Christmas is coming

Glad tidings we bring to you and your King, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.....

How was your Christmas? I don't like to think that it's already in the past tense, all that effort and expectation has got to be worth a season of goodwill not just a day.  But how do you achieve that when Boxing Day sales start at 5am and lure you in for all you didn't get from Father Christmas. 

From what I've heard and observed, loads of you enjoyed a local Christmas. With such amazing food available from your local town or your Christmas eve Stroud farmers market 

it was easier than ever to enjoy the tastiest Christmas yet.  

We had some great local highs this year with presents.  Tom loved his handmade leather case, the kids were thrilled with all theirs and I was given a fab selection of local gifts- vouchers for a local massage, lush clothes bought locally and a beautiful make up bag bought at Prema's Christmas fayre.

As for our Christmas dinner, we were in France and I can tell you their weeny turkey wasn't a patch on my 9kilo one I cooked at the beginning of December, their sprouts weren't up to much either.

Very ironically I did find myself in a French supermarket on Christmas eve. Father Christmas needed the obligatory walnuts, (later regretted in airport customs, as the kids stamped on them to get at the nuts) clementines and an ice cream.  French towns seem to have the same predicament as our local towns with domineering supermarkets presiding over the demise of independents and the high street.

For High Street sake, make it your new years resolution to shop locally and keep your independents thriving. 

...now bring out that figgy pudding.

soup

Why does Christmas always seem such a mega task?  

I write this feeling overwhelmed by what needs to be achieved this week before the children break up for school.  Obviously all the pressure is put on by myself trying to make it all lovely, local, special and social.  Last weeks main feat was to get through the Turkey.  There was turkey leftovers, turkey curry, turkey pasta, turkey in the freezer, turkey in the dog and of course turkey soup.  My lot in life at the moment is to make soup.  I have started to make soup for our shops and have also been involved in organizing soup lunches at school.  As a consequence my hands resemble celeriacs but I can now knock out a mean soup.  Making a stock from the turkey carcasse made a far superior soup to one made with water or a vegetable stock.  I just sweated some onions in butter and salt then added leeks and a good selection of winter veg: swede, parsnips, potatoes, carrots and covered with the stock and cooked until tender.  The soup was smooth and sublime.  I also used some of the stock to make a broth.  Frying off some onions, leeks and chestnut mushrooms then covering with stock some torn turkey and tarragon, this was stuff to nourish the soul.  That’s the next achievement for this season- to avoid getting ill, there’s worse ways to do this then filling ourselves with broth and clementines.

Now to ice the Christmas Cake...

  

Christmas come early

I have celebrated my one year anniversary of shopping locally with a lush family breakfast at Star-anise.  I continue to take it very seriously and have not been to a supermarket in a year.  This Christmas I continue to find gems locally, there is nothing more exciting than finding a perfect present for someone you love in your favourite local independent.  This season a couple of fantastic pop up shops have appeared in Stroud, Nothing but Navy and the Weaving Shed.  In Nailsworth there is the newly opened Sharland and Lewis for all your present needs.  

Today I have been practicing what I preach and cooked a nine kilo turkey.  This beast will most certainly feed us for the week if not until Christmas.  The Elizabeth David turkey recipe had been hanging over me since the new year, and it was definitely worth waiting for.  I made her chestnut, apple and pork stuffing and filled him up with this and sausagemeat.  I then smeared him with butter and cooked him in a moderate oven for four and a half hours.  We weren’t quite ready for a full on Christmas dinner so we had him with braised celery and roasted beetroot, steamed sprout tops and roast potatoes.  For pudding we tested out a bakery Christmas pud, and my it was good with homemade brandy butter.  Christmas tip of the week,* heat your brandy and light in the saucepan before pouring over your pudding for the biggest flames you have ever seen- Elizabeth David would be proud.

*Disclaimer - ceiling touchup paint may be required. I or SNJ can not be held responsible for fire or burning in any way. 

Christmas is coming

Elizabeth David is taking a back seat, the boy is working in London and I in school girl fashion have left all the tricky recipes requiring moral support to the end.  I can't see myself boning a duck at that twilight hour between 5 and 6 with four hungry tired children running wild.  Persuading my children after athletics one night that they really would like a dinner of oxtail stew or ox kidney isn't going to happen.

This means I will just have to seize opportunities as and when.  We had a jolly nice egg breakfast yesterday, baked with grated carrot and bechamel sauce.  Last weekend was my mother in laws birthday so I scored some points by cooking up an ED feast.  Scallops with garlic and parsley served with a winter salad.  A peasant stew, filled with pork, beef, rabbit and chocolate accompanied by good crusty bread and home grown kale made for a hearty autumnal main.  Then a pudding of  lemon ice cream and baked figs.  All finished with some jolly nice cheese and homemade membrillo.  

I am keeping myself busy without Elizabeth David by Christmas shopping.  I have managed already to get myself pretty sorted using great independent shops.  The girls wrote their Christmas lists yesterday and Father Christmas will successfully be able to tick off the list locally, there's lip gloss, hair bands and an electric toothbrush for the eldest, felt tip pens and all the Barbie princesses for the middle and for the youngest sylvanian families and a lollipop.    

Trout Triumph

Back on the ED wagon
Tonight I cooked a couple of trout bought from the long established David Felce and daughters in Stroud market.  For old times sake I cooked each to a different Elizabeth David recipe, one in a court bouillon cooked for only five minutes then topped with breadcrumbs fried in butter.  The second recipe was cooked similar to an a la greque.  Water and olive oil were boiled up together with the addition of thyme some crushed juniper and thyme.  The trout was cooked in this fast for one minute then slower for three, thats it.  perfect.  I served this with celeriac dauphinoise, purple sprouting and horseradish.
It marked a very welcome return to ED.
Hopefully this will be continue tomorrow when I cook my 9 kilo turkey!

Remaining ED

This is work in progress and is my remaining recipes from French Provincial Cooking.  Like a defiant teenager I have left all the tricky recipes to the end-nice one!
Stock for sauces
Tresor de cuisine
Orange sauce
Sauce Bercy
Beurre blanc nantais
Sauce catalane
Horseradish and cream sauce
Marinade pour les gibiers
Salad of chickpeas
Celery with anchovy sauce
Mussel salad
Oeufs durs en tapenade
Tomatoes aux Oeufs durs et a la mayonnaise
Eggs in tarragon flavoured jelly
Pain grille aux anchovies
Le saussoun
Sweet sour cherries
3 x salad nicoise
Salad au Chaplin
Salade de pissenlits
Salad of artichoke hearts and lettuce
Bouillon pour
Game consommé
La soupe au lard
Cream of turnip soup
Lentil and sorrel soup
Marseillais fish soup
Nimois fish soup
Mussel soup
Oeufs mollets a la crecy
Hard boiled eggs with onion and cream sauce
Oeufs sur le plat, au miroir
Oeufs sur le play
Oeufs sur le plat Bercy
Oeufs Frits
Oeufs Frits au Beurre noir
Les Oeufs poches
Poached eggs with mussel stock
Poached eggs with meat sauce
Omelette aux truffles
Petites fondues a la bourguigonne
Semolina and potato gnocchi
Truffled pate of duck
Potted rabbit and pork
Galantine of pork with parsley and garlic
Sausage baked in brioche dough
Poached sausage with horseradish sauce
Cured knuckle of pork
Beet root baked in their skins
Cepes a la bordelaise
Dried haricot beans red wine
Lentils with parsley butter
Glazed turnips
Onions stewed in wine
Roast onions
Tinned petits pois
Sweet peppers stewed with tomato
Tomatoes stuffed with breadcrumbs and parsley
Fish
Fried smelts
Red gurney with cheese sauce
Grilled herrings with mustard sauce
Soft roes in jacket potatoes
Mackerel with egg butter and herb sauce
Fish mayonnaise
Whiting with red wine sauce
Turbot with cream and herb sauce
La bourride de Charles befit
Cream of salt cod
Salt cod in red wine sauce
Eel baked with leeks and black olives
Fresh water crayfish in court bouillon
Sweet sour carp in the Jewish fashion
Burgundian fish stew
Trout in court bouillon
Fried scallops with garlic and parsley
Mussels on skewers
Mussels with onion and tomato
Moules a la provencale
Lobster mayonnaise
Langouste comme chez nenette
Crawfish or rock lobster with cream and white wine sauce
Grilled Dublin bay prawns
Snails
Stuffed snails
Tinned snails with parsley and garlic butter
Frogs legs
Beef
Boeuf a la bourguigonne
Boeuf a la mode
Oxtail stewed with white grapes
Grilled oxtail
Ox kidney stewed in wine and mushrooms

93, and that's not it, to quote the third child "what the earth"!
Sent from my iPhone

I couldn't carry a box

I always loved receiving my Riverford box,  arriving home to a box packed full of shiny fresh fruit and vegetables never failed to delight.  As you know a year ago with a tear in my eye I cancelled this in favor of shopping locally.  I was reminded of this on Saturday as I carried my loaded box of fruit and veg to the car, this box too was beautiful full of shiny fruit and veg.  Of course it is always all in the packaging and I am the first to fall for something wrapped in tissue with a bow round it packed in a paper bag.  But I realised this week, that carrying your shopping in an open box gleaming up at you is as good.  This is as satisfying for me at Horsley Community shop when I grab one of their used cardboard boxes and fill it with groceries, be it cereal, washing up liquid, milk or butter.  This week they are starting to stock Duchy Farm’s organic veg so my box will be all the more bountiful.

I have been busy with Elizabeth David this week trying to crack through those last recipes.  A couple of beef stews, lamb fillet and a pepper omelette.  Butter has been the ultimate ingredient this week, transforming some ordinary carrots to something extraordinary with a splash of cream and some salmon steaks cooked in butter then bubbled in white wine were sublime.

I heard a saying this week that taste is not in the cooking but in the shopping.  This I have to agree with, taking pride in my beautiful, locally sourced box of shopping, and what it’ll cooks up is invariably more tasty.