Christmas cake

We stirred this up properly this afternoon, and made a wish - you screwed your face up tight, and wished for snow on Christmas Eve.

The recipe comes from a rather battered page in Sainsbury's magazine, November 2007.

You'll need:

315g butter
340ml apple juice
295g dates, chopped
1 medium cooking apple (about 300g), peeled, cored and grated
350g raisins
315g sultanas
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
150g plain flour
150g ground almonds
lots of freshly grated nutmeg
zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon

First of all, stick the oven on at about 150 degrees C.

Then get out a fairly large saucepan (you're going to be boiling up all the dried fruit in it, so it needs to be pretty big), and melt the butter with the apple juice. It'll look very strange...

Stir in the dates, apple, raisins and sultanas, bring to the boil, and simmer for 5 minutes or so. Then comes the fun bit - tip everything into a (large) mixing bowl, and add the bicarb. Once you mix it in, it'll fizz enthusiastically for a while - guaranteed to amuse small children.

Leave everything to cool for 5-10 minutes. Add the flour, ground almonds and nutmeg, and beat until it's all thoroughly combined. Grate in the lemon and orange zest and you're done!

Stick in a large tin (at least 20cm/8in round and 9cm/3.5in deep). This year we've tried a star-shaped silicon tin, rather than having to bother with all that wrapping in baking paper. It seemed to work and was much less faff. (If you haven't got a silicon tin then you'll need to line the tin with baking paper, and also wrap a double layer of paper around the tin itself before it goes in the oven). Lay a sheet of baking paper on the top, otherwise the cake will turn too brown.

Bake for 2.5 hours - it's done when a skewer or long thin pointy thing inserted into the centre comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin, then turn out onto a baking rack.

If you're going to eat it straightaway, dust with some icing sugar, and go off in search of some Wensleydale cheese. If you're keeping it until Christmas, wrap in greaseproof paper, then foil, and place in a tin. You could feed it a little rum/brandy at intervals if you feel like it.

Cherry and almond muffins

We spent the morning in the park in the freezing cold, and then realised that we'd eaten all the cake in the house. Doh.

You'll need:

65g glace cherries, chopped
25g sliced almonds
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
175g plain flour
100g sugar
1 egg, beaten
125ml milk

Chuck the baking powder and flour into a large mixing bowl. You probably ought to sift it, but doing that with a three-year-old is nigh-on impossible, as it just goes everywhere.

Add the sugar, and stir thoroughly. Mash up any sugar lumps and bumps. Add the cherries, and then the almonds, and stir really well. You don't want one person to get all the cherries in their muffin, and someone else to not get any. That could cause a riot.

Mix the egg and milk together in a jug, and then pour in to the mixture. Stir until it's all combined - doesn't matter how lumpy it is.

Put into little fairy cake cases (we road tested the silicon ones against the paper ones this time, and actually the paper ones were better).

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes or so at 180 degrees C. Try not to eat them all at once.

Pork and cabbage parcels

We spent this afternoon running round Homebase like a bunch of loons, looking for wallpaper samples. Sixteen rolls of paper later, we've found one we all quite like for the loo. You liked pretty much all the ones we tested up against the wall, especially if they were pink.

Tea was adapted from a Hugh Fearnley Whernley recipe. His leaned towards Eastern Europe, with dill and sour cream, whereas this one is a bit more Greek in its origins.

You'll need:

tomato sauce
a largish onion, finely chopped
two tins of chopped tomatoes
a clove of garlic, chopped
salt/pepper/thyme

Fry the onion and garlic in a little olive oil until they soften and turn translucent. Add the tomatoes and herbs, bring to the boil, and leave to simmer for 20 minutes or so.

parcels
12 large cabbage leaves (we used white cabbage, but savoy would also be nice)
500g pork mince
an onion, finely chopped
half a mug of rice
an egg, beaten
a few mushrooms, chopped
oregano, salt and pepper

Add a mug of cold water to the rice, and cook until soft (there shouldn't be any water to drain away). Stick in a large bowl.

Brown the pork mince, then add the onion, and fry until it's softened. Add this mixture to the rice.

To the rest of the pork/onion juices in the pan, add the mushrooms, and fry for a couple of minutes (you might need to add a little extra olive oil here). Chuck in your bowl with the rice/pork etc. Add the beaten egg, season well with the herbs/pepper, and squidge together.

Take your 12 large cabbage leaves, and blanch for 3 minutes in some boiling water. I had to do this in two batches, as I only had a small pan on the go. Shake most of the water off, and then stick a very large tablespoonful of the pork/rice mixture in the middle of each leaf, and fold up. Place fold side down in a large baking dish. Repeat ad nauseam until all leaves are parcelled.

Pour the tomato sauce over the top, and then stick in the oven at 180 degrees C for 30-40 minutes. We ate ours with grated cheese on the top...

Mediterranean fish stew

It's been one of those drizzly, mizzly sort of days, that's only cheered up by a bowl of steaming warmth and Captain Jack Wakeman.

You'll need:

fish (I used a couple of trout fillets, cut into chunks)
two tins of tomatoes
whatever potatoes you have left in the cupboard
a couple of green peppers
a few mushrooms
two onions
1/3 jar of black olives
a clove of garlic
salt, pepper, oregano

Fry the onion and garlic in a little olive oil, until it's softened. Add the peppers and mushrooms, and cook for a couple of minutes until they start to go soft too. Add the potatoes, and cook for another couple of minutes.

Bung in the tins of tomatoes, the olives and lots of seasonings, bring to the boil, and then simmer for 45 minutes or so, until the potatoes are soft, and you have a beautiful tomato-y sauce.

Add the fish, and simmer gently for another 10 minutes or so, until it's cooked (it might cook quicker, depending on the size of your chunks, so keep an eye on it).

Serve with some buttered couscous.

Chicken and spinach pie

We spent this afternoon scooting round Jesmond Dene like lunatics - pushing me round on the scooter made you laugh like a drain.

But then it got dark, so we came home and made pie for tea, turning the kitchen into a glorious fug of warmth.

You'll need:

leftover chicken from a roast (doesn't need to be a huge amount)
a couple of small onions, sliced
a clove of garlic, crushed
2/3 bag of spinach
a couple of hundred ml of milk
a good-sized knob of butter
a tablespoon of plain flour
some grated nutmeg
lots of black pepper

shortcrust pastry

Turn the oven on to about 200 degrees C.

Pull your chicken off the bones, and cut into chunks. Stick in the bottom of your pie dish.

Fry the onions and garlic in a little olive oil until they're translucent. Add the spinach, and stir until it's all wilted (usually takes a couple of minutes, if that). Transfer the mixture to the pie dish, and mix in with the chicken. Season with lots of black pepper, and maybe a little salt.

Using the same frying pan, throw your knob of butter in, and let it melt. Add the flour, and cook for a couple of minutes. Gradually add the milk, letting it get absorbed by the flour each time. Keep stirring...

Grate in some nutmeg. Stir a bit more.

Once the sauce is nice and thick, pour over the mixture in the pie dish. Top with the shortcrust pastry, and make whatever fancy designs you like on the top (we had a 'M' today), not forgetting to leave a slit for the steam to escape.

Bake in the oven for 30 mins, or until the pastry is golden brown. Serve with some nice veg (we had broccoli, peas and sweetcorn today...).

Pumpkin soup

Well what else do you do with the inside of the jack o' lantern?


You'll need:

everything you can possibly scrape out of the pumpkin (except the seeds and the stringy bit in the middle)
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ground ginger (or an inch or so of finely grated fresh ginger)
an onion, finely sliced
salt and black pepper
vegetable or chicken stock (when in doubt use some bouillon powder)
a little coconut cream

Fry the onion in a little olive oil, together with the ginger and turmeric, until it's translucent. Add the pumpkin (chopped into small pieces), and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the stock, salt and pepper, bring to the boil, and then simmer for 20 minutes or so.

Either shove in a blender, or use a hand blender, to make it all nice and smooth. Swirl in a little coconut cream on the top. Eat with lots of fresh bread rolls and cream cheese, preferably under the verandah at the Alnwick Garden in the sunshine.

Grandma's stuffing (sage, onion and apple)

Just the thing to go with roast chicken, after a day of climbing, icing Halloween biscuits (better late than never) and watching the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

You'll need:

half a small box of sage and onion stuffing
some breadcrumbs (a slice of stale bread will do, or whatever's in the freezer)
a small apple, grated
a handful of raisins
an egg
some hot water
salt and pepper

Stick the stuffing and breadcrumbs in a small mixing bowl. It doesn't matter if your breadcrumbs are frozen - they'll defrost soon enough, and anyway you're going to be shoving them in a 200 degree oven shortly.

Add the grated apple and raisins, and mix well. Beat the egg gently, and bung in the mixing bowl too, along with a little salt and pepper. Add some hot water from the kettle - you're looking for a fairly sticky mixture, but you need all the dehydrated stuffing mix and the breadcrumbs to be rehydrated nicely.

Fashion into balls - I just dollop them out onto a baking sheet. Bung in the oven for 20 minutes or so, until they're nice and brown. Just stick them in at whatever temperature the oven's on for the chicken - they'll be fine.