Hello and a very happy New Year to you all! Twelfth Night has been and gone in a flurry of snowflakes but our little twinkly tree still adorns a corner of the living room quite happily - fear not, superstitious readers, I am merely making the most of my Swedish roots here, for in Sweden the Christmas decorations stay up until the 20th day. So there. What with the glistening winter scene outside, keeping the lights going a few days more seems appropriate!
However, the novelty of a second helping of this unusually thick snow and sub-freezing temperatures is wearing very thin - bring on spring and bring spring soon! In our non-centrally-heated house it's a daily challenge just keeping warm and since I can't get to work at the moment I'm spending a lot of time trapped and wrapped in about 9 layers. It's a shame because we have a new menu this week at the pub and I haven't had the chance to try it out on the customers yet. Juicy hot steak sandwiches made with succulent sirloin, onion rings and dijon mayonnaise, homemade fishcakes and tartare sauce, beef and ale casserole with jacket potatoes and fresh seared tuna nicoise are amongst the tasty new menu items. And of course tapas on a Thursday night as usual, such fun!
Even on the days I can't make it to work there is always plenty of cooking to do at home so I haven't been slacking, have no fear! After all the festive gluttony it's good to eat slightly more plain food for a while. I never make New Year's resolutions as they'd only get broken within a matter of hours, if not minutes, but I have managed to avoid butter for over a week - mainly because I've largely been avoiding bread. Not missing it so far which is a good sign... Tonight we're going to make a good old-fashioned toad-in-the-hole with lovely fat pork sausages from our village butcher and the batter will be made with our hens' eggs. We can use up the rest of the goose fat we roasted our spuds in on Christmas Day to cook it all in too. The chickens are being fantastic by the way, still laying every day even though they hate the snow because they can't get to the grass - and they get very confused when they can't see the ground bless them. We are giving them lots of treats and attention though and they seem happy enough.
And one can always bake one's socks off on a gloomy day can't one? It always cheerifies things, the smell of baking on a cold, dark day. All the Christmas cake has gone and such is husband's fondness for fruit cake, good old wifey made him one today - it's not as dark, spicy and rich as the festive version, but is a lighter, more golden fruity sponge flavoured with vanilla and orange zest, the fruit having been soaked in liberal quantities of yummy Pedro Ximenez sherry. While the cake was still warm we prodded it liberally with a skewer and poured thick white icing over it so that it sank in and left a soft crackly glaze on the top. We also made a chocolate yule log the other day, the sponge as light as can be with no flour or butter in the making and a rich, dark chocolate buttercream over the top, mmmm.
But we haven't discussed the feasting of the festive variety yet! We had some delicious venison fillet on Christmas Day but there was far too much for the two of us, so we recycled the hunk we didn't use a couple of days later when ma and pa came round for lunch. It was seared quickly on all sides, roasted for 10 minutes in a hot oven then wrapped in parma ham, surrounded by a duxelle of chestnut mushrooms in madeira and then baked in a shroud of golden, flaky, buttery puff pastry - essentially it was Venison Wellington. Twas to die for - slightly fiddly but totally worth it. Juicy, pink melting meat, earthy mushrooms and crisp pastry. To accompany it we had braised red cabbage cooked with pear, apple and dried cranberries, brown sugar and red wine vinegar - no potatoes this time, just some buttered green veg on the side. As we'd started with rich crab souffles (hurrah, they turned out to be puffy delights) we didn't need afters, so just had coffee with homemade florentines and Christmas puddinis (sorry to put the same picture in as in the last blog but they are so yummy!)
So now we have a long forecast of cold, wintry weather and we need to keep cooking things to make us toasty - thick soups, stews, braises and roasts, hot puddings and custard - endless tasty possibilities, so get creative and keep safe and warm all.
Happy cooking!
AMT
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