This is super tasty and really very fast to make after a busy day at work, so long as you remember to get the duck breasts in to marinate the night before anyway. This feeds two greedy adults and is an almost direct go at the Ching He Huang recipe from Chinese Food Made Easy, which is well worth a watch or peruse if you like a Chinese dinner now and then.
So, you'll need to start with your two duck breasts and a sealie bag. Stick the following things into the baggie and mush it up a bit: tsp ground five-spice, tbsp sesame oil, 3 tbsp hoisin sauce, 1-2 tbsp soft brown sugar, 3 tbsp water, 1 tbsp dark soy sauce. Add the duck, seal up and bung in a bowl in the fridge until tomorrow dinnertime.
Next day, get the oven on at 200°C and pat down the duck breasts (throw away the marinade). Pan fry them in a dry pan on a high heat for a couple of minutes either side, then put in a baking tray (skin up) and roast for 15 minutes or so.
While they're roasting get a litre of chicken stock on the hob and bring to a simmer. Add a tablespoon each of shaoxing rice wine (or sherry), soy sauce and rice vinegar (or any vinegar).
At the same time put some noodles on to cook, they should only take a few minutes. When they're done drain them and hold them under the cold tap for a bit to stop them going soggy.
Add some shitake mushrooms and sliced spring greens or cabbage to the soup and cook for a few minutes.
Take the duck breasts out of the oven and rest on a cold plate for at least 5 minutes, before slicing. Add the noodles, some sliced spring onion and chopped coriander to the hot soup, lay the duck slices on the top and garnish with thin slices of green chilli.
Ok, so I'll admit that swiss roll doesn't immediately spring to mind when you think of Christmas, however it is an essential part of my trifle, so it has to be given a place.
It's a sort of sponge cake cooked in a very specific way, to ensure that it is light and flexible enough to roll without breaking. You will need an electric whisk for this.
Measure out 125g of caster sugar into a basin, pudding bowl or other heatproof vessel. Crack in 3 eggs and get out your whisk. Boil a saucepan of shallow water with a low trivet in and place the bowl over the top. Whisk and whisk and whisk until the mixture is pale and extremely light and fluffy looking, almost overflowing the bowl.
Remove from the heat and whisk for a bit longer, letting it cool down a bit. Measure out 125g of plain flour, seive it into the eggy mixture and gently fold it in, followed by a tablespoon of hot water.
Line a shallow baking tray with greaseproof paper, sprinkled with a little sugar, and pour the mixture in. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 200 degrees, depending on the thickness of your baking tray. Check on the poor thing: don't let it burn!
Lay a damp teatowel onto your worksurface with another sheet of greaseproof paper on top, again sprinkled with a little sugar. When the cake is done, quickly upend the cake onto the paper on the teatowel. Peel the used paper off the bottom of the cake (now the top).
Heat up some your favourite flavour jam in a saucepan, this will make it nice and easy to spread. Spoon or pour it onto the cake and use a knife to spread it all over. Since my Dad is diabetic, technically he shouldn't eat any swiss roll at all. However, that would be what happens in fantasy land, in the real world he will inhale it until the whole family shout at him, so I have used a bare scraping of jam to try to minimise the damage.
Roll the cake up towards you, using the teatowel to help grip it firmly and taking care not to break the sponge. The centre should be tightly rolled, the outer layers less so. Leave to cool, if you can, before eating slices off the two ends. The rest, at least in our house, belongs to the trifle.
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
Making custard sounds like a pain... it really isn't. The stuff you can buy in pots in the refrigerator section isn't terrible tasting, at least from some suppliers.
However, it doesn't hold a candle to the real thing and, when you make it yourself, you have a lot more control over where those eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla pods came from. It also tastes fabulous in a trifle...
Separate six egg yolks into a bowl and add 60g caster sugar and a tablespoon of corn flour (to help it thicken). Whisk up until thoroughly mixed.
Put 400ml of milk into a
saucepan with 120ml double cream and the seeds from a vanilla pod and
the pod casing. Gently warm until almost at a boil, but not quite.
Take
off the heat and slowly pour onto the eggy mixture, while constantly whisking. It's even easier if you have a kitchen helper to hold the bowl!
When it's all combined, pour it back into the saucepan and put back onto a low heat. Keep gently whisking over the heat until the custard thickens. Perfect!
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
Some people love christmas cake, some people love christmas pudding, some love mince pies...
we might not agree on any of the above, or what film we want to watch, but the one thing my whole family can agree on is that we all love trifle!
It does help with this one if you've already made the swiss roll and the custard!
Take a large mango (or a few peaches, nectarines... anything of that nature. I chose mango because they're still in season in Southern Spain in December and can be shipped here without airmiles). Skin and slice into small wedges. Melt a couple of tablespoons of dark sugar in a frying pan, chuck in the fruit and sprinkle a tablespoon of brandy over. Cook until the fruit is lovely and soft and the sugar has turned to caramel.
Slice the swiss roll and layer the bottom of a trifle dish with it. Sprinkle over a couple of tablespoons (or more!) of brandy, and then tip all the cooked, caramelised fruit on top. Spread the custard over the top, cover with clingfilm and put in the fridge for as long as you can - ideally a day.
Mix together two tubs of creme fraiche with the seeds of a vanilla pod and a tablespoon of dark sugar. Slather on top of the custard and pop back in the fridge.
Melt a couple of tablespoons of caster sugar in a non-stick pan and throw in a small packet of salted peanuts. Cook, stirring, until the sugar has turned light brown, then tip out onto a sheet of greaseproof paper. Let cool, then crush with a rolling pin and sprinkle on top of the trifle before serving.
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
I have a lovely neighbour who looks after my car ("Big Sil") as I am rather mechanically challenged. Last week he very kindly filled her up with coolant, checked the oil and tyres and things so I thought I'd make some cookies for him and his family.
The recipe comes from Kitchen by Nigella and worked out absolutely perfectly. Instead of a bag of chocolate chips, which I think sometimes taste a bit... funny, I just got a bar of organic cook's chocolate and cut it into chips.
First, melt 150g of butter in a pan and then set on one side to cool down. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.
Measure out 125g of soft brown sugar and 100g of normal caster sugar into a large mixing bowl, then pour the warm butter over the top and stir together. Add 2 teaspoons of vanilla essence followed by a chilled egg and extra yolk. Beat them together until lovely and creamy and then slowly fold in 300g of plain flour and 1/2 a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda.
When you have a beautiful, golden, sticky dough, chop up your chocolate to make chocolate chips - about two thirds of a large bar - and stir it through.
Lay out a baking tray and line it with greaseproof paper, oil it lightly to make sure your cookies won't stick. Use an ice cream scoop to place dollops of dough on top, cook them in two batches as they spread out quite a lot when they cook. The recipe said this would make 14 cookies and that's exactly what I got.
Bake for 17 minutes and leave to cool slightly before transferring to a wire rack. They do need to be cool before you eat them for the texture to be just right.
