скачать книгу бесплатно
Spoon the mincemeat into the sterilised jars, seal with a tight lid and label.
Quince and cardamom mincemeat (without suet)
I feel a little sorry for those impervious to the charm of a mince pie. I want to offer them something. Calling the recipe that follows ‘mincemeat’ is stretching it a bit, but it still contains the fruits and spices of the original (many early recipes include quince in place of apple), and it smells like the classic as it cooks. But it has another appeal, that of no suet, or indeed fat of any kind. Think of it as Christmas jam. The colour is gold rather than black. It is rather good with cheese too, in the way a slice of Cheshire is good with fruit cake. Oh, and can I suggest grinding the cardamom seeds at the last minute – the ready-ground stuff loses all its magic.
Makes 3 × 400g jars
caster sugar – 100g
water – 1 litre
the juice of a lemon
quinces – 500g
green cardamom – 8 pods
mixed spice – 1 teaspoon
ground cinnamon – ½ teaspoon
golden sultanas – 200g
raisins – 200g
currants – 200g
dried apricots – 200g
light muscovado sugar – 100g
brandy or quince liqueur – 100ml
You will also need 3 × 400g jam jars, sterilised.
Put the caster sugar into a medium-sized saucepan, add the water and bring to the boil. Pour the lemon juice into the syrup. Peel the quinces, cut them into quarters, remove the core, then lower them into the pan. As soon as the syrup comes back to the boil, lower the heat to a simmer, partially cover the pan with a lid and leave for forty minutes, or until the quinces are soft but far from collapsing. Take off the heat.
Break open the cardamom pods, scrape out the seeds and crush them quite finely, using a pestle and mortar or spice mill. Put them into a capacious saucepan with the mixed spice and ground cinnamon. Add the golden sultanas, raisins and currants, then roughly chop the dried apricots and stir them in. Pour in 400ml of the quince cooking liquor and add the brown sugar. Simmer, stirring from time to time, for twenty minutes. Cut the quinces into small dice and add to the mincemeat. Pour in the brandy or liqueur, simmer for a further five minutes, then spoon into sterilised jars and seal.
11 NOVEMBER
Martinmas, a ham dinner and a citrus cake
For centuries this has been a feast day. The date marked the end of the agricultural year, the harvest was well and truly in, the livestock were ready for slaughter, wine was ready for drinking. It is officially the beginning of winter. In medieval times, such an important feast was celebrated by eating a goose for those who could afford it, duck or chicken for those who couldn’t.
The celebration began in France, then spread to the Low Countries, Eastern Europe and then to Britain. It is still celebrated in Germany, with goose, dumplings and red cabbage. In parts of Scandinavia too, though to a much lesser extent, with lantern processions and singing, church services and, of course, feasting. In Britain we have traditionally eaten our goose on Michaelmas Day, September 29. But reading Martinmas in my diary does get me thinking about Christmas dinner and what will be on the table.
By now, many a working-class Victorian family like mine would have had a healthy collection of coins in their local Goose Club. This was a way of saving up for your festive food by stashing away as much as you could afford each week during summer, autumn and early winter, to help dilute the horror of the cost of Christmas. Each member of the clubs, which were run by publicans, groups of friends and butchers, would eventually get a goose and possibly some other treat into the bargain. Goose Clubs live on in the form of Christmas Clubs, though one usually only hears of them when they go bust, and everyone loses their hard-saved cash.
Today is, of course, Remembrance Day, Poppy Day, when we remember those who have died in the line of duty. I have breakfast at the Wolseley in London’s Piccadilly, where, on the dot of eleven, a full minute’s silence is observed by staff and customers. Hush falls on the enormous, high-ceilinged room; the staff stands still, not so much as a teaspoon tinkles in a saucer. I am moved almost to tears.
I have cooked a ham around this time of year for as long as I can remember. A practice run for the ham I will need over Christmas, that eternally useful cut-and-come-again joint for lunch, supper, sandwiches.
I usually take the route of simmering the rolled and tied joint in water or apple juice with peppercorns, cloves, celery, carrots and onions, then draining and baking it. The poaching keeps it moist, and the baking ensures a sticky crust, the surface of the ham usually having been spread with marmalade, apricot jam or honey.
This year I take the same route, but decide on quince paste – membrillo – as the sweet spread for the crust. The quince jelly is a good idea; it stays put in the oven, which is more than you can say for maple syrup or apricot jam, which you painstakingly paint over the meat only to find it slides off into the tin. The fruity-tartness is welcome with the sweet pink ham.
Ham with quince paste, cauliflower and dill
Serves 6 hot (with enough for a further 6 cold)
gammon, rolled and tied – 2.5kg
quince paste – 250g
dry Marsala or medium dry sherry – 4 tablespoons
For the stock:
an onion
cloves – 5
a cinnamon stick
black peppercorns – 10
bay leaves – 3
For the cauliflower:
cauliflower – 1.3kg
dill – 25g
Put the gammon into your largest saucepan or stockpot. Peel and halve the onion, then add it to the water along with the cloves, cinnamon stick, peppercorns and bay leaves. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and remove any froth from the surface of the liquid with a draining spoon. Partially cover with a lid and leave to simmer, gently, for an hour and a half. After an hour’s cooking, turn the meat over.
When the ham is ready, remove it from the cooking liquor and place it in a roasting tin, reserving the stock. Heat the oven to 200°C/Gas 6. Mix the quince paste and the Marsala or sherry in a small saucepan, letting it bubble briefly until it melts. Spread the paste over the ham. Bake for twenty-five to thirty minutes, or until the glaze has set. Remove and loosely cover with foil to keep warm.
While the ham bakes, break the cauliflower into florets and place in a saucepan. Ladle enough of the hot ham stock into the cauliflower pan to cover the florets, then bring to the boil – no need to add salt. Let the florets simmer until tender, about twenty to twenty-five minutes.
Remove half the cauliflower with a draining spoon and place in a warm, shallow dish. Put the remaining cauliflower and 200ml of the cooking stock into a blender with the dill (do not overfill – you may need to do this in two lots). Pour the cauliflower and dill purée over the cauliflower florets.
Serve the ham, carving it thinly, with the cauliflower. You will have plenty of ham left for tomorrow. Serve it with the apricot and tomato chutney recipe (see December 12, here (#litres_trial_promo)).
Orange poppy seed cake
It is also useful to have a cake that will keep in fine condition for several days. This soft, moist, citrus-scented loaf cake has the crunch of poppy seeds running through it.
Serves 8
soft butter – 225g
golden caster sugar – 225g
grated zest of an orange
grated zest of a lemon
plain flour – 110g
baking powder – generous ½ teaspoon
ground almonds – 115g
eggs – 4
poppy seeds – 20g
For the topping and syrup:
candied orange and citron peel
juice of the orange and lemon above
caster sugar – 75g
poppy seeds and golden sugar – 1 tablespoon of each
You will need a deep-sided, rectangular cake tin, 22cm × 12cm × 7cm deep, lined on the base and sides with baking parchment.
Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Cut eight thin slices of the orange and citron peel, no thicker than 5mm, and the right size to sit on top of the cake, and set them aside. Put the butter into the bowl of a food mixer, add the caster sugar, and cream for a good five minutes until soft and fluffy. Add the orange and lemon zest. Sift together the flour and baking powder, then stir in the ground almonds.
Break the eggs into a small bowl and beat lightly with a fork to combine. With the beater at a moderate speed, add the eggs, a little at a time, to the butter and sugar. If the mixture appears to curdle slightly, add a spoonful of the flour and almond mixture. Continue adding the flour until thoroughly creamed. Mix in the poppy seeds.
Transfer the mixture to the lined cake tin, gently smoothing the surface flat. Place the slices of citrus peel on top of the cake. Bake for forty-five to fifty minutes, until a skewer, inserted into the cake, comes out without any raw cake mixture attached. Leave the cake to cool for ten minutes.
Make the syrup: put the orange and lemon juice into a saucepan and add the sugar. Bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar has dissolved. Still in its tin, pierce the cake in about twenty places with a metal skewer or a fine knitting needle. Spoon the citrus syrup over the surface, letting it trickle through the holes. Scatter the surface with poppy seeds and, if you wish, golden sugar crystals.
12 NOVEMBER
A pot roast partridge
We never had Champagne. At least not the real stuff. All that mattered was that a cork went pop and there were bubbles in our glasses. No one minded that what we drank was tummy-twistingly acidic and had bubbles the size of Maltesers. The point was noise and fizz. Asti Spumante had it with brass knobs on.
For a family on the quieter side – Mum, softly spoken as ever, with her calming there-there tone; Auntie Fanny, deaf as a post, who just sat and hummed to herself; and me, the little boy too scared to speak lest he upset his father – we nevertheless managed to make quite a bit of noise at the Christmas table. Dad was unusually loud, Mum got the giggles, brothers and aunties and grandmas were animated and chatted excitedly. Even the docile, flatulent golden retriever would run in circles around everyone’s legs. It never occurred to me that the table came to life because everyone was slightly pissed. We appeared, for once a year at least, like any other vast, happy family.
The year I was seven, Dad opened a bottle of the Italian fizz at the table, the cork flew across the room – a trajectory aimed at nowhere special – and contrived to hit one of my mother’s precious painted birds that lived on the wall over the fireplace, knocking the poor thing into an explosion of blue and yellow feathers. Mum laughed, yet I could see she was quietly fuming. The dog was coughing up feather-balls for weeks afterwards.
Birds pepper my winter eating like currants in a garibaldi. The goose or turkey at Christmas, of course, but weeks before that, the pheasants, grouse, a roast duck with apple sauce, maybe a quail or two. I like the deep flavours of game birds, the toasty bits in the bottom of the roasting tin; the accompaniments of redcurrant jelly, bread sauce and tiny sausages. I also relish the chance to tear my food apart with my hands. Much has to do with the shooting season, but the flavours are appropriate to the time of year, particularly when small birds are roasted with suitable vegetables, onions, mushrooms, parsnips and Jerusalem artichokes. And that medlar jelly you didn’t make, well, that is just the accompaniment for a roast pheasant or partridge too.
The most expensive of the birds is grouse and is something I tend to leave to restaurants. But the partridge does it for me. Expensive without being prohibitive, neat, lean and sweet-fleshed, they have a sense of jollity to them that I suspect comes from the carol. (There are no songs about a guinea fowl.) It is too early to think of partridges in pear trees but it is almost impossible to think of them without the rumbustious little tune coming into my head. The idea that one should be served on the first day of Christmas doesn’t really work, as we need a bigger bird for the attending family, so they are better pre or post Christmas.
The rhyme, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’, starts with a modest bird on Christmas Day and carries on through French hens and milking maids, getting grander with each of the twelve verses until we get to the leaping lords on Twelfth Night. An accumulative song – each verse builds on the previous ones – it was first published in Britain in 1870 and is thought to be of French origin. No one really knows how it started but it is generally considered to be a children’s game of memory and forfeit. I love the idea that the best-known version appeared in a children’s book called Mirth without Mischief (oh, for simpler times).
I have a pear and partridge recipe in Tender, Volume II. I take a more savoury route today, browning parsnips and onions before cooking them with a pair of little partridges and some chicken stock.
The clever trick and indeed the point behind pot-roasting is the small amount of liquid added to the casserole. Under a tight lid, the moisture produces steam that keeps the flesh of the birds juicy, circumnavigating the lack of fat that can make a traditionally roast bird dry. The roast partridge, by the way, is a tidy little dinner for one, and carries with it a faintly festive air. I eat them from early September (they come into season from the 1st) until early February (last shoot is the first day of Feb), often as a plain roast. Covered with bacon and smeared with dripping, they will roast to rose-tinted perfection in twenty-five minutes at 230°C/Gas 9. I tend to remove the bacon after ten minutes to give the breasts a chance to burnish. I throw in a chipolata or two if I’m feeling frivolous, or a slice or two of black pudding for the final ten minutes of cooking. Cabbage is a splendid accompaniment.
Pot-roast partridge with parsnips and smoked garlic
I am pot-roasting today’s birds with parsnips, juniper and smoked garlic.
Serves 2
banana shallots or small onions – 3
parsnips, medium – 2
smoked garlic – 4 cloves
olive oil – 3 tablespoons
partridges – 2
chicken stock – 250ml
thyme – 6 sprigs
juniper berries – 10
double cream – 125ml
Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Peel the shallots and slice them in half lengthways. Peel the parsnips and cut them into chunks the length of a wine cork. Peel the garlic.
Warm the olive oil in a casserole for which you have a lid, lightly brown the shallots, parsnips and garlic in the hot oil, then remove. Season the birds with black pepper, then brown lightly in the oil. Remove the birds, pour in the stock and bring to the boil, scraping at any delicious debris in the pan and stirring it into the stock.
Return the birds and vegetables to the pot, tuck in the sprigs of thyme, and season with a little salt. Lightly crush the juniper berries and add them too. When everything returns to the boil, cover tightly with a lid and place in the oven for forty minutes. Remove the partridges, wrapping them in foil to keep them warm, then place the pot over a high heat and reduce the volume of liquid by half – it won’t thicken but will instead give you sweet, creamy juices. Stir in the cream, check the seasoning, then make sure all is thoroughly hot. Serve the birds in shallow bowls or deep plates, spooning over the vegetables and the juices. You will need a spoon as well as a knife and fork, and something with which to wipe your fingers.
13 NOVEMBER
Maple syrup and fig terrine
The garden has skeletons – hydrangea, hornbeam and beech – holding their leaves even now. The pale walnut browns are smart and crisp against the green of the high yew hedges. Blue tits feast. Leaves, yellow, grey, black, lie frozen to the garden table, silver with frost. The space is tidy, but beneath the neatness lie worries. Two much-loved trees in the garden require major surgery, a third lost its leaves in the summer. The white jasmines, normally survivors in any garden, have suffered from a mysterious fungus. (This could well be due to their location, a curiously warm, damp courtyard where frost gets no hold, an enclosed space warm enough for pelargoniums to spend their winter unprotected.)
The garden needs a fierce snap of cold and so do I. The frost adds a touch of fairy-tale sparkle to the hedges and trees but it is still warm enough to venture out without a coat. I long for snow, for frost-ferns on the windows, for ice on the water butt.
I have been gardening long enough to know that there is much happening underground. Narcissi and tulips sprout, muscari and crocus are waking up. I feel this happening too. I feel in need of a prolonged cold patch to stir my own energy. Where some see a garden in repose, a sleeping beauty, I see what lies beneath, the garden’s hidden spirit, waiting to emerge.
