Saturday's festive catering: part 2

Part 2

(You can find part 1 here.)

So far my festive catering amounted to a large number of (undecorated) gingerbread (well, multiple spiced) biscuits and a lump of pastry.

Now I really was going to need to get on with the Yule log. First thing was to choose a recipe. I found a few ranging from the very chocolatey to the less chocolatey (I would be interested to know the link between chocolate and Christmas, the best I can make up is that it's a high calorie food to set you up with energy for the winter); with anywhere between 4 and 6 eggs. I eventually settled on a less chocolatey option with 4 eggs. The main reason I chose this one was that it used whole eggs – I didn't have to do any egg separation which is an operation I generally try to avoid. It's ok when it's just one egg (as in the pastry above) but becomes too risky when you've to separate lots of eggs and even riskier when you don't have a good supply of spare eggs.

Other reasons this was the best choice recipe:

* It was titled Bûche de Noel which sounded way more exciting than Yule log. For a while I thought that this translated as “mouth of Christmas” but wasn't convinced this is the right spelling for “mouth”. A quick check in the mini French dictionary confirmed that this is the case; bûche translating as “log” so not really being that much more exciting after all. (For reference mouth is “bouche”, which might be a culinary delight awaiting invention.)

* It used chestnut purée in the filling and I have had a tin of this sat in the cupboard for quite some time.

I measured the sugar (100g) and cracked in the eggs and my thoughts turned to decoration. I needed some small plastic Christmas things to go on top of the bûche. My best bet would be Barbara, my mother-in-law. Although a quick phone call revealed that she didn't own any she was conveniently just finishing “work” (at a charity shop so it should really be called “volunteer”). The convenient thing about this is that it is just next door to the most comprehensive catering shop in Plymouth and she kindly agreed to pick a few things up for me. Then I decided that I'd better go out and get some cream, and then by the time I got back (I had to go to the 2^nd nearest corner shop because the first one didn't have the right sort of cream) I needed some lunch, and then (after a little bit of cheese on toast expertly prepared by Matt) a visitor arrived. It was just before 2pm and I was under the impression that no-one was going to be arriving until at least 5pm. I had based my entire kitchen schedule on no-one arriving until at least 5pm. Nothing was ready for this first visitor but Matt came to the rescue and made some more cheese on toast. And then at about half past two the next visitor arrived (along with some lovely flowers for yours truly).

Since I hadn't really made a start on the “Bûche” I decided I should put this on pause to focus on the “proper” food and get the soup done. This was quite easy to do with sporadic conversation as it doesn't require too much concentration (I make a lot of soup). 2 onions, 2 carrots, 2 sticks of celery, 4 leeks and 2 potatoes, all into a big pan with a little bit of olive oil and sweated off. Then after a bit of chatting I added enough hot water to cover it all and then chatted some more until the veggies were nice and soft. Then I poured in some red lentils (I suppose about 2 cupfuls) for thickening and protein and let it all cook a bit more while I chatted a bit more. (Matt would blend and serve later.)

I tried to continue my food preparation whilst not being too antisocial, but came to a bit of an impasse when I came to prepare the tin for the log. The recipe said I needed a 23 x 33cm swiss roll tin. I had a baking tray that was slightly thinner and longer and found some sort of tin that was a bit shorter. I had no idea if this tin was a swiss roll tin. I wouldn't know a swiss roll tin if it hit me in the face. I think this tin must have come from my granny. I was facing a quandary that (in the absence of a hotline to a certain baking doyenne) would best be solved by a call to my mum (also a baking doyenne in her own way). She recommended that I use the slightly shorter tin that may or may not be a swiss roll tin. I lined this and then the next guests arrived, I think it was just before 4pm. This was getting silly. I still had a bowl of sugar and eggs sat on the side, and was expecting a serious arrival of guests in an hour.

To be continued.......

(This would be a really far too long blog if I don't split it up; you are after all getting multiple recipes.)

Tuesday's mushroom rejuvenation

I was thwarted in my intention to come home for lunch today due to never predicted but often occurrent Tuesday busy-ness. So lunch was a sugary drink from my favourite bargain supermarket and a just-about-enjoyable cheese scone from a local chain bakery.

So my planned lunch was to become dinner. Which in itself was a modification of Sunday’s dinner. Which had been substantially modified yesterday morning, further modified (unsuccessfully in my opinion) by Matt, my husband, yesterday evening and served up in its final guise tonight, after Matt had made another (successful this time) modification.

Sunday’s dinner was a mushroom stew with dumplings. We have a large store of  vegetable suet due to a misadventure a couple of months ago. I can’t think of much to do with suet except for dumplings and Christmas pudding. I have investigated the Christmas pudding option but it seems that I’m 6 months too early. That also gives me 6 months to get some breadcrumbs.

Normally I would put celery in the stew but our weekend visitor, Glen, makes no secret of his dislike of celery so it consisted of mushrooms, onion, carrot, garlic, thyme from the garden (still disproportionately exciting) and stock. And more mushrooms. To make it really mushroomy you use some normal mushrooms and some of those preserved mushrooms. The dumplings were a tiny bit mustardy (I was careful with the mustard powder but will be more liberal next time). The stew was served with veggie sausages and lots of brocolli (Glen likes brocolli almost as much as I do), which soaked up the juices in a most delightful way (to paraphrase a song from one of my favourite Disney® films).

The first modification was the addition of a load of (green) lentils to the stew leftovers (all the dumplings had been eaten), all simmered up until they were soft (approximately the time it takes to do a load of non-dishwashable washing up and then all blended up. This did not look very nice, but did smell very nice. I was looking forward to having some later in the day.

Matt offered to get the dinner ready – the modification being the addition of enough hot water to turn the mixture from mush to soup and then salt / peppering it. Unfortunately he was perhaps too liberal with the salt for my liking (and I am a bit of a salt fiend). Fortunately he had only modified a enough for a bowl each (about a quarter of the mush). So after a few mouthfuls mine went back in with the rest of the mush.

I now had 30 minutes to get dressed, put on some make-up, tweak my instant fake tan (an impulse buy from earlier in the day – I do not usually “do” fake tan but was pleasantly surprised and it even smelled quite nice) and get my stuff ready to go out to a wedding reception. A wedding reception is a strange thing to go out to on a Monday night, but it was one of the most enjoyable Monday nights I’ve spent in a long while. There was no capacity for further soup preparation prior to the anticipated arrival of our lift. Instead I jammed up a scone (leftover from Sunday afternoon’s tearoom visit) and managed to eat this in the back of my friend’s car with minimal (although not absent) crumb-age.

Tonight Matt did the same modification but this time without the salt. I added my own. As I said I’m quite a salt fiend so I added quite a lot but it still tasted of delicious mushrooms rather than the sea, so I dread to think how much went into last night’s bowl.

A bowl of soup seemed somehow insufficient following the day’s busy-ness. So I put some peppers in the oven to roast up while we were slurping with some vague idea that I’d put them into a wrap (a lot of wraps have somehow appeared in the bread bin).  The idea matured while I slurped and I was aiming to assemble something featuring tomatoes, feta and sweetcorn as well as the peppers (basically all the things that needed using up). I was aiming to assemble them into something resembling a quesedilla. I put all the fillings between two wraps and pan fried in the griddle pan (a rare outing for the griddle pan and it may have actually been more of a toasting since I didn’t actually put any oil in the pan).

The serious flaw here was that quesedillas generally rely on being held together with lots of stringy cheese, versus tonight’s creation which was relatively cheese light. And feta is not renowned for its adhesive properties. So after a few accidents with bits of filling falling out whilst turning the creation (fortunately I had fairly recently cleaned the hob so they could be safely reinserted) it really ended up being more like a toasted sandwich with really thin bread. I cut it into triangles. I’m sure serving food in triangles makes it taste better but it was good whatever. And because we had to use knives and forks to eat it (due to the risk of filling loss) it felt more like a meal than a sandwich.

Monday's medley of soup

After a leisurely start to the day it was all systems go to equip the garden. The leisurely start included reading an old book – I’m sure I’m enjoying it more because it smells old.

The equipping of the garden first involved removal of junk from the boot of my car at the dump. This included:

1. An enormous and cute, but slightly mouldy teddy bear, that had been freed from our loft by my cousin, Alastair, in January. It had been sat around in a black sack in various locations since as I had been intending to fettle it up with a trip to the launderette but finally thought better of it.
2. A whole load of VHS tapes which I had discovered whilst spring re-arranging (more enjoyable than spring cleaning) yesterday. Both mine and Matt’s and none of them viewed in at least the last 7 years.
3. My condemned sandwich toaster.

Items 1 and 2 disposed of according to plan. Item 3 disposed of causing Matt great hilarity. Today I was fulfilling the role of dumping whilst Matt watched from the car. This is often beneficial as the men at the dump are generally quite keen to help ladies with their dumping. I was duly assisted with items 1 and 2 but today the electrical waste was unmanned.

Taking health and safety seriously I called out before throwing the sandwich toaster into the skip to check that there was no-one inside it. There was no response so I went ahead with the launch of the sandwich toaster. Unfortunately I didn’t launch with quite enough force and the sandwich toaster rebounded from the side of skip, plug flailing and narrowly avoiding my head. It was whilst I was picking up the bits that Matt wound down the car window and told me, between fits of laughter, to walk round the other side of the skip. Where the side was down and I could just place in the sandwich toaster with no risk of head injury.

A successful trip to the garden centre ensued and 8 terracotta, mosaic encrusted pots later we began the return journey. Matt had seat belted the larger pots into the back seats with the rest in the boot so there was limited capacity for shopping from a “luxury” supermarket. One of the best things about said luxury supermarket is that when they reduce things they do really good reductions. Today’s best bargain was watercress and I picked up 4 packets. I also picked up a packet of reduced salad which when put together with some reduced beetroot, the remaining salmon & prawn leftovers and a homemade dressing made a very nice lunch.

After lunch it was back out to another garden centre where we successfully equipped ourselves with garden tables (that sort of match the pots) and a hose. And what appears to me to be an extravagant hose attachment but Matt assures me that we will not regret it.

Once home I needed to turn the watercress into soup while it was still nice. I think that potato is the traditional thickening to go with this but I prefer lentils to add some protein.

Realising that we’d had watercress in the lunchtime salad I thought that I should mix up the day’s flavours, I decided to make another sort of soup too. I got a leek and potato one on the go. 

Then I thought: why stop at two? We had eaten the last portion of frozen soup yesterday (the parsnip and apple one) so there was scope for restocking.

One of my other luxury supermarket bargains was a pot of sun ripened tomatoes and I thought I’d try these with some slightly wrinkling peppers. Having started to heat some olive oil to sauté an onion I noticed that there was quite a bit of oil in the tomato pot and not wanting to waste this I got out another pan and heated that instead.

So now I had a spare pan with olive oil and the only logical thing was to use this to make another soup. I had used up nearly all of the fresh vegetables in the house but there were still some carrots. And I had a little knobble of ginger so decided to try carrot and ginger. To improve the flavour I oven roasted the carrots before adding to the onion and ginger. Whilst the carrots were roasting and I was pondering this creation I felt inspired to add orange juice. This would be the perfect opportunity to use up the oranges and satsumas etc that had been sat, unloved, for a good long while (some I fear since 2012) in the fruit bowl. This is because I love nice citrus and am often tempted to buy. But if I buy a pack, eat one and it’s disappointing then it puts me off the rest. But I hate wasting food so the citrus stay there. (If it’s nice the whole lot may well get devoured in one sitting.) Matt can usually be counted on to help consume food but he isn’t keen on oranges due to the peeling issue (not that I’ve ever perceived that as a particular issue). So I was pleased to be able to squeeze some semi-decent juice out of my languishing fruits, which I added with some stock and red lentils to the other ingredients.

The tomatoey-peppery soup was looking rather insubstantial so I added a tin of tomatoes to that. And some red lentils.

Once all the soups were blended up (separately) we faced the dilemma of which to eat tonight. Matt went for the watercress (with a dollop of crème fraiche) – I am told it was scrumptious. I went for the carrot / ginger / orange. It too was scrumptious. I think that I’ll call it velvet carrot soup as the lentils gave it a gorgeous texture (although I did miss a few bits of carrot in the blending process).

Now I’ve just got to find enough containers to freeze it all. And replenish the lentils. 

Sunday's experimental dumplings

Today saw the sad demise of the sandwich toaster. Probably inspired by the delicious fried bread I had enjoyed at breakfast, I felt inspired to make some cheese and tomato toasties for lunch. This included the slightly taxing task of purchasing tomatoes. Available were 2 packs (of 5) for £2 or loose for £1.99 per kilo. But the packs didn’t have a weight on them. And I’m dreadful at estimating weights. Having found some scales, weighed the loose ones and worked out that I could get five for just about £1 I went for this option. I don’t know why I bought five as the toasties would only need one.

But upon opening the sandwich toaster (which had lain dormant for at least 2 years), the inners appeared to have decayed. So toasties were off and reheat soup was on. This is always a bit of a gamble as I make soup in big batches and freeze in smaller portions which are invariably unlabelled. Today I extracted a tub at random, reheated and we enjoyed parsnip and apple soup, accompanied by toast with my favourite yeast extract spread. The soup was an improvement on its first consumption when I had failed to add enough water and it was more like eating runny apple sauce fragranced with parsnip. I don’t know why I didn’t think it out previously.

Suitably fuelled for an afternoon swim I left Matt with his skirting boards. My exercise was impeded (quite literally if this word comes from ”ped” which I think means to do with feet) by my blistered feet. Having enjoyed 2 night’s dancing in Torquay (hence the cooked breakfast) my feet were rather the worse for wear. Blisters the size of a 50 pence piece on the ball of my left foot and a 20 pence piece on the right, and on both little and big toes. Which resulted in diminished pushing off from the ends and discomfort from the turbulence of the water flowing around my feet.

And then it was time to think about tea. We had a butternut squash which I’d been intending on cooking today and when I inspected it there was a suspicious looking blemish suggesting that it needed using. We had both eaten butternut squash yesterday – Matt as a soup and me in a pasta dish. So the pressure was on to do something creative. Also present was somewhat of a glut of vegetable suet (due Matt’s supermarket enthusiasm a number of weeks ago) and he was keen for some dumplings today. So I decided to go for a vegetable stew. And I decided that as well as the butternut squash I’d use red peppers and mushrooms.

I set the stew off with some onion, celery and garlic. And when I went to vegetable drawer I was confronted with some rather sorry looking courgettes. So one went into the stew. And then I thought I might be putting too many vegetables into the pot. Hence the idea of putting the red pepper into the dumplings.

Once the veggies were sautéed off a bit I had to think about liquid. I would usually chuck in a tin of chopped tomatoes but thought this might be too overpowering for the other relatively subtle veg. So opted instead just for vegetable stock. And then thought I’d add some sherry. This wasn’t totally random. I have made a lovely soup recently with squash and sherry so was this was an extension of that concept. It simmered away, smelling lovely, but not happy leaving well alone I threw in a couple of cups of red lentils.

And so to the dumplings. This was high risk. I am not an experienced dumpling cook but have had relative success when I have done them before so was prepared to be a bit adventurous. I chopped up the red pepper really small and fried it up in the little fried egg pan before adding to the dumpling mixture with some salt and mixed herbs. And then it was just a matter of hoping that the whole thing worked out ok.

Which it did. Not the most attractive looking of dinners but really tasty and the dumplings were lovely.

I’m looking forward to more adventures in dumpling land but first have two dodgy courgettes in urgent need of consumption.

Red pepper dumplings (will make 8 large / 16 small dumplings)

• 45g (vegetable) suet
• 100g self-raising flour½ a red pepper, chopped up as small as you can & fried so it’s soft 
• Sprinkle of dried mixed herbs
• Bit of salt (which is about as descriptive as “pinch”) 
• 70ml cold water

Mix it all up and form into dumplings. Cook in your stew for about 20 minutes, just before serving.