Archives for December 2010

After all the Christmas gorging, many of us put eating less cake or drinking less booze top of the New Year resolutions list - even though scientists have been telling us for years that detox diets are a waste of time and money. If you resolve to get healthy for 2011, do have a peek at the Food Standards Agency's views on New Year food resolutions. But then again, what's the point in setting a resolution you know you won't fulfil?

A fishy resolution?

Far better to set something that might give a little pleasure along the way. Organise that folder of printed-off website recipes you've had lurking in the sideboard all last year; or perhaps start a food blog to share all the great recipes you've been making; or maybe give a different cuisine or new ingredient a go?

My resolution is to try to eat most meals with my son. It will mean getting more organised and eating earlier - on some days as soon as I get back from work - but it's definitely something to strive for.

I asked some BBC chefs and food writers about their New Year food resolutions. Hairy Biker Si King says, "I'd love to spend more time in the kitchen with my youngest son, encouraging him to learn some basic culinary skills", while fellow biker Dave Myers would "really like to continue raising the profile of British cuisine, which is something very close to my heart."

The presenter of new series Baking Made Easy Lorraine Pascal says, "In 2011 I will be growing a lot more of my own food, herbs and leafy veg - the kind which need little or no tendering. I also intend to give up my monopoly on the kitchen and give others a chance to cook (well only a little bit!)"

Baking expert Dan Lepard says he "must spend more time debunking all the bad baking science out there (somehow) and continue to say no to the requests to 'dumb it down' for readers." While food maverick Stefan Gates is as off-the-wall as ever: "My New Year's resolution is to stop making difficult, counter-intuitive, arcane food programmes and instead to write a best-selling romantic culinary bonkbuster novel and bring out my own range of frilly napkin rings in pastel pink. You think I'm joking?"

However Raymond Blanc won't make any promises to himself this year: "Actually, I will not make a New Year's resolution for 2011. In the past I have broken each one. Why set yourself up for disappointment?"

Have you made a New Year's resolution involving food or drink? Comment and tell us about it.

Ramona Andrews works on the BBC Food website.

Why on earth would anyone in their right minds cook salmon in a dishwasher or fry an egg on a piece of paper? Well...

Like any good dad, I used to invoke that ancient parental mantra "Don’t play with your food" whenever my daughter Daisy mushed her lunch into a swirling mess. I moaned at her for smearing yoghurt over her face, for squeezing each of her peas until they popped and I whinged when she fondled every juicy morsel of food with her fingers before eating it.

Then one day Daisy turned her sweet, mucky face to me and said “Why not?” and I realised I had no credible answer. In every other area of her life Daisy was encouraged to play – with words, with music, with paint and water. Play is where the good stuff is, where the fascination, inspiration and wonder is. I want to inspire her to enjoy eating, to taste as many different foods as possible and to find food as fascinating as I do.

So then and there I made a parental U-turn and decided that mealtimes should be where the fun is, and if I had to wipe daughter and table clean after supper, that’s a small price to pay for getting kids fascinated by food. I went a step further and called up the head of CBBC (well, her PA at first) to ask if I could make a wild kids’ food TV series, and we’ve made 26 episodes of the enormously successful Gastronuts teaching recipes such as the legendary bum sandwich.

The best thing you can do for your kids’ long-term health is encourage them to eat as wide a range of food as possible, because that’ll give them the best chance of a balanced diet. If you make meals fun, surprising and occasionally a little bit naughty, you’ll be surprised at how many different foods kids will try. Daisy and her sister Poppy will eat almost anything: stinky cheeses, roasted grasshoppers, sea urchins, sushi, curly kale and oysters. They don’t love every food they try, but they love to cook, love to eat and love experimenting with their food.

So what can you do at home? My kids like making their own butter because it’s a little bit magical and happens so quickly. It’s also dead easy and cheap (all you need is double cream and a jam jar) and they can eat it as soon as it’s made.

We also love making bread in flower pots. Use a recipe like this one, stop before the final proving (rising) period and put the dough into very clean, well-buttered flower pots so that it fills each pot up to about half to two-thirds full. Bake in a preheated oven at 220C/420F/Gas 6 for 15-30 minutes. When the bread is nicely browned on top and sounds hollow when tapped, it's done.

Another fun method of cooking that fascinates kids (and adults too) is cooking kebabs on a car engine, and, for adding a little science to your food, try making fluorescent jellies, a vinegar volcano or a cola fountain.

But what about manners and propriety? Well, I grew up learning lots of manners that seem to have no point to them at all. I’m not advocating daily food fights – that’s just silliness – but by making food fun, I’m making my kids healthier and helping them live happier, longer lives, and I’m not sure there’s much in the world more important than that.

What do you think? Should we instil our children with old-fashioned manners when it comes to dinner time, or should we be more concerned with making mealtime fun and food fascinating?

Stefan Gates is a BBC presenter and food writer.

‘Tis the season for food traditions: the crumbly mince pies, the warming mulled wine and the fistfuls of chocolate and sweets you’ll eat almost unconsciously between now and New Year. The turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and pudding can all be reassuringly ticked off along with Santa’s list... or so it seems. We may all essentially be eating a glorified roast dinner, but delve a little deeper and you’ll find that every household has evolved their own fascinating set of festive food foibles.

My uncle serves his family steak for breakfast every Christmas. It may sound overly indulgent, and who has the stomach for sirloin in the morning anyway? But what could be better to kick-start your metabolism for the main event than a huge portion of protein? A colleague’s husband, whose family are a complicated set-up of step-kids and step-parents, solves the problem of veggies, picky eaters and more importantly whose turn it is to cook by ordering a take-away curry the night before and reheating it for Christmas dinner. No stress, no mess. They go for a nice long walk and then come back home to day-old chicken dopiaza and saag aloo.

Happy (stress-free) Christmas!

Some family food traditions are so engrained, they just continue without question. Take the flatmate whose friends were perplexed when she served a perfectly halved turkey. Realising this wasn’t the norm, she rang her mother who in turn had to check with her grandmother. The grandmother explained that she once had a really small oven which couldn’t accommodate a whole bird. And so three generations had been cooking their Christmas turkey in two ever since.

There’s the nurse who prepares a whole live lobster after finishing her shift on a neonatal ward on the 25th; the dad who spectacularly takes a risk on the big feast by scouring the supermarket aisles until closing time on Christmas Eve to nab a turkey bargain; the family who must have macaroni cheese on their list of trimmings; and the kids who took over the kitchen one year by making their own pizza toppings.

So what are your unique festive food traditions? Are you forgoing turkey this year for something completely different? We’d love to know...

Nora Ryan works on the BBC Food website.

There's a question that tends to preoccupy me around this time of year, when the chefs start lining up their Christmas specials and the first mince pies start creeping into the office…when is The Right Time for the children to take responsibility for the family's Christmas meal?

I'm not talking child labour here. I'm getting on for 30, I love cooking, and I work on a recipe website. On paper, I'm a perfect candidate for Christmas hostess. Yet however many times I might offer to make a dessert, bring a ham, or take over completely, year after year I end up going home and playing a minor role in getting the Christmas Day shebang on the road.

I can only assume that, even though my mum finds Christmas stressful, she's trying to protect me from bearing the brunt of this annual feat of consumption. Either that or she's scared of the monster I'll become once let loose in the kitchen – whirling around it with hot pans, ducking and weaving like a champion boxer when anyone enters my space, and making loud verbal to-do lists in place of normal conversation.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being spoilt, and my mum's version of this meal is everything a girl could wish for. But I can't wait to put my own twist on the proceedings – and give my mum a rest.

So what's the benchmark when one generation is at last recognised as ready to take over from its elders? Is it once you've bought a house big enough to accommodate everyone? Is marriage the answer – or do offspring make good bargaining chips?

Karen Mulholland, 45, from Northern Ireland, took part in the forthcoming series of The Hairy Bikers: Mums Know Best, due to hit our screens in the New Year. She told me I'll most likely have to wait until I have children before the mantle will be handed down.

"Our main reason [for taking over the Christmas dinner] was the children," she said. "They don't want to be taken away from their toys. When you get married you tend to have a few years of, 'Well, we’ll go to your parents this year and next year we'll go to mine'. When the kids come along it's more logical for everyone to come to you – and by that time you have more room. It's a natural progression."

When the time does come for me to take over, Karen recommends making gradual changes rather than stunning the family with a Tudor-style extravaganza or single-handedly trying to give Delia a run for her money.

"The first year I did parsnips instead of carrots. The parsnips were well received but the feedback was 'Can we have our carrots back please?'! Slowly but surely we tried different things."

Or perhaps I should take a leaf out of Rebecca Simpson-Hargreaves' book? Rebecca, another Mums Know Best participant, went to her parents' house for Christmas dinner every year until she got married – when her husband took over.

"The only time I made Christmas dinner was when I was about 30 because my mum had just got so fed up of cooking it," she says. "But usually I just make the gravy, the vegetables and the pudding."

I tell myself that I won't get my knickers in a twist over the turkey like Caroline Aherne's Denise Royle last year, that it's only a meal and that it would be fun to try to feed the five thousand. But deep down I'm not sure that I really will be a paragon of zen when I finally take the helm of the family Christmas. However, even if I do bite off more than I can chew, I'd like to have a crack at it while my parents still have their own teeth.

Who makes the Christmas dinner in your house? And should I enjoy my extended childhood while it lasts?

Nicky Evans works on the BBC Food website ...and is going back to her mum and dad's for Christmas.

When I was younger it seemed the whole world was against me because I loved Christmas pudding. It was seriously uncool. It was cool to like chocolate log, or the profiteroles I used to get at my friends' houses that were from 'Marks & Sparks', but my love of Christmas pudding evoked the same sneers you got when you wore the wrong thing on Own Clothes Day. Needless to say I never spoke of my mum and me frying up leftover Christmas pudding in butter and dousing it in cream!

Despite my adoration of the stuff, the question I get asked most at this time of year is what my favourite alternative is to Christmas pudding.

I was pretty much bought up on black sticky gingerbread. It’s possibly one of the best cakes in town, but if you’re looking for a pud, serve it warm with butterscotch sauce and vanilla ice cream. It’s THE pudding to rival Christmas pudding and, dare I say it, I think it kicks the bottom of the best sticky toffee puddings. It’s brilliant for dinner parties if baked in individual dishes.

Another more calorie-laden pudding and a great way of using up any excess panettone over Christmas is this panettone bread and butter pud. There is rarely any left in our house; as you can imagine the Christmassy spices and fruits in the bread make this really special.

I don’t know if this is just me, but Christmas feels a bit wrong without the inclusion of trifle somewhere on the menu. You can make it really seasonal by using winter berries and I am smitten with this recipe from BBC Good Food. I have made it with amaretti biscuits in place of Madeira cake, as I prefer the taste and it knocks down the calorie content a bit to boot.

I adore a chocolate log and the great thing is that the cake base is really low-fat as it’s got no butter in it, meaning it’s a great slimline cake! Who’d have thunk it? OK, let’s not mention the topping and filling... Anyway, I think this one is so Christmassy with the cranberry addition, but what I love to do is swap the cranberries for 200g/7oz of chestnut purée mixed with three tablespoons of icing sugar, and spread it on the log before spreading with cream. It’s what I’ll be eating this year.

So what’s on the dessert trolley this year at your house? Are you a traditionalist, favouring Christmas pudding slathered in brandy butter? Or do you dare to be different with a festive trifle, cheesecake or Yule log?

Gizzi Erskine is a food writer, chef and TV presenter.

One of the most regularly asked questions I get is, “How do I make Christmas dinner exciting for my vegetarian son/daughter/boyfriend?” Well, what non-vegetarian people are really asking is “How can I make a vegetarian Christmas dinner exciting for ME?” In my opinion meat substitutes are pointless. If you want to eat meat, just eat meat!

Vegetarians like vegetables; it’s what they eat all the time. There are, of course, horror stories from the veggie guest. I’ve been told about those who have just been given a plate of sprouts, no gravy (as it was made with meat stock), a salad or a veggie lasagne ready-meal and the like. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

So much success can be had by making sure that you have big flavours in all the veg side dishes. So for those of you cooking for a vegetarian, remember not to do your roasties in duck or goose fat and don’t add bacon to the sprouts! But a good selection of veg is a great start – roasted root veg, like carrots, parsnips and squash are good. Dauphinoise potatoes – rich, creamy and very naughty – are a regular guest at our house on Christmas day.

A good, homemade bread sauce with plenty of spices is what you need. Maybe add roasted beets to your sprouts, together with a little orange zest and toasted almonds for a truly inspired veggie treat. In fact all of those dishes are spectacular, whether Mr, Mrs and Ms Veggie are coming to eat or not!

So what about the main event? Again, I think big strong flavours are the order of the day. If you’ve ever made nut roast, you’ll know that it can have an awful, tasteless, sawdust-like texture with that bottom-of-the-hamster’s-cage (small rodent, not Richard Hammond) taste. My recipe for nut roast packs a huge amount of moisture into the fella, including bread soaked in milk to keep it juicy. I also like to include plenty of herbs, spices and a spoonful of mustard. It’s quite a time-consuming recipe, but it is Christmas after all.

I also like gravy. Add things like caramelised onions, garlic, rosemary, tomato purée, red wine and vegetable stock to get your tastebuds going.

Another winner is my filo pastry strudel (pictured above) with leeks, tomatoes, mushrooms and cream cheese. This is so packed full of flavour and texture, meat-eaters may end up fighting veggie guests to eat it. I love it with port wine sauce, which takes some beating for a Christmas sauce.

Can a meat-free Christmas menu be magnificent? Are you veggie? I’d love to know what you’re eating this year. Share your tips and recipes for a vegetarian feast to remember.

Simon Rimmer presents BBC Two’s Something for the Weekend.

Those simple mince pies you see stacked in boxes at the supermarket at Christmas looking ever so manufactured and modern link us to a British heritage that’s essentially been forgotten. Like a species that has eluded evolution, the mince pie that you see in shops around the country in December is virtually the same as it was over 350 years ago: two crusts of pastry holding a rich fruit, sugar and spice mixture, and baked in small tins.

Their history extends back into more drunken and rowdy Saxon Yuletide traditions and though they’re a part of today’s Christian festival of Christmas for many, the association of mince pies with a few good slugs of spirit and bit of festive shoulder rubbing hasn’t gone away. In fact, for a night on the razzle half a dozen warm mince pies can take the place of dinner for some of us.

It’s somewhat of a myth that mincemeat was once always made with meat. Hannah Glasse’s recipe (1784) adds meat as a variation at the end, in a recipe that layers the currant-rich mincemeat with layers of candied citron. There were some that felt that there was enough slaughtering of animals during the season without adding it to mincemeat as well, and others that just didn’t have it to spare, so keeping mincemeat vegetarian today still fits well with tradition. Suet was later added, a relatively stable hard animal fat that melted when the pies were baked and mingled with the filling, making it thicker. Do leave it out if you prefer, or stir in a little thick apple purée to give it more body.

Shop-brought mincemeat can be really good, and the average types are often best: the extra economy ones and the ultra expensive both seem a bit off the mark to me. Start by tasting it, then add extra flavours that suit: nearly always add a little freshly grated lemon or orange zest, extra spice, extra brandy or rum and some cherries or nuts. The old recipes, like this one from Robert Smith’s Court Cookery (1725) used caraway seeds steeped overnight in “sack”, a kind of fortified wine like sherry. Today, you can follow Nigella’s lead and use cranberries and clementine zest to brighten the flavour.

Now, the pastry. Though puff pastry is more traditional, I’m a sucker for the slightly sweetened rich shortcrust pastry. The food writer Orlando Murrin has an utterly simple recipe and method for making a tender all-butter pastry that plenty of readers have commented on. My friend Angela Nilsen wrote a lovely recipe that uses a dollop of custard under the mincemeat so it becomes a mini-dessert in a pastry case. I do make my own pastry, but if you’re not feeling up to it there are some excellent all-butter shortcrust and puff pastries available. Also, there is a certain indestructibility to mince pies, and they can usually be frozen before (in the tin) or after baking (packed in an airtight bag) without a worry. Just make sure to bake them until piping hot inside before serving.

But when to make them, and when to stop? Samuel Pepys writes in his diary from 24th December 1663 that he returned home that evening to find his wife making mince pies, and I must say that I’ve usually had my fill by Christmas Eve. But there’s no historic reason why you shouldn’t make them on New Year’s Eve and into January, even as far the evening of the 5th on what’s known as the “Twelfth Night”.

So tell me, are you a mince pie buyer or a maker? I’ve a few secrets on how to get them out of the tin, but I’m not giving them out without a struggle. And that upper crust, do you crumble, roll, lattice or something else entirely? After years of mince pie making, I’m ready for some new ideas…

Dan Lepard is a food writer for the Guardian and a baking expert.