What I ate over Christmas!

 



 

Happy New Year! I hope you all had lots of festive fun and food over the holiday. I'm a little late, I know, at wishing everyone a happy new year but I've been back at work since the 28th December, so I've been busy. 

What did I eat over Christmas? Well, far too much is the short answer. It is a distinct possibility that Royal Mail will issue me with a post code all of my own any day now. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I have decided it's celery and a handful of laxatives all the way to June so I can slip into my two piece (don't try this at home kids!) I don't want Green Peace throwing buckets of water over me and desperately struggling to heft my bloated form off the beach and back into the sea as soon as I lie down on my beach towel. There will be WWF leaflet campaigns, telethons and rallies all because I ate two slices of Christmas cake and not just one.  

Before I get into all the good things I'm going to delicately chew 10 times before I swallow, I will recap on a few of the lovely, naughty things I gorged on.

Christmas day consisted of all the usual lovely things. A bronze turkey, moist and delicious served with freshly made cranberry sauce, chippolata sausages, crisp roast potatoes and parsnips, stuffing and brussels sprouts boiled and then fried in a little butter with breadcrumbs and chunky chopped brazil nuts. Christmas pudding then followed with rich brandy butter melting over the top.



I think my Dad went over the top a little and made about five puddings, so I took some back with me and made a nice dessert. I simply crumbled up the christmas pudding into small chunks and gently fried them in a little butter, then topped with some ice cream. I made the ice cream myself and flavoured it with a syrup made from orange zest, juice and brandy, but vanilla would work just as well, especially with a little brandy, cointreau or amaretto drizzled over the top. 



While I was at home for Christmas, Graeme decided to make some rocky road, a la Nigella Lawson. We had seen it on her Christmas programme and thought it looked really nice. I made him promise to leave me some for when I got back after Christmas. I tucked in as soon as I got through the front door and three pieces later I was feeling rather sick, but in wonder of the beautiful thing I had just consumed. It was DELICIOUS! 

The last thing I really enjoyed was on new year. I had never had goose before but was really keen to get one. We ordered one from our trusty farm shop and it was lovely. I think it was even more lovely because I just sat down and enjoyed it and didn't have anything to do with the cooking of it at all as I was at work all day. Sadly we didn't a good picture of it before carving but you can see from the gleaming carcass that there wasn't much left of it. 



The diet starts tomorrow, fingers crossed.

I am still here, Honest!!

I am struggling to get my act together to write blog posts recently. Maybe it's just because of the amount of energy that goes into making the cakes and I need a couple of weeks to recharge my batteries after making one. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. So to make amends I will tell you about this dessert I made last weekend.

Last Saturday I saw James Martin making an iced coffee and honeycomb parfait on Saturday Kitchen. I had never made parfait before, but it looked nice so I thought I would give it a go. As usual my inability to stick to anything written down or done for me, i.e a recipe, lead me to make a totally different, but delicious, chocolate and amaretti parfait.

Ingredients

150g dark chocolate

3 free range eggs - separated

150g caster sugar

500ml double cream

50ml Amaretto (optional)

100g Amaretti biscuits

Line a loaf tin with cling film. Lightly Crumble 50g of the amaretti biscuits into the base of the tin. Put the egg yolks and half the sugar in a bowl over some simmering water. Whisk the mixture for about ten minutes until thickened. Remove the bowl and set aside. Melt the chocolate in another bowl over the simmering water with the Amaretto and then add to the egg mixture, stirring to combine. Whisk the egg whites until soft peaks and then add the rest of the sugar to make a raw meringue mixture. Stir this into the chocolate mixture. Finally softly whip the cream and fold this into the chocolate mixture with the other 50g of the amaretti biscuits crumbled lightly. Pour this into the pre-prepared tin and tap to settle out properly. Put in the freezer for about four hours until set. To get the parfait out of the tin, either use a chefs blowtorch around the outside of the tin or sit the tin in warm water for a minute, then simply turn out. Cut into slices and serve.