Nothing beats mince pies after a big Christmas dinner!

Christmas without mince pies is like Cannon without Ball, Paul without Debbie – it just doesn’t work. You could always pop down the supermarket and buy in your mincers but where’s the fun in that?! The recipe below, spotted in a Sainsbury’s magazine and tweaked ever so slightly, is supposed to make 24 mince pies – trust me, whilst the pastry is enough for 24 the mince meat will probably make in excess of 36! It’s also worth bearing in mind they calculate the 24 based on cutter sizes of 7.5cm and 6cm. So stick on some cheesey Christmas music, pour yourself some booze and get stuck in…

Brown Sugar Pastry
350g Plain flour
75g Brown sugar
125g Cold butter, diced
1 Large egg yolk
Vanilla extract

Begin by preheating the oven to 200˚, fan 180˚, gas mark 6.

Now, sift the flour into your mixing bowl and add in the brown sugar.

Next rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

Making a well in the centre, add the egg yolk, a few drops of vanilla extract and 4-5 tablespoons of cold water.

Now for the messy bit, get your hands in there and start to combine the ingredients until they form a soft dough.

Tip it out onto a lightly floured work top and knead briefly until the dough becomes smooth.

Divide your pastry up into 2 or 3 smaller balls, wrap them in cling-film and place in the fridge to chill for 30 minutes.

Whilst waiting for the pastry to chill it’s time to make the mincemeat.

All you need for your own mince meat

Your mincemeat should be a nice thick, sticky consistency

Mincemeat
25g Blanched almonds
50g Ready-to-eat Dried figs
50g Ready-to-eat Stoned dates
50g Ready-to-eat Pitted prunes
50g Dried cranberries
50g Cut mixed peel
50g Regular or Vegetarian suet
1/2 tsp Ground mixed spice
1/2 tsp Ground cinnamon
Grated zest & juice of 1 tangerine
75g Dark soft brown sugar
1 Small Bramley cooking apple, unpeeled & grated (and it really does need to be small!)
2 tbsp Dark rum or Brandy (or Whisky or Orange Liqueur or any other alcohol really, not sure why they only suggest those two)
Demerara sugar for sprinkling

For some reason when you say to most people why don’t you make your own mincemeat they give you a look of both mild contemplation and utter despair, usually responding with “Oh it takes far too long” or “It’s too much faffing and arsing about, you might as well buy it”. Now, it may come as a surprise to learn that from weighing out the ingredients to spooning it into your pastry it will take you around 15 minutes. Yes. 15 whole minutes. Ages isn’t it? Admittedly it may work out costing a little more than buying a jar readymade but I can guarantee it will taste a whole lot better!

Firstly if your almonds aren’t already, blanch them by covering with boiling water for no more than 1 minute. Drain off the hot water and immediately rinse with cold water. Drain again and pat dry to remove excess water. Now holding the almonds between your thumb and index finger, squeeze gently and the skins should slip off.

Put the blanched almonds, figs, dates, prunes and depending on their size, cranberries into a food processor and pulse until roughly chopped.

Transfer to a mixing bowl and add in the remaining ingredients stirring until well mixed.

At this point the recipe states to add 2 tablespoons of your alcohol, personally I felt this was woefully inadequate, you could barely taste the brandy in the first batch I made. If you follow my lead you will stir in a good 4 tablespoons (more if you are so inclined) and leave the mix to stand whilst you turn your attention back to the pastry.

Nothing beats mince pies after a big Christmas dinner!

Having chilled for 30 minutes remove your pastry from the fridge.

Lightly flour your work surface and roll the pastry out thinly.

Using the larger cutter, cut out 24 pie bases and push them into your bun trays.

Add a spoonful of your mincemeat, careful not to add too much as it will bubble over.

Roll out the remaining pastry and cut out the 24 tops with the smaller cutter.

Brush the underside of each top with milk and place on each pie, pinching the edges together to seal them.

Brush your pies with milk, sprinkle generously with demerara sugar and make 2 small cuts in the centre with a knife.

Lastly, bake in your preheated oven for 20-25 minutes.

The best thing about making your own mincemeat is that if you make too much simply put it in an airtight jar and store it in a cool dry place until next year. Alternatively, festively label and decorate your jars and give them out as stocking fillers!

Time for a nice warm mince pie, smothered in cream – enjoy.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

For me, hotpot is the meal of childhood. It was the meal mum would bring out to satisfy all seven of us, ladled out at times to suit the comings and goings of a family growing up. Roughly cut potatoes bulked out the meal and the prized joy of dumplings were fought over far more than more meat. Hotpot was the meal that seemed to just appear when needed and even today I’m surprised at how quickly it seems to appear on the table. As though mum was some sort of Northern Soup Dragon, ready for winter siege or surprise visitors.

Hotpot is a slow-cooked dish. Its meat needs to be coaxed into submission, tenderised by time rather than the threat of the flame. It took me years to pluck up the courage to try this one, as simple as I knew it would be to cook it seemed to represent a line to step over. Once cooked I’d be judging the dish I measured my childhood by against the one I would put in front of my own family.

Mine is different to the one cooked by mum. Mine is perhaps meatier, richer; cooked without the pressure of a large family it should be better. But of course it isn’t. It could never be. But it is mine. And that’s the trick with any sort of cooking: make it your own way. Purists will scream about my inclusion of mushrooms, throwing in the potatoes rather than having a sliced potato lid (which is nice) and all the other bits that make this mine. I don’t use chicken livers either but that’s down to who I cook it for rather than my own personal tastes.

Ingredients:

• 500g beef steak
• 2-3 large potatoes, peeled and cut into chunks
• 2 carrots
• Handful of mushrooms roughly but thickly chopped
• Pearl Barley
• Thyme
• Worcestershire sauce
• 1 pint beef stock
• 1 large onion
• Flour (seasoned with thyme added)

Prepare the meat by cutting into bite-sized chunks and mixing into the seasoned flour to coat thoroughly.

Quarter the onion (don’t dice it, beauty is in tasting slices of onion softened by the cooking process).

Slice the carrots and mushrooms into chunks.

Chop your potato into chunks as well.

Get the oven on to about 170C.

In a measuring jug, add some worcestershire sauce and a beef stock cube. Add about a pint of boiling water.

Add some oil to a heavy based saucepan and brown the meat before keeping it to one side.

Add the onion to the pan to get some colour and then add the mushroom, again to brown.

Add the carrots and the potatoes and mix thoroughly before adding the meat back in (along with any juices that would be on your plate by now). Top up with the stock until the dry ingredients are just covered.

Add plenty of thyme and sprinkle in some pearl barley. Bring to a simmer.

Cover your pan and place in the oven for around 2 hours or longer if the heat is reduced. Check after an hour to make sure you still have liquid. You don’t want this being dry.

If you are adding dumplings (which I rarely do now – preferring to save that pleasure for meal time at my mum’s) then add them about twenty minutes before you are bringing it all out of the oven.

Serve with beetroot and a couple of slices of thick, white bread to mop up that delicious, meaty gravy.

Serve this to your children and tell them they won’t be eating again until summer.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Right, so if I remember this correctly….

Ingredients:

• Pork mince
• Potato flour
• Salt
• Spring onion
• Fresh ginger
• Soy sauce
• Japanese Mirin (sweet cooking Rice Wine)
• Hondashi (Japanese Fish stock)
• Udon noodles
• Seaweed leaves (pages?)
• Eggs
• Chinese cabbage
• Carrots / green beans / any other veg you want really
• Miso

Technique:
Put the mince into a bowl, and knead in some grated ginger, a little spring onion, some salt and some soy sauce.
Add about two tablespoons of the Potato flour to bind the mixture.

Add about a level teaspoon of the Hondashi (fish stock) and about a tablespoon of the rice wine to a nice big pan of boiling water.

Using a couple of spoons, sculpt the mince mixture into balls and drop into the stock. This is a good point to imagine you are an alchemist.

Bring another pan of water to the boil for the Udon noodles.

Oh, and another one to hard-boil a couple of eggs.

Cut a few pieces of the seaweed off the main sheet and put them into a bowl of water to expand and soften.

Chop up a decent amount of the Chinese cabbage and add other veg as you see fit. Add these to the stock.
Once the noodles are nearing completion, take a hefty tablespoon of Miso and lower it into the stock, using chopsticks to break it up into the liquid.

Important: The stock should be just simmering at this point. Under no circumstances allow the mixture to boil when the Miso is added. I am assured this will change the flavour a great amount.

Empty the Udon into a colander, and rinse through with cold water to stop the cooking process.

Then rinse through with boiling water to bring back to temperature.

Serve them into a couple of bowls.

Add the vegetables and pork from the stock, then pour the stock over the dish.

Add your seaweed, your peeled, hard-boiled egg, and a generous sprinkling of chopped spring onion.

Season to taste.

Eat with a spoon and chopsticks, allowing 30 minutes resting time after the meal for a contended snooze.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

For the meal on Monday I decided to buy in some venison. Yes, you know this is going to be good.

So, on to the shopping list. You will need:

• Venison – cut into chunks
• Shallots – about 8
• Turnip
• Carrots
• Potato – I bought some called apple fir
• Chicken or beef stock
• Red wine
• Balsamic vinegar

Add the venison to a mix of flour, thyme and black pepper. Stir it around.

Peel the shallots, cut the vegetables into one inch chunks and heat up some oil.

Brown the meat quickly and then reserve. Add the veg and shallots and cook for about ten minutes. Put the meat back in and then add the liquids. Balsamic, red wine (half a bottle) and stock. Scrape the bottom of you pan when you stir it all in. That gets all the lovely browned meat into the stew. Use around a pint of stock.

To this I then added some red hot, firecracker sausages. Made in Lancashire they are our answer to chorizo. I’m counting on the strong venison flavour to be able to withstand the heat.

And that’s it. In true stew style you just throw it all in and leave for about two and a half hours.

Warning: I am cooking and writing on a Sunday evening. The meal won’t be eaten until Monday. This post will be updated with photos and a postscript which will reveal whether or not it tasted good. Fingers and forks crossed.

And I’ll be serving the stew with some locally brewed raspberry wine from www.wilsonswinery.co.uk.

POSTSCRIPT

OK, so opinion was divided on this one. My wife loved it and I hated it. We both enjoyed the vegetables but I felt the meat was too strong, it needed another flavour to tone it down somehow. The veg was nice. The chorizo didn’t add anything at all to the dish but I’m going to have to read around if I’m to ever make a similar dish again. Next week I may stick to a simpler Lancashire Hotpot. Or I may fish around and find something just as belly-warming.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Rarely a day goes by when I don’t take a good look at this site. That and the excellent Food Pornographer’s. Daily Internet use for me is a scramble to read news, design blogs, game news and advertising journals. It’s not easy cramming all of this into an already overloaded day but even so, I do try to squeeze in a little food viewing. It’s one of the ways I relax each evening without resorting to the TV so neglecting that would be like quitting reading or hiking through the Lake District.

When it came to cooking this eye wateringly good dish, however, I couldn’t get it all and so had to improvise a little. Cauliflower was substituted for parnsips and I’m afraid I had to resort to plain old beef rather than venison. And what’s that about only TWO meatballs? Pah!

Despite my tinkering the meal was still a success and one that will be going into the scrap book for repeated cooking. I will get the venison in next time; although I hear it’s a little deer.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

It doesn't lend itself to high-falutin' presentation but it sure does taste good

Autumn is my favourite season. It’s the time of year when I can start cookinjg up stews and casseroles (what’s the difference between those anyway?) and get thick, crusty bread onto the table and even start thinking of mulled wine. It’s the time of year you eat for comfort and can’t, in all conscience, buy salad.

This weekend I decided to put my feet up and let others do the cooking. My wife searched through the books and came back with this recipe which we ate over two evenings and cried a little when the pot was empty. It’s beef and red pepper and you’ll love it. Unless you are vegetarian.

You will need:

• Beef – enough for however many people you are serving and of a cut good for stewing
• Red peppers – usually 2 or 3 for 2 people
• Mushrooms – a good couple of handfuls
• Red wine – a decent merlot or alcohol-free equivalent
• Shallots – about 10 will do for 2 people
• Stock – beef stock, a pint of
• Flour – about 3 tablespoons of
• Herbs / Spices – thyme, chilli, bay leaf
• Worcestershire sauce
• Potatoes – for roasting

Start be preparing everything – peel the shallots (but leave whole), slice the peppers, slice the mushrooms and cut the beef into one inch cubes (thinking more about presentation on this dish and I may try it by cutting the beef into larger medallions which would place neatly), mix up a pint of stock, open the bottle of wine and place the flour into a bowl along with some salt and the thyme and chilli.

Throw the beef into the flour mix and turn it around in order to cover completely.

Add some oil to a large, heavy pan and heat. Once hot, brown the meat in batches and reserve. Add the shallots (whole) when you are on the last batch of meat.

Chuck in the mushrooms and let them fry a little to colour. Then place all the meat back in, add the peppers and get ready for the last stage.

Add the bottle of red wine, more thyme and a dash of worcestershire sauce. Then pour in the beef stock and add the bay leaf. Bring to a boil and then cover and either leave on a low heat on the hob or place in the oven for 2-3 hours (170C).

That’s it. I serve with roast potatoes which i do an hour before the whole thing is ready. You may need bread at the end in order to mop up the rich, juicy gravy.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

I bought a rack of lamb with 7 chops on it. It was meant to be 4 which would be enough for 2 people but 7 was the smallest they would do so I went with that. And I ended up being very grateful for it. I could have eaten this again.

First I put some potatoes in to par-boil. That meant chopping them into two inch cubes (they aren’t really cubes of course because potatoes aren’t square and I’m not about to go wasting good food). Drop them into boiling water and leave for 10 minutes.

In the meantime warm the oven (200C) and place a tray with some vegetable oil in there to heat up.

After your potatoes have par-boiled, drain, sprinkle with plenty of thyme and salt. Then pour the hot oil over them and give it all a good shake before returning the mix to tray and slamming in the oven for about an hour.

That’s the tough part over with.

Put your carrots on to cook – I can’t give you a time for this because it’s a personal thing. I like them mashed and so reasonably soft.

Get some green beans read to cook (these take 5 minutes so leave until the meat is out).

Prepare your lamb. Make a breadcrumb mixture from stale bread, garlic, salt, thyme, sage and rosemary. Coat your lamb with mustard and then roll it in the mixture. Place the rack in a frying pan and “seal” all over. Then put the rack into the oven. Timings again depend on preference. I had mine in for 30 minutes but it wasn’t cooked to my wife’s satisfaction so I ended up carving it, putting it back in the frying pan and finishing it all off with a blow torch for speed. The blow torch was a great way (and a tip that came from Carl) of rendering the fat down to a nice crispy finish so I’m glad I did that.

For the sauce I reduced about 100ml of balsamic down to a thick consistency and then added a beef stock cube, some thyme, 200ml of boiling water, some worcester sauce and some pepper. I reduced that down to a thick(ish) sauce and added some butter right at the end. No idea why, everyone seems to do it on the telly though.

And that’s about it. The sauce was the secret but the lamb still shone through and tasted great.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Tuna and pasta is, for me, an utterly warming and indulgent meal. Usually I cook this mid-week and it does enough for two nights. Really I ought to cook it the night before I plan on eating it because it would benefit hugely from time to let the flavours to develop.

The idea for this comes as a mashup between the inspiration of Jamie Oliver and my son’s first pasta based meals that we did for him when he was weaning. I enjoyed “showing” him how best to stuff food into an eager mouth and developed a taste for the way his food was being prepared. Then I added chilli

So, for Tuna Pasta you will need:

• 1 x red onion
• 3 x tins of tuna (or jars)
• 1 x jar passata
• Flour
• Milk
• Butter
• Cheese (cheddar, grated)
• 1/3 pint vegetable stock
• Cinnamon
• Basil
• Chilli flakes
• Pasta (I use Penne)
• 1 x big ass saucepan

Dice your onion nice and fine (unless you like it big a chunky). Then set it a-softening in the pan care of a little oil. Add some chilli flakes to get the heat. Add some cinnamon and the stalks from the basil. I sometimes forget the basil and add a bit of paprika here instead, just to make it all fiery.

When the onion has softened, throw in the tuna. Remove from tins first. Then add the passata and give it a stir before adding the stock. It will be very liquidy but you want to reduce it down quite a bit so leave it alone.

Make a cheese sauce by melting some butter in a pan and mixing it with flour. You need a nice roux, not too floury and not too soft. Once that is done start adding milk bit by bit. This is just a standard white sauce and you don’t need too much of it but you may as well make a load and then freeze anything you don’t use.

Once the sauce has thickened, throw in the grated cheese and remove from the heat. The cheese will melt.

Add some of the sauce to the tuna mix. This is down to personal preference but maybe 200ml. Give it a stir and let it bubble more.

Cook your pasta with plenty of boiling water and salt.

When the pasta is perfect, drain and add to the tuna mixture. If I’m using this over a few nights then I will put a portion of the tuna mixture aside before adding pasta to what I’ll be eating that night.

And that’s it. Give it some ripped basil if you aren’t making this a fiery dish. You can put it all in a casserole dish and then cover with breacrumbs and grill if you want one of those pasta bake things that come out of packets but I like it just the way Mom intended.

©2012 HEAD BLOG. All Rights Reserved.

Risotto rice
White wine (a glass of)
Stock (about a pint – one cube of veg and one of chicken)
1 white onion
Red pepper (roasted – either made yourself or a jar of ready roasted red peppers)
Chilli flakes
Prawns (raw)
Peas
Coriander

Get your stock on the bubble and keep it on a low boil
Use some of the oil from the jar of red peppers (tablespoon should be fine) and drop it into a hot heavy based saucepan.
Give that a minute or so and then get your onion in. Let it soften in the oil – you don’t want colour on it. Add some chilli flakes as it cooks. They are powerful hot so trial and error on this. I use what is commonly referred to as a “bit” sprinkled over the onion.
Stir in the red pepper.
Add the risotto rice and stir it about so that it soaks in the oil.
Turn up the heat. You need the pan nice and hot but you don’t want anything burning.
Once you’ve given the rice a good stir for maybe 30 seconds then it’s time to start making the risotto. So pour in the wine and begin stirring.
The wine should boil down quite quickly. Keep stirring.
Once it becomes fairly thick then add a ladle of the stock from your bubbling pan of joy.
Let this reduce down and add another ladle-full.
Keep doing this until the rice becomes softish. It’s nearly cooked so you’ll want to add the peas and begin frying your prawns.
Keep an eye on the risotto – don’t let it dry up (you may add a couple of ladles now which will warm the peas through and you can turn down the heat so it will continue to reduce and soften the rice but won’t over cook.
Fry off your prawns. Nice hot pan, bit of oil. Dry the prawns if they seem overly wet and give them a blast of ground pepper and maybe more chilli flakes.
Once they turn pink then they are cooked. Tip them into the risotto which should be pretty much ready.
Taste the risotto. Your stock should be almost gone anyway. If the rice tastes nice then you are ready to serve.
Ladle into warmed bowls. Sprinkle over some chopped coriander and scoff until you are happy.

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