Smoked salmon blinis

This was our starter on Christmas Day. You weren't keen on the smoked salmon, but the blinis and cream cheese disappeared remarkably quickly.

You'll need:

4 small blinis per person (I cheated and bought these in Sainsbury's - life's too short to stand over a frying pan for that long)
cream cheese
smoked salmon
capers (4 or 5 for decoration per person)
cucumber, sliced into long thin strips - you want 5 or 6 strips per person

I thought the blinis would be nice warm, so I heated mine in the oven for 2 or 3 minutes (the oven was on at about 180 degrees C to cook the capon anyway). Spread the cream cheese liberally on each blini, and then top with a generous piece of smoked salmon.

Arrange the cucumber on each plate in a fan shape, and dot with the capers. Sling 4 blinis on each plate, and present to your delighted audience.

Smoked salmon, lemon and courgette pasta

We had a freezing cold morning in the park being pursued by ravenous geese, followed by a trip to Borders in the frenzied sale crowds. The former was rather better than the latter.

Tea was the result of leftovers from Christmas day (we had smoked salmon on little blinis as a starter).

You'll need:

pasta (spirali were good for this)
smoked salmon - whatever you've got left
grated rind of a lemon
a large courgette - sliced into chunks
an onion, finely sliced
salt and lots of black pepper

Gently fry the onion in a little olive oil until it's translucent. Add the courgette (you may need to add more olive oil at this point), and fry until soft.

While this is happening, stick your pasta on.

Grate the rind of your lemon into the courgette/onion mixture. Add some pepper/salt to season it. When your pasta's only got a couple of minutes to go, throw the smoked salmon into the frying pan with the courgette/onion mix, to heat it through.

Drain the pasta, and shove it in the pan with everything else. You could add a squeeze or two of juice from the lemon at this point, if you like the lemony taste.

Sprinkle with lots of grated cheese and eat straightaway. It'd be nice with a green salad.

Profiteroles

We made these to have for pudding on Christmas Day, stuffed with whipped cream and topped with dulce de leche chocolate and toffee sauce.

The shape went rather wonky (they turned out rather flatter and wider than I hoped), but they tasted delicious. A piping bag might have solved the problem, as might not putting in all the egg (you're after a fairly stiff mix).

You'll need:

150g plain flour
1 tablespoon sugar
75g butter (cut into small pieces)
200ml water
3 eggs lightly beaten

Stick the oven on at 180 degrees C.

Making choux pastry is not anything like making normal pastry - it's completely weird.

First of all, you'll need to get a sheet of baking paper. Fold it in half (to make a chute), and then flatten it again. Sift the flour onto the paper, and sprinkle with the sugar (and a pinch of salt).

Put the water and butter into a pan, and then bring to the boil. Take it off the heat, and then use your paper chute to quickly tip the flour/sugar in. Beat it all together with a wooden spoon, until you get a smooth dough.

Leave this strange mixture to cool down for a while - about 20 minutes should do it. Then you'll need to add the egg - and do this little by little, beating it in really well each time. You may not need all the egg (see above), as you're looking for a fairly stiff mix that will only drop into the bowl fairly reluctantly when lifted up.

If you spoon or pipe this mixture into little mounds (about 4cm across) on a baking tray (use your greaseproof paper chute to line it), you should be able to get about 24.

Bake the little buns for 25-30 minutes, until they're golden and puffed up. Prick each bun (with a skewer, or pin) to release the steam inside - and then return them to the oven for another 5 minutes so that they dry out. Leave them to cool completely after that.

I made these a couple of days in advance, and they kept fine in an airtight tin. Filled with whipped cream and drizzled in chocolate, no-one really noticed they were a bit misshapen...

Chocolate stars

These cheered your Dad up no end, after a week of flu.

You'll need:

a bar and a half of dark chocolate (about 150g ish)
a small pack of dried cranberries

Break the chocolate up into small pieces, and place in a large bowl. Sit the bowl over a saucepan which contains a couple of inches of water, and turn on the heat. The chocolate will gradually melt - keep stirring it so it doesn't stick on the hot edges of the bowl.

Once you've got molten chocolate, turn off the heat and leave to cool, for 10 minutes or so. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper, and pour the chocolate (which should be thick but not too drippy) onto the paper. Leave for another 10 minutes, until it's starting to set.

Take one small star cutter, dip in hot water, and use to cut shapes in the chocolate. Quickly push a cranberry into each star.

Leave the chocolate to cool completely - it's often easiest to do this in the fridge. Once it's cold, you can peel the chocolate off the greaseproof paper, and the stars should be easy to push out.

Red cabbage

There's a lovely Nigella Lawson recipe for proper red cabbage, that you cook in red wine and spices for a couple of hours. Sadly, this isn't it. I was going to have a go at making that yesterday, but by the time we'd been to the park, walked to the post office and back, and sorted out the ingredients for toad in the hole there just wasn't time.

This is my poor substitute. You'll need:

a quarter of a red cabbage, finely chopped
half an onion, finely chopped
a slosh or two of vinegar
a teaspoon of brown sugar

Fry the onion in a little olive oil until it turns translucent. Add the cabbage, and cover with some boiling water. Add a couple of sloshes of vinegar (I used the white wine variety), and a teaspoon of brown sugar.

Leave to simmer for ages. You'll also need to add a lot of black pepper, a little salt, and maybe a slosh or two more of vinegar - it depends how you like it.

We ate this after about 40 minutes, but it could have gone on cooking for a lot longer quite happily.

Apple sauce

This goes really well with the roast pork. You helped me make this - I peeled the apples and you chopped them up carefully into chunks with a sharpish knife. Aside from the odd moment of wafting the knife about a bit too much, you were brilliant.

You'll need:

a couple of cooking apples (we used up some of the stash from Grandma and Grandad)
a couple of teaspoons of sugar

Peel and core the apples, and chop into chunks. Put into a small pan with a little bit of water and the sugar, and leave to bubble away for 15-20 minutes. The apples will turn mushy - splodge them down in the pan a bit if you like a smoother sauce.

Whatever you do, don't forget about the pan once it's on the hob - if the apples boil dry they're an absolute pain to scrub off...

Roast pork (with especially crispy crackling)

I think crackling is probably your Dad's favourite thing (after curry and chicken dripping - not together, obviously). We made this for Big Meal For Jesus (BMFJ) yesterday, to Gran's instructions.

It's safe to say we've only just about recovered.

You'll need a large piece of pork to roast - we bought a shoulder of pork from North Acomb farm, but a pork loin would be just as nice.

First of all, you'll need to stick the oven on - at about 200 degrees C. You want it nice and hot for the first 20 - 30 minutes.

Then, wash your pork rind, and dry, really really thoroughly with some kitchen towels. Score the rind with a very sharp knife. Don't just do this a couple of times - you need to make a proper job of it. Then massage in some salt (not a huge amount, as you don't want to make the meat underneath too salty).

Stick in the oven for 20-30 minutes, then turn the oven down, and leave to roast. As a rough guide, you need to roast the meat for 30 minutes per 500g...

Once it's done, leave it to rest for 10-15 minutes before carving. We ate this with nubbled sprouts, parsnips, roast potatoes and Owen's special stuffing. It were great.

'Whatever's left in the fridge' fried rice

Your Dad made this today, to cheer himself up after a day of hacking and coughing.

You'll need:

an onion, finely chopped (the rest of the ingredients may change, but this is one thing that you really have to have)
a couple of peppers, chopped (different colours are nice)
a couple of carrots, chopped into small pieces
whatever odds and ends of meat-based things you can find - today we had a couple of rashers of bacon, a little bit of yesterday's roast chicken, and a couple of inches of chorizo to play with
rice
soy sauce
black pepper
an egg
hot sauce/mayonnaise to serve

First of all, sort out your rice. Stick it in a pan, with double the amount of cold water, and leave for about 12-15 minutes until all the water's been absorbed. Test it and make sure it's cooked - you may need to add a little extra water and give it another couple of minutes. Drain into a colander, and then run it under the cold tap to stop it cooking any further.

Then put your bacon (chopped up small) and chorizo (ditto) in a frying pan (you shouldn't need any oil with these two), and fry for 3-4 minutes. Add the onion, peppers and carrot, and cook until they've softened (this might take a little while for the carrot). Add in your chicken, and swish about until it's heated up. Do the same thing for the rice - at this point, you may need to add a little extra oil if it starts to stick on the bottom of the pan.

Add a tablespoon or so of soy sauce to the mixture, and then crack in an egg. Swish it all about for a couple of minutes until the egg is cooked and distributed evenly throughout the rice.

Season with black pepper (and possibly a little salt). If you're making this in the summer, it'd probably look really nice with a little chopped parsely on the top.

I like mine with peas, but your Dad thinks they're the Devil's work and prefers the mayonnaise/hot sauce combo.

Celeriac salad

You had a hectic time at the nursery Christmas party this afternoon (complete with a visit from Santa). So tea was nice calming food - a roast chicken, some potato wedges brushed with olive oil and baked in the oven, a spinachy salad, and the experimental celeriac salad.

I adapted this from a Jamie Oliver recipe - he includes vinegar and olive oil as well.

You'll need:

a celeriac
a heaped teaspoon of capers, finely chopped
a couple of large gherkins, chopped
two anchovies, finely chopped
a teaspoon dijon mustard
a couple of tablespoons of Greek yoghurt
a large teaspoon of mayonnaise
black pepper

First of all, peel your celeriac. Ours came out of the vegetable box, so it was fairly muddy, and sprayed soil all over the kitchen as I was trying to peel it. Oops.

Once all the skin has gone, keep peeling - you want lots of longish ribbons of celeriac. Ignore the fluffy bit in the middle - it can go on the compost heap.

Plonk the celeriac in a bowl, and add the gherkins, anchovies and capers. Mix. Swearing when you drop the capers on the floor is optional.

Mix together the yoghurt, mustard and mayonnaise in a small bowl, season with lots of black pepper, and then sling over the celeriac. Give it all a good stir, until everything is coated.

Onion and goat's cheese tart

While I was making mince pies, I thought I'd make a tart for tea - they use the same shortcrust pastry base.

You'll need:

a small log of goat's cheese
two or three large onions, sliced
a handful of black olives
dried thyme
black pepper
enough shortcrust pastry to line a flan tin

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C.

Chuck a slug of olive oil into a large frying pan, and heat. Add the sliced onions, and cook on a low heat for 15-20 minutes (at least - they can keep pottering along for much longer if you need them to), until they've softened and started to caramelise.

Roll out the shortcrust pastry, and line the flan tin. Shortcrust is usually pretty forgiving, so you can patch up corners if you haven't got the shape quite right. I use one of those flan tins with a removable base, just to make getting the damn thing out a bit easier.

Spread the onions over the base, and then top with 4 or 5 slices of goat's cheese. Sprinkle over some olives, thyme and black pepper, and then bung in the oven for 20 minutes or so until the pastry is golden and the cheese is molten.

We ate ours with a salad of spinach leaves - it went well with the oily cheese.

Mince pies

Having decided we'd hold an office party on Saturday (given that both me and your dad work from home the chances of us getting a Christmas party are zilch unless we organise one), I've spent the evening making mince pies.

You can get around 24 mince pies out of one jar of mincemeat.

You'll need:

one jar of mincemeat (I used the last one from last year's batch. It was a little on the dusty side, having been hidden at the back of the pantry all year, but tasted just fine.)
8oz plain flour
a little pinch of salt
4oz butter

Stick the oven on, at about 180 degrees C. While it heats up, get on with the pastry making. I use just a basic shortcrust pastry (I like my mince pies on the tart side), but you could add a little sugar to the mix if you wanted.

Rub in the butter and flour, and then add some really cold water to mix. Bring it together to form a smooth, pliable (and not sticky) dough. Roll the dough out on a floured work surface (you should probably leave it to rest in the fridge for 20 minutes or so, but I ran out of time to do this today), and cut out the bases for the pie tins. I cut out some stars to go on the top as well, but you could use just plain tops too.

Dollop in a spoonful of mincemeat (if you're using a shop-bought jar then beware - it tends to go quite runny in the oven, so use a little less than you think), and then shove the star/lid on top.

Bake for 12 minutes or so in the oven, until the pastry has turned a golden brown. Turn out onto a rack to cool.

They're rather nice when warm, especially if you sprinkle them with a little icing sugar.

Christmas tree decorations

The idea for these is shamelessly nicked from Nigella Lawson's How to Be a Domestic Goddess. They are deliciously spicy/peppery, and rather good fun to decorate.

You'll need:

300g plain flour
100g butter
100g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
4 tablespoons runny honey
a pinch of salt
1 teaspoon of baking powder
1 teaspoon of ground allspice
2 teaspoons ground black pepper

Turn the oven on to 170 degrees C.

Stick the flour, baking powder and spices/pepper/salt in the food processor, and give them a good whizz round. Chop up the butter into little pieces, and then shove in the blender too. Give it a quick blitz, and then add the sugar. Whizz round until it's all combined.

Beat the 2 eggs with the runny honey, until you get a delightful gloopy mess. Add this to the food processor too, and the mixture will start to come together into a beautifully spicy brown dough.

Roll the dough out thinly (about half a centimetre or less) - you'll need a fair amount of flour so it doesn't stick. Cut out whatever shapes you fancy - we did hearts, stars (large and small), and some rather nifty Christmas trees.

Take a small pointy object (I used the nozzle of the icing gun, but a straw or skewer would do), and poke a hole in the top of the decoration - you'll need this to thread some ribbon through to hang on the tree.

Bake in the oven for about 20 minutes - they'll turn brown(er), and won't be doughy underneath.

Once they've cooled down, you can ice them, which is the really fun part. We did ours with an icing gun, and so made royal icing. You'll need:

one egg, separated into white and yolk
icing sugar - about 225g, but you might need a little more

Sift the icing sugar through a sieve into the egg white. Mix round until you have a smooth, glossy icing. You want it fairly stiff if you're going to pipe it through an icing bag, or use an icing gun.

This makes quite a lot of icing - we used the other half to decorate the gingerbread house we bought from IKEA. It keeps in an airtight tin for a few days if you've made slightly too much.

Chicken and courgette stir fry

We spent the day doing Christmassy things - buying our tree, decorating it, and then making biscuit decorations.

Tea was a bit secondary, to tell you the truth. Maybe it should have been turkey in honour of the festivities.

You'll need:

noodles
some cooked chicken (I roasted some chicken legs yesterday, and there were a few left over, so I just pulled the meat off them and then chucked the bones in a pan to make some stock).
a large courgette, thinly sliced lengthways
an onion, thinly sliced
a carrot (or pepper), thinly sliced
a tablespoon of soy sauce
a sprinkling of dried ginger (sadly there wasn't any fresh ginger lurking at the bottom of the fridge)
a teaspoon or so of honey
sunflower oil
sesame oil

Firstly, get the noodles sorted out. Bung them in a pan with some boiling water to cover them, and cook for 3 minutes or so, until they're done but not soggy. Drain.

Mix together the ginger, soy sauce and honey in a small bowl.

Then, heat the sunflower oil in a large frying pan on a high heat (we use a heavy, dark green Le Crueset one - but that's only because the wok went rusty years ago). Add the vegetables, and stir round until they start to soften a little (probably 2-3 minutes). Chuck in the chicken, and swish about for another couple of minutes until it reheats. Add the ginger/soy sauce/honey mixture, together with a teaspoon or so of sesame oil, and let it bubble away in the pan.

Add the drained noodles, and stir for a minute or so, until the noodles are reheated. Serve as soon as possible - noodles seem to go cold terribly quickly.

We ate this with some steamed broccoli (drizzled with a little soy sauce).

Salmon and leek parcels

It's still freezing cold, with powdery snow everywhere. It'd be rather good for sledging except (a) it's about 1mm deep, and (b) Grandma and Grandad failed to bring the enormous wooden sledge with iron runners that Uncle Dom and I used to hurtle downhill on.

Tea turned out to be rather good, considering it was thrown together in 10 minutes after a hideously cold walk back from nursery in the dark.

You'll need:

salmon steaks (two large ones fed the three of us)
a couple of large leeks, sliced into rings
two large foil squares
a little olive oil
black pepper

Take your square of foil, and place half the leeks on top. Sit the salmon steak on top of the leeks, and drizzle with a little olive oil. Season with black pepper. Repeat for steak 2.

Stick in the oven at about 175 degrees c for ooh, half an hour or so - open up the parcel and have a look. If the salmon is pink all the way through, then you're in business.

We ate ours with a real ragtag of things today. I was going to do a lemony, oniony risotto to go with it, but discovered there was only one rice for one portion - so your Dad had that on the side, while we had some tiny star-shaped pasta, swished round in some pesto.

Pancakes/crepes

A rotten sort of a day - cold, wet, and everyone with hacking coughs. We brought in the little Christmas tree to make up for it, and decorated it with tiny fairy lights, angels and chocolate baubles.

Tea was rather an afterthought, after all that excitement.

To make 15 thin pancakes you'll need:

500ml milk
2 eggs
a pinch of salt
250g plain flour

Bung the flour in a large mixing bowl, and add the salt. Make a well in the middle of the flour, and crack the eggs into it. Add about half the milk, and whisk, so there's not too many lumps in the gunge. Add the rest of the milk, and give the batter another really good whisk so it's nice and smooth.

If you can leave the batter for 10 minutes or so while you sort out the fillings, so much the better. We tend to like our pancakes rolled up with crispy bacon and a little something inside (pick any from sweetcorn, spinach, mushrooms and courgettes, grated cheese) or drizzled with a little maple/golden syrup and lemon juice.

Put your frying pan on a high heat, and add a little sunflower oil. Once it's really hot, add a ladleful of the batter into the pan. Swirl it round really quickly, and then leave for a minute or so, until you can feel it coming away from the pan when you shake it. Flip the pancake (the best bit is obviously when Daddy drops one on the floor - although I have to say he was remarkably restrained tonight), and stick a little bit of your filling in a line on the top.

Cook for another 30 seconds until it's starting to brown on the underside, and then flip one half over, to cover your filling, and slide onto your plate. Eat really quickly while it's still hot...

Apricot and chocolate chip muffins

Just the thing for frosty trip north to the Alnwick Garden, to meet up with Santa at the lantern parade.

This made about 16 little cupcake-sized muffins.

You'll need:

150g dried apricots, chopped
500ml boiling water
225g self-raising flour
75g brown sugar
1 egg, lightly beaten
125ml vegetable oil
125-150ml milk
100g chocolate chips (or in our case, leftover mini chocolate Easter eggs gleefully unwrapped from their foil and smashed up into little pieces)

Stick the oven on at about 180 degrees C, and line some cupcake pans with paper cases (that's your job usually).

Add the apricots to half a litre of boiling water, and leave to stand for 5 minutes. Drain, and then stand them on some kitchen paper to absorb the worst of the wet.

Mix the flour, sugar and apricots in a large bowl. Pour everything else in (including the chocolate, assuming you can stop eating it) and give it all a jolly good stir. It'll look supremely revolting.

Using a teaspoon, drop the mixture into the paper cases, and then shove the muffins into the oven for about 15-20 minutes - they're done when the tops are browned.

These are gorgeous when they're still warm and crispy on the top. They freeze well too.