What's up my sleeve?

I just love a recipe that lends itself to all manner of uses.

Here's my first :

Roasted Garlic and Sweet Onion Jam

1 garlic bulb

1 tbsp olive oil

170g sweet onion – finely chopped

85g sugar

85g Granny Smith apple – finely chopped

120ml balsamic vinegar

Here's the make ahead bit :

Baked Garlic

2 bulbs of garlic

olive oil/rapeseed oil for drizzling

2-3 sprigs of fresh thyme - optional

salt and black pepper

Pre-heat your oven to 200c/180f/Gas 6.

Slice the tops off the bulbs and place the in a small oven dish, garlic roaster or foil dish so that they fit snugly. Drizzle with oil and season with thyme, salt and black pepper.

Roast in the oven for about an hour – until the garlic has softened. Squeeze the garlic out of its skin. Add a little more oil , keep in a tightly fitting container and place in the fridge.

You can use the paste in the same way as you'd use fresh garlic – the difference is that the baked garlic is sweeter and ready to use!

The paste will keep in your fridge for one to two weeks or you can freeze in small containers.

Method

Squeeze garlic cloves and any juice into a medium saucepan. Add the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil over medium to high heat, stir occasionally then reduce the heat. Simmer uncovered for 30 minutes or until thickened and again stir occasionally.

Be patient! It will look like it will never reduce and thicken. It does.

This recipe will fill a 370g conserve jar and here it is :

A note about sweet onions. I searched high and low and found them in Tesco – Finest Sweet Onions – a net of 3 for £1.50. You may think a little on the expensive side but I can assure you that they are worth it.

I can hear you saying “so what, it's another chutney” - yep it's good with the usual cheeses, hang around and I'll mention a couple of other ideas!

Take a moment …

ponder… if I was going to offer any advice for the festive season, it would be with one sole aim in mind – to try and prevent you becoming a demented person, disappearing under the weight of wrapping paper and the fancy dressings we now expect – twice the amount of work requiring time that we haven't got to begin with. Which, of course, does not take into account the shopping – on-line or not you still have to plan it. Is there steam coming out of your ears yet – if not it won't be long. It's like a pressure cooker – remember them – you have to release the steam or it'll blow up (only kidding about that).

So, to try and avoid spontaneous combustion decide how your holidays are going to pan out. The more you ponder and plan the less stressful it will be – just sit and think about what you want to serve.

Last year's suggestions on the blog cover everything from breakfasts to suppers, canapés et al, beginning with The dreaded “C” word! - right through to Lunch or Dinner? … on New Year's Day.

I make no apology for repeating – create your own store cupboard/secret stash of ingredients that won't spoil whether in the pantry, fridge or freezer but will enable you to produce food quickly and easily when unexpected guests appear.

This is personal to you because only you know the likes and dislikes of your friends and family. If Great Uncle Fred is the only person who likes Christmas Pudding then why buy a large one when you can buy him an individual pudding – you don't have to buy for the sake of it.

With luck and a following wind you might even finish up sane enough to enjoy it!

My plan …

… is just that – plan – the more you accomplish sat with a pad and pen, the easier life will be.

If you've been following the blog recently you'll know that we've just completed a weeks meal planning – Christmas is no different – actually that's not true, what is different is the outside pressure of bigger, better, more expensive and a huge headache. I'm just saying that if you follow the same planning principles it'll be less of a panic.

If you are new to the blog then I can do no worse than to suggest you have a glance at the suggestions I made last year. I'm not being lazy – at least I don't think so!

I also mentioned at the same time that my family Christmas was a little, shall we say, unorthodox. We chose to eat “chips with everything” - the everything being gammon, turkey, fillet steak and a veggie option too – whatever took our fancy. I have asked my family what they'd like for Christmas Day lunch this year and their resounding response was - “the same as last year – it was great”. We have a treat on Christmas Eve, dinner out, which does make a difference. I have made one or two changes – instead of the chip-pan there'll be a tartiflette and/or a roast potato or three but the principle remains the same – a little bit of what you fancy!

If you are catering for your family and friends I might be inclined to ask whether they really want a traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings – if yes – that's fine and relatively straight forward.

If not, bounce some ideas around – ask your guests what they'd like, but not in such a way that it commits you to providing 12 different main courses and 12 different puddings – I know, I know, I'm exaggerating. I'm just suggesting that you might have been cooking a turkey for 10 years on the trot that no-one enjoys – particularly you!

Just a thought.

I do have a few bits and pieces up my sleeve that I hope will help.

An intermission

I'm interrupting my “gadding about” on location – there's more to come shortly. In case it had escaped your notice Christmas is on the doorstep – again!

In the supermarkets it begins earlier each year, or so it seems to me. Aided and abetted by adverts on the tv showing delectable delicacies designed to tempt us – what did we do before “party food”?

How many of us succumb and ram the freezer within an inch of its life with all manner of stuff that, hand on heart, we will either serve and be disappointed since it all tastes the same, or jiggle it around the freezer for two weeks and then throw it out in the New Year?

The party food fashion reminds me of the idiom “Keeping up with the Joneses” - I suppose you have to be a certain age to remember the phrase – here's my useless bit of information – did you know that it came from a comic strip of the same name which ran from 1913 to 1940?

Wearing a wry smile of course, I can't help but picture a gathering where your party food is scrutinised within a inch of its life by guests, with the imaginary, cartoon style bubble above their head saying “mine's better than yours and it cost more!”

Please don't think I'm being a party pooper nor that I'm saying you shouldn't buy festive treats – just that you give a little more thought ahead of the game to what you buy and what you'll use, rather than a trolley dash hurling in, at random, stuff you can't possibly live without, elbowing other shoppers out of the way, because you have to have the last exorbitantly priced product left on the shelf!

Lets see what we can do.

On location in SC - The not so glossy magazine!

$9.95 may sound a smidge expensive but, have a look at my first purchase – Cooks Illustrated

as you can see – 76 recipes!

Just to prove my point – remember the whole wheat flour for the soda bread – here's a review of the very same :

There's another major plus with this magazine – apart from the number of recipes it's full of clear and helpful advice for the novice. I would not describe my friend as a novice cook but needless to say he was impressed and so it stayed. Worth every cent!

By the way – on the “teach as you go” front, from last night's supper we had the technique of “smoking” chicken, an Alfredo sauce and veggies. By the by - another “lost in translation” ingredient – never heard of semolina flour in this neck of the woods (to toss the par boiled potatoes prior to roasting) – life is too short to hunt it down – all purpose (aka plain) flour will do – there's sad and then there's really sad.

I discovered that last evening's supper was photographed and emailed – I think I'll take that as a good sign!

Note to self – check out the pantry for supplies in the am – slow cooked beef could be on the menu and I suspect we may have more ingredient challenges!

On location in SC - My guilty pleasure

My guilty pleasure – don't get too excited!

I know it's not considered “de rigueur” these days but one of my favourite treats is a visit to a book store – aka shop.

A browse is the ultimate treat for me with a coffee and compulsory chocolate chip cookie sitting in a comfy chair. We pinched this idea in the UK but somehow I can't justify the time when at home.

Anyway the other major lesson I've learnt when abroad is that Airlines are quite strict these days about luggage weight – note to self, you can't buy heaps of books that weigh a ton!

Aha – here's my answer – buy good quality magazines instead. There are some really good ones out there and the way I look at it is if you discover 2 or 3 recipes that you like the look of or immediately want to adapt, then it's worth the dosh and it has paid for itself.

In my house magazines are treated the same way as books – I appreciate that this may seem a little over the top but if you are remotely interested in cooking – and buy books or magazines – then you'll browse through both at some time or another. Where magazines are concerned you might not bother to mark anything at all – conversely you might think it's acceptable to turn down a corner to mark a recipe – there's only one problem – I'd put money on you referring back for a particular recipe or article and its vanished into thin air. Treat yourself to a supply of coloured tabs – like post it notes but smaller – and mark as you browse – anything that appeals gets a tab – problem solved!

I know I'm sad – can a cookery magazine qualify as a “glossy mag” - probably not but who cares.

On location in SC – this is your roving reporter!

Did you know apparently there's a problem with bagels – in that when you fill a bagel the filling oozes through the hole – really?!

I give up – surely the (w)hole point – sorry couldn't resist – of a bagel is that the filling is meant to ooze and arming yourself with a heap of table napkins and licking fingers and getting generally messy is the best part!

Anyway I feel it only right that I should impart information that has recently come to my attention. I give you the alternative – a bialy – it's not a bagel, it's not an English muffin, it's the best of both.

The bialy is Jewish in origin – in particular Polish Ashkenazi. It's very similar to a bagel but a bagel is boiled before it's baked - a bialy is baked. The depression – not hole – is filled with various different ingredients to suit.

Personally I'd describe a bialy as a slightly smaller version of a bagel and I have to say that the thought of a cooked onion filling in the “depression” would definitely lift my spirits!

My quest is to see whether we can find them in the UK – I'm on the case.