Be Excellent To Each Other

L-LOL.

There's a happy medium, I think. The bottom one is waaaaaay too runny for me.

There's also the "undercooked eggs make Mrs K projectile vomit" to contend with as well. Bearnaise sauce has a fairly instant effect on her, for instance.

I've been on a Christmas baking kick for the past week or so. Decided to give mince pies a go yesterday, and blimey if they didn't turn out fantastically.

For the pastry, I tried a recipe from the BBC Good Food website. It's unusual in that you don't use water to bring the dough together - the recipe relies solely on the butter to do it. I was a bit sceptical, but the pastry turned out wonderfully

Mincemeat from a jar - next step will be to try and make some myself.

Just to be clear, you were sceptical about the idea of replacing water with extra butter when making pastry?

and you've got my friday night

*CRASTER'S BUTTER KLAXON*

Is that the "unbelievably easy mince pies" one? Just bought some mincemeat today to give that very recipe a try for Chrimbo, purely because our local megamart now has a "British" shelf - mincemeat is not something you'd usually find over here (other delights include Shipham's beef paste, Cadbury's Flake and Penguins.

Yep, that's the one.

Talking of pies, I did a really easy chicken and mushroom one yesterday (recipe from an ancient Sainsburys cookbook).

Ingredients for the filling are 500g of cooked chicken, 1 onion finely chopped, 1 clove of garlic, crushed, around 150g of mushrooms,sliced, 300ml of chicken stock, 1 tablespoon of flour, parsley.
Fry the onion until soft, add the garlic and mushrooms for a couple of minutes then take it off the heat and sprinkle on the flour. Then you add the stock, give it a whisk (you’d expect it to come out lumpy, but it doesn’t), then back on the heat until it thickens and add the chicken and parsley and some black pepper (I also put in some sweetcorn) and that’s the filling done.

I didn’t have leftover chicken as the recipe suggests, so I pan-fried the skinless chicken breasts and ripped them up when cold rather than frying them cubed. Served it with the easy version of roast potatoes (around an hour in the oven from raw, rubbed in olive oil and with salt and pepper) plus veg.

The pastry was ready-made supermarket puff pastry.

Just had epic breakfast at The Breakfast Club in Spitalfields.

Huevos rancheros with added home fried potato.

Awesomes.

Nice. The Hawksmoor breakfast is still the one to beat though.

That is impressive.

Really impressed by TBC though. Two chorizo sausages, two fried eggs, lots of tortilla, sour cream, salsa, guacamole and the best refried beans I have had in a loooooong time.

Ooh. I want that now.

I have the awesome Kerb street food market going on outside my office front door, and I'm still too full of breakfast Togo out and have some!

Go to the market and get some Eat My Pies scotch eggs for the weekend. They come in a variety of flavours including chorizo and black pudding (not together obviously!) and the yolks of the eggs are slightly runny. Delicious. It's run by Andy Bates who is on The Food Network. The man is a genius.

Go. Now. You'll thank me.

They're not here this week. We get a different six stalls each time. I'll be sure to sample their wares next time they're here.

For the record I went for a pimp steak hot dog from the Big Apple Hot Dog Co.

Yum!

I love Mexican breakfast food. I have a baked eggs and peppers dish with ranchero sauce I make sometimes:



And here's a breakfast burrito I made a few weeks back:



As for Scotch eggs, the best I've ever had have been from The Handmade Scotch Egg Company. Craster can testify to their greatness. Those ones Ange posted look very similar.

I did once get to sample this, though, which was remarkable; an onion bhaji Scotch egg!


Onion bhaji scotch egg! by PenLlawen, on Flickr

Chicken parmesan by PenLlawen, on Flickr

That's not a parmo!

This is the American chicken Parmesan (shallow fried, tomato sauce, mozzerrella and parmigianio-reggiano, with spaghetti) rather than the Northern England parmo (deep fried, cheese sauce, cheddar, with chips/salad). Frankly, I'm with the Americans on this. It's a hell of a lot closer to the Italian original (escalope Parmigiana).

Yay our Christmas Fortnum & Mason pies have arrived (a few of us from work put an order in every year).

I keep it simple, I just get a four-pack of the hand raised pork pies (they do me one per meal), and a Poacher's Pork Pie, which I split into two - so even though it costs £22 for the lot, I get six meals out of them.

The pies are so nice they don't need anything fancy to accompany them, just mash or chips and some veggies or beans.

BEST PIES EVER.

I suppose one could make pies oneself, but, y'know, effort.

Also, Fortnum & Mason use SPACE AGE PACKING TECHNOLOGY. All the pies are boxed up and swaddled in some sort of sleeping bag astronaut space suit type thing with a load of ice gel packs, so that even though they have been posted from the UK in a big cardboard box, the gel things are still mega ice cold and the pies are all chilled, I really don't know how that works.

I'm currently in the middle of epic prep-work for my wife's birthday dinner. It's going to look like this...

Starter of coconut shrimp with homemade sweet chilli and sesame & soy dipping sauces.

Main course is Chicken Souvlaki, with Greek-style fried potatoes, rice and a Greek salad with a homemade creamy feta dressing.

Dessert is a chocolate custard with a port & cherry compote.

I'm exhausted already and there's still four hours to go...

Remember to save some energy for shagging afterwards.

It'd be an awful shame to go to all that effort and not get your leg over at the end of it.

Heh. If tonight's anything like last night (where our 1 year old refused to go to sleep and was up until 1am dancing and demanding we read her endless In The Night Garden books) I'll be out of luck anyway.

lulz

Remind me to post the recipe for those chocolate cherry thingies. Fucking epic.

Souvlaki too please.

Any food I need to Google to find out what it is, is clearly too posh for me.

You ass. You've just made me go to Fortnums and buy pork pies. And then I went wine shopping in there for New Year. You ass.

That's what you get for being a member of the moneyed metropolitan elite.

Gorgeous pies and fine wines.

So really, it's worked out OK for you.

I suspect wine shopping is expensive there. I guess they don't sell Namaqua at £17 per box?

Well I managed to steer myself away from the £950 Montrachet, if that helps.

Bagsy sit next to Craster at New Year!

Gravadlax made up and curing the fridge.

Every recipe I look at for the sauce is wildly different. Does anyone (Nickachu?) have a particular recommendation?

My souvlaki recipe is totally made up, but this is what I use for the marinade...

Good glug of olive oil.
Lemon juice (from about one lemon).
Couple of cloves minced garlic.
A little minced onion.
Couple of tablespoons of dried oregano.
Teaspoon of cumin powder.
Salt and pepper.

Mix all this together well. Give it a taste - if I find the lemon to be a little overpowering I usually add something to sweeten the marinade a little, like agave nectar. You can also add a little extra seasoning/flavouring if you want at this point - like I said, I totally wing this recipe whenever I make it.

Chop up either chicken breast or pork into good-sized chunks (if you're going to skewer and grill/barbecue) or smaller pieces if you're going to just pan-fry. Toss with the marinade and leave for at least a couple of hours, but longer if possible.

Either place the meat on skewers and grill or barbecue until done or, the cheaty cheat method is just to pan-fry it. Serve over rice, with a side of potatoes, which have been parboiled and then finished off in a frying pan with the following...

Healthy knob of butter.
Olive oil.
Minced garlic.
Minced onion.
Lots of oregano.
Cumin (I usually put a higher proportion into the potatoes than I do with the chicken marinade)
Salt and pepper.
Good squeeze of lemon juice at the end.
Turmeric for extra colour, if you'd like.

You're not looking for crispy potatoes here, just saute them with a lid on, shaking or stirring gently from time to time until cooked through and thoroughly coated in the butter/oil mixture.

Again, I would have to Google that.

Soulvaki and Montrachet? It's like some sort of secret code.

Sucks to be you!

I don't actually mean that, it's just the ridiculous yet brilliant secret code from the last mafia scum game.

I'm spotting a theme: Foreign foods and drinks.

I have only been abroad once in my life, which was for my honeymoon, and I didn't like it very much.

Was glad to get home.

I only leave the Isle of Man now when someone dies or gets married.

Can someone nominate that post please?

I don't mind what for - POTW or belmingist.

Tonight I attempted to make a limoncello posset. Instead I appear to have created the world's greatest egg nog.

Roll with the punches, Cras.

Of course. This is how we learn. If of course I actually remember it tomorrow.

So, here's some of my festive cooking...

Appetiser served to some friends on Christmas Eve. Home-cured gravlax, with homemade rye cripsbread and mustard and dill sauce:



A little snack of homemade vanilla shortbread with Cointreau double cream:



German baked apple pancake (apfelpfannkuchen), heavy with cinnamon and nutmeg. This was breakfast on Christmas day:



(Cras, as you can see, I've tidied the presentation of this up considerably...)

And the big meal itself: Christmas dinner. Roast goose with pan gravy. Parsnips and potatoes roasted in goose fat. Chantenay carrots glazed with maple syrup and thyme. Pigs in blankets. Homemade cranberry sauce with rum and winter spices.



(Portion is strictly for photographic purposes. I ate this, then went back for seconds, followed by thirds.)

Excellent work. Bet the apfelphlankuchen wasn't as good as when I was 'helping'.

It was less fun, fo' sho'.

Looks magnificent! Good work mate!

Why have I got it in my brain that you dont use goose fat?

I experimented with it a while back for roast potatoes and they weren't that nice. I now think it was my technique, though, rather than the goose fat. These ones turned out nice.

I've got about a litre of the stuff in the fridge now. Going to cook the goose legs confit today (I removed them from the goose to make it fit in the oven), then filter the goose fat. Freeze most of it.

I used it for Christmas roasties ( ) and it was fine. It has to be good and hot before the spuds go in.