 inches. 
14. Your dough should be puffy again.  Separate into four equal parts for your four loaves – each one will weigh 500 to 600 grams.  Back to the lightly floured surface.  Roll out each portion of dough  into a rectangle.  If using traditional marzipan, place the log at the end nearest to you and roll the dough up into a long fat cylinder.  Sort of giant cigar shape.  If using the flat marzipan, place on the rectangle and roll up the dough. 
15. Place the loaves on baking sheets covered with parchment paper. Cover with plastic wrap. Let the loaves rise for 30 minutes to an hour and preheat the oven to 180C (160C fan). 
16. Bake for 35 minutes,  the loaves with be golden brown on top.  I try and use the bottom of the oven because it seems the stollen likes a gentle hear. 
17. Take the loaves out.  Brush with melted butter and dust with icing sugar.  Repeat this step at least 3 times but if you forget how many, do it a couple more times.  No one ever said no to butter and sugar at Christmas.  I have a fine mesh ‘sugar shaker’ and this is it’s highest and best use.  
18. Wrap your stollen in parchment paper, then foil and leave to rest for a day or so.  Keeps beautiful in the refrigerator for at least week.   I’ve put mine in a cool dark cupboard (essentially had to hide it from the Davinator) and it was lovely a month later. I forgot about it.  But it seldom hangs around for that long. 

Enjoy with butter or cheese or just as it comes.   Also lovely with my Christmas chutney. 

Merry Christmas, all. 

I love feeding people and it rains baked goods on my friends, family and co-workers. And I love  Christmas. Put the two together and it’s time to give the gift of homemade food.   I look for things that are durable and keep for some time.  There’s so much food at Christmas that you don’t want to give food with a short shelf life.  Two of my favourites are Christmas cranberry chutney (this blog post) and stollen, my next blog post. 

My children love cranberry sauce that comes from a can.  So much so that the Davinator made a special dish for the canned stuff that shows off the perfect rings.  But most adults find it too sweet.  I make a cranberry chutney that goes well with turkey, chicken, ham and I’ve even spotted it on a cold beef sandwich.    

Preparation of the chutney is fairly simple.  If you’re going to eat it yourself, it’s easy to let it cool, put it in a storage container and keep it in the fridge.  It keeps well for a week or more.  But if you’re going to ‘gift’ it, you will need to sterilise the jars and put the chutney in jars when it is still hot.  Your chutney should keep for six to eight months although I’ve never had it last longer than a few weeks.  However, it also means that it doesn’t need to be refrigerated and thus good for gifting.  

Chutney recipes are usually flexible; the cranberries are essential (its in the name)and they give the chutney it’s beautiful colour. But I’ve used mango instead of pears & apples and I usually look around the kitchen for any spare fruit that might suit.

If you’re an experienced preserver of food, skip this section.  But if not, I highly recommend this BBC Good Food video  They sterilise the jars in the oven and boil the lids and rims.  I use a jam funnel to help fill the jars (way better than the jug they recommend in the video).  I sterilise the funnel, some tongs and a couple of big spoons at the same time as I’m filling the jars. 

My secret weapon is a pair of heatproof gloves.  These are really helpful for handling the tongs, the jars, etc.    These aren’t life changing but really have their moments.  Mine are a sort of knit and I try hard to keep them away from the boiling water because they soak it up like a sponge.  

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Recipe and instructions

Ingredients

2  large onions, chopped

150 grams  minced ginger (save your time, use the jarred stuff from Waitrose)

360 mls wine or cider vinegar

200 grams of brown sugar 

Juice and grated peel from 2 large oranges

4 garlic cloves either chopped fine or pushed through a press

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (omit if you don’t want some zing)

4 large tart apples, chopped into say 1/2 pieces (no need for precision but too big and it’s hard to put on a sandwich, too small and they dissolve in cooking)

4 pears, chopped in the same manner as the apples

1 kilo of cranberries

A small cinnamon stick for each jar. 

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Instructions

1. Put all ingredients from the onions through to the red pepper flakes in a big pot (not aluminium) and bring to simmer.
2. Add the apples, simmer for five minutes.  Add the pears and cook for another five minutes. 
3. Add the cranberries, bring to a boil and then back it down to a slow simmer.  Cooking time will vary depending on what kind of pot you use.  I would estimate 30 minutes and then start checking on consistency.   The Davinator likes his chutney of a spreadable consistency but sticky enough to hang onto the sandwich.  Or cheese.   Use your imagination, he puts chutney on it.  
4. Start getting your jars and lids ready.   To prevent bacteria (and thereby have wasted your time) the chutney needs to go in the jars while the jars AND the chutney are both hot.  If you’re comfortable with this process, go for it.  If not, go watch this video! 
5. I like using the jam funnel to fill the jars, but make sure it fits in the jars. Great tip from BBC Good Food – get more job ready than you need.  I filled 6 x 400 ml jars.  I often do several different sizes.   
6. Fill the jars and carefully put a cinnamon stick in the hot chutney.  Then put the lids on.   Use your imagination to decorate the jars.  Pinterest is a great place to get ideas; go there and search ‘jam jar decoration’.  If you haven’t used Pinterest, I’m not trying to ruin your life.  Some people have too much time…….
7. This should keep for about six months but refrigerate as soon as opened and use in a week.  

Enjoy your Christmas preparations.  It is the most wonderful time of the year.