rose petal jam

told you I would!

Well I wouldn't blame you for thinking that this blogging was all a flash in the pan and I'd be off again for 5 months!

So you wanted to see the boy and here he is, a recent picture taken only this weekend just gone.

 

Isn't he the handsomest chap you ever saw? (Permission to disagree only if you have a little man of your own). This was taken in our fave cafe in Whitby, Becketts which I have blogged about before here

I think I was pausing from drinking my butterscotch steamer (yum!) when I saw the opportunity to take this little snap of my men. As my friend Helen at Busy Bee would say, GORGEOUS.

So what's new for 2010? Well back on with the cooking etc. I have been making some great things recently including some lovely gift food which alas I have not been sharing with you. Meany. But I will be back soon with a recipe. And some gift food as valentine's day is on the horizon...shhh... not a word.

In the meantime, have a revisit of this classic which I am making for dinner tonight. except with rice not naan as our oven has broken down. did I not mention? three days before Christmas dear reader, three days before the most important meal of the year... Luckily the hob still functioned (all praise dual fuel) and my sister and her fiance who were our guests live but two streets away, so much tooing and froing in the snow with stuffed capon, roasted vegetables and sausage rolls ensued :-) In the SNOW. and ICE. All was well though.

Toodle oo for now chicks and chaps and thanks for stopping by xxxx

a surfeit of plums - part one

I know, I know, I have been away from this blog for soo long that I probably have no-one left reading! Well being pregnant just sucks your life away, FACT. I have no idea what I have done in the last few months but time and energy have seemed in very short supply! I most certainly have not had a surfeit of those! I do however have a newly decorated house, a beautiful nursery, a freezer full of batch home cooking, a massive bump and a million baby related essentials :-)

Anyway, onwards, hopefully this is the start of many more posts :-) and I promise they won't all be about babies and pureed vegetables! In case you are wondering, no, he isn't here yet. he is due on the 20 August and so far no signs to speak of... watch this space!

I think I have mentioned, but my sister and her partner Mark have an allotment. Having popped down there the other sunday eve to lend a hand, Dominic arrived home, 4 hours later, hungry, and with a carrier bag full of plums. I mean full. I mean, I weighed them and there were 10 and a half pounds of them!

So, Wwe spend a pleasant hour sat at our table stoning them all, except for the ones required for what I am about to share with you next. I totally forgot about the finger staining properties of plums and we both looked like 40 a day smokers by the end of it! Anyway, it was quite good fun to be honest. I did them one at a time, whilst Dom did the cutting bit first of a few and them stoned them. ever the competitor he even timed us doing ten each at one point to see whose method was fastest! His was, but by about 2 seconds so really, do we care? No we don't!

So, wanna know what I made first?

ta dah!

Welcome to Spiced Plum Liqueur!

aaaahhhh...

This is ridiculously easy, it literally takes 5 minutes.

1 lb of plums, washed and pricked all over with a pin (I was lazy and used a fork!)

6 oz caster sugar

A pint or so of spirits - I used 350ml vodka and 120ml of brandy (sorry for mixing imperial/ metric, I was born in the 1970s)

2 cinnamon sticks snapped in half

about 10 cloves

Place all in a litre kilner jar. Close tightly and shake up.

Keep in a dark place for 2 months, shaking every 3 days or so. Everything should act upon each other and the plums impart juice and colour into the booze.

The brilliant thing about this is that when it's ready, you decant the liquid bit into bottles as a drink (straining out the plums and spices) and then rebottle the plums in a light sugar syrup (maybe with more booze, a splash of ginger wine would be awesome) to eat as dessert with ice cream etc, so it's like two for the price of one! I am sure they would make EXCELLENT gifts for Christmas and the like. Unfortunately I am just not that nice! I intend to test the liqueur on bonfire night at the allotment (ok, I'll share it with those there!) and them keep the rest for Christmas, maybe take some to the cottage for our New Year break to sip in front of the fire... bliss! Can you imagine that boozy, spicy, plummy taste, slipping down very nicely... or the sodden, sweet plums with some cold cold vanilla ice or a dollop of clotted cream...

More plumminess soon... can't say when, ideally tomorrow but the baby might have other ideas!

Stuffed

Merry Christmas from Hideaway Cottage!

Christmas begins...

As you know, I love Christmas and can't wait for it to get started each year! This year it begins today with the making of The Christmas Cake. I love Christmas cake and there was always a homemade one when I was younger and at home but I am surprised to say that I don't think I have EVER made one in my own home. Until now :-)

I decided to go for a fail safe recipe and turned to Delia, Saint Delia, patron saint of Christmas and more importantly of recipes that WORK. Apart from on the odd occasion which we will gloss over in the spirit of Christmas...

I won't give you the recipe, but a link to her website where you'll find it here . Delia first published this in 1978 so it's 30 this year and let's face it, it must work if she has never had occasion to tweak it. From the number of people who seem to use this recipe it would seem highly unlikely that anyone reading this would not have tasted it at some point, in someone's home, a cake shop or Christmas fete. Unless you don't like Christmas cake in which case don't bother reading any further cos today, it's all about the cake!

This is last night, as you have to add the brandy to the fruit so it can all mull overnight - aren't the colours outstanding? I love this bowl too, my friend Emma bought me it - it's actually a pasta serving bowl but it makes a great mixing bowl too. It's a pity this blog doesn't have a smell option as the combination of the gorgeous fruit and the kick of the rich scented brandy was wonderful.

It's not so much a fruit cake as some fruit with a bit of cake. As you can see from the picture below, it was totally packed with fruit and nuts. I actually did deviate from the recipe and used dark soft brown sugar rather than the paler kind - oh no! That means if it all goes wrong I can't even blame Delia! Ah well..

Another pretty bowl, this time courtesy of sister Helen :-)

The mixture was so full of fruit that it was actually really hard to stir and I strained my wrist a little - not joking!

I listened to Christmas carols as I made it (I know, a bit OTT) and it was fantastic, a little slice of Christmas in October!

mmmmm...!! There's something about greaseproof paper hanging over the edge of a cake tin that I love! Incidentally I had to buy a new tin as Delia was very firm on the point of size of tin and I didn't have a 7" square one. The only one I could find in town yesterday was in Fenwicks and cost £13.95. I nearly died. 

After I heaved it into the tin I had to lick the spoon and the bowl, quelle chore and Dominic wasn't even here to help. Shame :-)

So do you want to see it, all cooked up?

GORGEOUS! Ahhhh... Christmas has truly begun. Dominic found it really dreadful that there was such a thing as baking that couldn't be eaten straight away - but a little lesson in delayed gratification is good for us all I reckon! So, once cooled, I pricked it all over and fed it some more brandy, then carefully wrapped it in baking parchment and a double layer of foil and stored it away. Only 63 days to go until I can legitimately cut into it :-) I made a square cake rather than a round one because a whole Christmas cake is a bit much for two, even two as greedy as us, so I wanted to divide it up to give some to Helen & Mark and also to Dougie and Andrea, our neighbours at the cottage where we are spending Christmas this year - bliss!

Delia, don't let me down this time!

ching ching ching!

I love Christmas. Scrap that. I ADORE Christmas. What's not to love? I am totally bound up in the rituals of it all and am currently tracking down the perfect advent calendar for me. (For some lovely advent ideas have a look here). I don't like the chocolate filled ones, they are just not right, neither are the ones with branded characters, cartoons etc. I like a cardboard one with a beautiful festive scene and lovely little illustrations underneath every window, preferably of candy canes, puddings and angels. My all time favourite one was a Woodmansterne one with beautiful angels flying in a night sky. My personal all time low was one Dominic bought me in sheer desperation from a religious book shop, one with a nativity scene. The illustrations were really rubbish (the donkey looked demented) and behind each window was a pointer to a bit of the bible to read. I know Christmas is about Christ, the clue is in the title, but I am not especially religious and like to see it more as a yuletide celebration, a sort of shining beacon in the darkness and chill of deep winter. I realise the fact that my favourite one featured angels is a massive contradiction to what I have just said, but there you go. I am quite a contrary girl. And anges are pretty in a way that demented donkeys and sinister looking magi are not.

Anyway! The best bit of Christmas is of course the food. Food to me sums it all up, its about bounty, sharing, pleasure, decadence and comfort. A Christmas without Christmassy food is not worth considering. I am not one of those people who wants to go abroad somewhere hot for Christmas and eat Thai curry instead of a plump bird with all the trimmings. That would not do at all. I might consider Christmas in a colder-than-ours European country, perhaps somewhere like Sweden or Switzerland, where I am betting they do Christmas really, really well on the culinary front.

There is a little part of my brain permanently dedicated to Christmas food planning, but the planning really starts in earnest about now with the Christmas editions of all the food magazines that I buy.

The picture which opens this post is of my December food magazine file. In a way that is very uncharacteristically organised of me, I do keep my food magazines in files according to the month of the year so they can easily be referenced in future years. The Christmas one is full to the brim and I think I need to either get rid of some of the older ones (like the ones from the 90s maybe!) and make room for the new ones, or start another folder!

One Christmas magazine that I will never get rid of though is this one.

I bought this about 4 years ago, and now I drag it down from the box every year and spend a good hour re reading the wisom of Saint Delia. It is a classic and has some fab recipes in, including one that I have adapted into my own Christmas chutney 9recipe coming soon). I love the way that she says it goes well with 'assertive cheeses'. Everytime I read it I imagine chunks of stilton marching across the table and demanding to be accompanied!

I know people think Delia is perhaps a little dull, and certainly some of her programmes would suggest that a charisma bypass has infact been performed, but for simple, no nonsense and traditional recipes that don't fail, she cannot be beaten. Anyway, she has her wild side as can be seen here when after too many sherrys she gloriously abandoned her bland image and came over all firey - come on Delia!

So, here you have it

this years magazines, a glass of rioja and candlelight. Looks like I am in for a festive evening...

red is the colour

Red cabbage is a favourite of ours. I cannot imagine Christmas dinner without it; it looks so beautiful on the plate and really takes the festive flavours such as cinnamon and cloves to its heart. Often I cook it in red wine, but I know lots of people (my mum included) aren’t keen on food cooked in wine, so it is just as lovely cooked in apple juice (the cloudy kind is more softly apple-ish I find, the clear is a bit sharp).

It’s hard to see how such few and humble ingredients can make something so delicious that Dominic reckons he could just eat it on it’s own, but it does.

Mulled Red Cabbage

Makes enough for 4

A medium sized red cabbage
Enough apple juice to almost cover – about 500ml should do
6 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon of muscavado sugar

Put everything into a large pan. Bring to the boil and simmer, uncovered for about 1-1/2 hours until the cabbage is tender and most of the liquid has reduced away. C’est tout! Amazingly easy. If you like, and can find them, pick out the cloves and cinnamon before eating. As this makes enough for four and there are just two of us, we freeze some...

it freezes really well and there is nothing nicer than knowing that there is a little batch of it, waiting in the freezer, maybe to be brought out on a chilly night to eat with fluffy mash and some roasted chicken or maybe a nice beef casserole…