For the first time in…oh, ages, it’s actually been a white Christmas. The children finished school on Tuesday, the 23rd of December, and Katy and I walked home through a near blizzard, throwing snowballs with some of her schoolfriends. Big kid? Me? Never!!!!!! Lots of sub zero temperatures and it’s STILL lying on the pavements, with an additional inch on it this morning. Still, it’s not as bad as it is up north of us.
I hope that you’ve all been very good and that Santa visited with lots of lovely gifts for you. He was certainly very good to me 
Christmas day was peaceful and quiet, with only my brother popping over to see the children opening their pressies. None of this getting up at 4am for my two, oh no. They are terribly well behaved. We came downstairs, Katy did her blood test and her insulin, we had breakfast and then (and only then) did we go into the living room. They sit on the couch and I pass them one at a time and we wait until the present has been unwrapped before I pass another one. Ahhh. I’m available for child training, if anyone’s interested.
Right, but what about the food? Well, it’s funny how plans change at the last moment. I was all set to try out a Spiced Morrocan Filo Pie that appeared in the BBC’s Good Food magazine back in 2002, but I do live in a small town and, if both of the supermarkets and the one veg shop are out of butternut squash. well then, you are, frankly, scuppered. Of course I was trying to buy my ingredients at the last moment to make sure they were fresh, so I had very little time to come up with an alternative. Especially as the backup plan of a Quorn Roast or even Linda McCartney pies were all sold out as well. Crikey. I knew I had some Quorn fillets in the freezer and a packet of dried porcini mushrooms in the cupboard, so could I possibly make something out of them?
Therefore, the menu was as follows……..
- Quorn Fillets in a Sweet Pepper and Porcini Mushroom Sauce
- Roast Potatoes
- Parsnips with a Honey Mustard Glaze
- Steamed Carrots and Brussel Sprouts with Butter and Honey Dressing
followed with
- Raspberry and Pistachio Trifle
- Christmas Cake
Raspberry and Pistachio Trifle
Quorn Fillets in a Sweet Pepper and Porcini Sauce
- 25g packet of dried porcini mushrooms
- 312g pack of Quorn fillets
- 1 vegetable stock cube
- 1 long thin sweet pepper
- 1 teaspoon of sugar
- Boiling water
- 1 rounded tablespoon of plain flour
- Sunflower oil for frying
Put the dried mushrooms into a glass measuring jug and cover with enough boiling water to fill it up to the 500ml mark. Leave them alone for at least half an hour to rehydrate. Fry the Quorn fillets in the sunflower oil until browned and then set them aside. Finely slice and de-seed the pepper and add it to the frying pan until the pepper is softened and then add the porcini mushrooms, along with the soaking liquour to the pan. Crumble the stock cube into the mixture and then whisk it to make sure that it’s completely absorbed. Sprinkle the flour over the pan and whisk this in as well. The sauce will thicken and change colour, becoming lighter. Check the sauce and, if needed, add a little sugar or sweetener to it to ‘lift’ the flavour. Re-add the Quorn fillets to the pan and leave on a low heat until they’re needed. This will give you plenty of time to finish off the vegetables.
Didn’t taste too bad (she said modestly).
The other recipe I’d like to give you was this years’ Christmas cake. Andy (my OH) is a volunteer with the Red Cross and, at the last meeting of the year, had to take something with him as they were going to have a bit of a party afterwards. I made him an old fashioned Half Pound Cake. Apparently, it went down very well. Now, I’m rarely organised enough to make my cake weeks in advanced and one day I was comparing various recipes, and I came to the conclusion that there was very little difference between cakes that have to be made weeks in advance and fed, and my favourite Half Pound cake recipe. So, why couldn’t I just make my usual recipe and possibly just ‘tweak’ it a bit to make it into something special for the holiday season? No reason whatsoever. What I have done is to chop up an extra 100g of marzipan and add it to the basic cake recipe, as I found that was the reason that I liked last years Christmas cake so much.
Half Pound Christmas Cake
- 225g butter
- 225g caster sugar
- 225g plain flour
- 450g mixed dried fruit
- 100g glace cherries
- 100g cubed marzipan
- 4 eggs
- pinch os salt
- 1/2 teaspoon of mixed spice
- 1 tablespoon of brandy
This is so easy that I’m embarrassed to call it a recipe.
Put everything into a large bowl
and mix it all up.
I used my Kenwood, but an electric hand whisk would do it just as well. Line a 20cm/8″ round cake tin with a pre bought liner and turn the mixture into it. Level the top and bake for about 2 and a half hours (although you should check after 2) at 150C/300F. No need to pre soak fruit, feed the cake…even icing is a doddle. As the marzipan is already inside the cake, all I did was mix some icing sugar with water and smear it all over the top of the cake, slapped a couple of festive decorations on top, and tied a ribbon round the middle. I made it on Christmas Eve and was ‘icing’ it when my brother called round on Christmas morning!!!!!!!!
Anyway, I hope you had as easy a Christmas as I did, and hopefully the New Year will find us all raring to go for another years blogging.
Christmas Dinner
It all looks lovely, but that Raspberry and Pistachio Trifle . . . ooooo! Love pistachios, can sit, shell and eat ‘em for ages!!