Easiest Ever Vanilla Fudge

This fudge is great. You have all the ingredients in the house already and don't need to go to the corner shop in the rain looking for a large tin of condensed milk as you would for most other fudges. You can make it right now as long as you've got a sugar thermometer or don't mind taking a risk.

Makes enough for 2 last-minute Christmas Eve gift bags
350g golden cater sugar
300ml whole milk (would probably work with semi-skimmed too)
100g butter
few drops of vanilla extract

1 Place the milk, sugar and butter in a pan and heat gently, stirring until the sugar dissolves. You get a better end texture if you make sure all the sure has dissolved before you start to boil the mixture.

2 Bring to the boil and bubble vigorously for 20 minutes, stirring regularly until it reaches past 116C on the sugar thermometer. This is the soft ball stage, if you don't have a thermometer, drop a spot into a cup of cold water and see if sets squidgily for you.

3 Turn off the heat and beat in the vanilla extract, keep stirring for about 5 minutes until the fudge starts to thicken.Pour into a buttered or lined non-stick tin (I used a small square one but it depends on how thick you want your fudge).

4 Leave it to set for a few hours, if you remember, mark out the little squares with a knife before it's fully set - we forgot to so the surface wrinkled a little but was otherwise fine. Cut into squares, pack into gift boxes or cellophane bags.

Limoncello

The 4 litres of limoncello I made in July ready for Christmas have now mostly been drunk. To be honest it only takes three weeks to make so I was a bit ahead of myself really and anyway I needed the bottles emptying so they could be ready again for this new batch.
I work on an equal quantities method (equal sugar to water for the syrup then equal syrup to vodka) but you can adjust yours, even each bottle, depending on how you like it and who you're giving it too. I serve mine with Prosecco, Kir Royale style before lunch and with ice after dinner.
Makes 2 litres
1 litre of basic vodka
5 unwaxed (preferably organic) lemons
500g caster sugar
500g boiling water

1 Peel the lemons using a swivel-style peeler. Scrape off any white pith, turn the radio on and sit comfortably at the kitchen table as this bit does take ages but it's very important as the pith will make the limoncello taste bitter.

2 Place the peel in a 2 litre kilner jar and pour in the vodka. Leave in a cupboard for a week, shaking the jar every day.

3 Put the sugar in a heatproof bowl and pour over the boiling water, stir until the sugar dissolves then leave until completely cool.

4 Stir the syrup into the vodka, seal the lid and leave for at least another two weeks, again shaking every day or two if you remember. Taste the limoncello at this stage and sweeten with more syrup or top up more vodka as suits your taste then strain into bottles. Pop one in the fridge and keep the rest on the shelf or give as gifts.

Christmas Leftover Pie with a Cider Crust

Pie is an obvious way to use up turkey and winter vegetables but the cider makes this one slightly less boring.

Serves 4 - 6

2 tbsp turkey dripping or vegetable oil

1 onion, chopped

2 tbsp plain flour

150ml pear or apple cider

400ml hot chicken stock

3 carrots, cut into chunks

3 parsnips, cut into chunks

1 tbsp cranberry jelly

chopped herbs such as sage or thyme

leftover cooked turkey, cut into chunks

leftover cooked ham or bacon, chopped

FOR THE PASTRY

200g self-raising flour

100g vegetable suet

large pinch of salt

125ml pear or apple cider

milk for brushing

Heat the fat in a large pan and cook the onion for 5 minutes until softened. Stir in the flour and cook for 3 - 4 minutes then add the cider and stock. Bring to the boil and stir in the carrots, parsnips, cranberry jelly and thyme. Cook for 15 minutes or so until tender.

Preheat the oven to 190C / Gas 5. Stir in the turkey and ham and simmer for 10 minutes then tip into a pie dish.

Mix together the flour, suet, salt and cider to make a soft dough. Roll out on a lightly floured surface and lay on top of the filling. Tuck in the edges, brush with milk and bake for half an hour until dark golden.

Holidays: Whose Good Idea Was That Then?

Hello! Are you back at work? It's cold, isn't it? Right after the last post we jumped into an Addison Lee cab and made for Heathrow. Scrap and S were full of "beans", while I felt completely bloody awful. Sick, tired, full of cold and thick with late-December London booze-fuelled poison. I was looking forward to the 11-plus hour flight as it meant I could sit in a chair for hours drinking Lemsip. You're right, I really was a barrel of laughs. Anyway, that was Tuesday morning. By Wednesday morning we were at the hotel, just about the single best place ever. Instead of wind and rain and grey skies it was hot and bright and quiet and calm and the sun felt good on our mottled, milk-white skins. By tea-time we were enjoying a Singapore Sling and watching the sun - now a blood-red ball - dip down into the Andaman Sea. We looked at each other - quite a lot - either just smiling widely and wondering whether we really were here, or whether it was some sort of waking dream. In fact, thanks to the jetlag - we're still dealing with the return journey's dose - it actually was some sort of waking dream.



We'd be first to breakfast (at 6am) for fruit and noodle soup (sometimes fish ball, sometimes chicken, sometimes white ear mushroom) and coffee. To be to honest, we had noodle soup for breakfast every single day. I generally had a version of it for lunch and dinner too. We were also first to bed (at 9pm at the latest) after a couple of drinks and, possibly, a single delicious gasper on the balcony (although Thailand's policy of plastering it's cig packets with autopsy snaps did take the shine off the moment a little). We usually squeezed in a couple of hours nap in the afternoon too.



So the days began to take shape. We swam, had ten minutes in the sun and got back under the umbrella. Scrap met up with his pals at kid's club for an hour or two meaning S and I could actually read books and relax for the first time in four and a half years. I read Gomorrah and S read The Road Home. S even had to buy more books from the hotel gift shop. She described Second Chance as "by far the worst book I have ever read", but she read it all the same. I tried to work my way through David Simon's Homicide, but after the sharp brilliance of Roberto Saviano's book it seemed a bit ponderous and heavy. Scrap watched Wall-E and Scooby Doo Aloha. Best of all, we watched no telly and ate no cheese or wheat.

After a refreshing nap we drifted down to the beach for a swim or build a sandcastle or to just lie in the warm surf. S had a massage every single day. One afternoon she spent wrapped in something amazing at the spa and came back smelling of amazing oils. I got so lost in the moment I agreed to a pedicure (I can fully recommend the experience). We all got a little colour. The black bags under my eyes began to shrink (that might have been the Clinique products). We got used to never wearing more than swimming costumes. On Christmas Eve there was a party. It was interrupted by a huge downpour, but no one cared. Rain's warm and it feels nice on your head. I took the opportunity to slip back to the room for an unbrella, hoiking down two glasses of champagne on route. The Bangkok Symphony Orchestra played and there was a bizarre dance performance entitled "The Miracle Of Christmas". Santa came by to say hello. We drank wine for the first time in a week (it was horrible).



There was a little row of shops and restaurants outside the hotel where we bought drinks and snacks and had our lunch and got our laundry done (S got a bit obsessed with this service). I got a black pinstripe suit made by a lovely woman in an incense-perfumed tailors. I tried it on for the first time with my bare, brown feet poking out the bottom and liked it very much. We developed a taste for Nori Seaweed crisps and put lime juice on everything. In the evenings we ate steamed crab and the soda or tonic for your gin or vodka was served in its own tiny jug. This was, literally, the best holiday of all time. We came home to weather so cold it made our hair hurt.

Fabio starts school next week. I have "gone freelance". There is snow on the ground. It's always good to be home, but this morning we woke up and said to each other, "Wouldn't you like to be back at the Katathani?" and the answer was, "Yes. Quite a lot, actually."

Winter Collection: Yule Log

This is one of those really old-fashioned cakes that I've not made since domestic science at school and thought would be easy, but actually, there's a lot here that can go wrong.
But as we're going to be away for Christmas and we were having a little neighbours' tea party yesterday, I thought I'd give it a go. I like to have everything sorted the day before but this really has to be eaten on the same day. I didn't enjoy the risk of making it on the morning of the party and although it was a bit of a faff and me and melted chocolate don't get on so well, it was a big hit and the icing covers a whole lot of cracks! Have a go!

Serves 12
75g self raising flour
50g cocoa
1 tsp baking powder
100g golden caster sugar, plus a little extra for sprinkling
5 large eggs
FOR THE FILLING
250g mascarpone
icing sugar, to taste
splash of double cream
FOR THE ICING
200ml double cream, broken into pieces
200g dark chocolate

1 Preheat the oven to 190C / Gas 5. Line a 30x40cm Swiss roll tin with baking parchment and rub with a little butter.

2 Sift the flour, cocoa and baking powder into a bowl. In a second bowl, whisk the sugar and eggs until thick and airy – they should roughly triple in volume. Sift over the flour mixture and gently fold in, making sure there are no pockets of flour hiding in the bottom of the bowl.

3 Pour into the tin as evenly as possible then bake for 10 – 12 minutes until just firm to the touch. Sprinkle some sugar onto a sheet of baking parchment and turn out the sponge. Peel off the paper then roll it up with the new sheet of paper inside. Leave to cool completely.

4 Make the icing. Pour the cream into a small and bring to the boil. Add the chocolate and stir to melt. Leave to cool completely then chill until thick enough to spread – keep your eye on it as it cools - it’s runny for ages then suddenly changes from runny to thick to too-thick-to-spread in quite a short time.

5 Make the filling: beat the mascarpone with a wooden spoon to soften a little then add icing sugar to taste – it may be a little to thick to spread so a little cream to soften.

6 Open out the sponge and spread with the mascarpone mixture, if you like, grate over some chocolate then roll up. Cut a diagonal slice off and place next to the log to look like a branch. Spread with the chocolate icing in a wood-like pattern and leave to set. Dust with icing before serving.

Basilicata Sweet and Sour Peppers

As a rule, I’m not much keen on stuffed peppers, but the ones Mum makes at Christmas are very special. This is an old recipe from Dad’s village in Italy where the home grown peppers were stored in big pots of local vinegar so they’d last the whole year. Dad’s mum taught my mum how to make them and now she’s shown me. They’re a proper labour of love and take the best part of a day to prepare. And anchovies with honey are a bit of an acquired taste.

Serves 8 as a starter
8 smallish red peppers
300ml malt vinegar
olive oil for shallow frying
FOR THE STUFFING
250g fresh white breadcrumbs
handful of roughly chopped parsley
2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
small cup of small sultanas soaked for 5 minutes in water
splash of olive oil
2 x 50g cans of anchovies in oil, roughly chopped
splash of balsamic vinegar
2 - 3 tbsp clear honey
FOR THE SAUCE
1 - 2 tbsp olive oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
2 cans chopped plum tomatoes
few fresh basil leaves

Take the stalk and core out of the peppers but keep them whole. Salt lightly and and splash some vinegar inside. Place in a large bowl and pour over the rest of the vinegar. Leave for 6 hours - 2 days.

Make the sauce: cook the onion in a little olive oil for a few minutes until softened then add the garlic and cook for a few seconds more. Add the tomatoes and basil and using a handheld blender, whizz until smooth. Simmer for 20 minutes.

Mix together the stuffing ingredients with some salt and pepper. Drain then peppers and stuff. Heat a splash of olive oil in a large frying pan and fry the stuffed peppers until the skin blisters then peel it off and discard it.

Sit the peppers upright in the tomato sauce, cover and simmer gently or bake at 180C/Gas 4 for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours.

1970s Christmas Clementines

When we were young, Christmas always used to include a trip to our Grandad’s restaurant La Gondola. It was very chic in its day (it’s terrible now and was on Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares not long ago) and my parents would have Campari at the bar, my brothers would ask Roy McFarland, Kevin Hector, Archie Gemmell and other Derby County footballers for their autographs and I would wait impatiently for the sweet trolley to be rolled in. I always picked rumbaba or the oranges in caramel. I’ve not had caramelised oranges since I was twelve but then Cousin Tilly served them up at the annual Fitzpatrick family party a couple of weeks ago. She followed a recipe from the lovely Silver Spoon cookery book and hers were indeed text book – sweet and golden and identical to the ones off the trolley. So I had a go at making some myself and burnt the caramel into a delicious dark syrup. Yes, loads of sugar but at least no added fat, unlike the tiramisu Mum served alongside them.

Serves 6
12 firm clementines
300g granulated sugar
glass of water
small glass of brandy

Cut the peel and pith from the clementines with a small sharp knife. Strip away the pith and shred the peel from about half of the clementines.

Place the sugar in a pan and set it over a high heat. Let it bubble and melt, it’ll quickly turn to dark caramel. Don’t stir but swirl the pan a bit until all the sugar is dark and molten. Turn off the heat and leave for a couple of minutes.

Stir in the water, brandy and shredded peel and simmer very gently for 1 hour until the peel has candied.

Poach the clementines in the pan of syrup, four at a time for a couple of minutes then transfer to a large serving bowl. Pour over the hot syrup and peel and leave to cool. Set aside for at least a couple of hours or overnight before eating. I love the bitterness combined with the orange but if you find it too much, you can stir in some more white sugar.

Seasonal Cheer

We are having tea and cake at James and Antoinette's house and trying to decide whether to go and see American Gangster or The Darjeeling Limited tonight. It's rather nice only having such simple things to think about.

We are now, officially, on our seasonal holidays and wish the whole lot of you the very best and all that.

Have a good one...

Sick

Landcroft House is poorly. As soon as the holidays approach, illness strikes. In the last fortnight we have had flu, chicken pox, a torn cruciate ligament and last night, the vomit bug arrived. Almost every party invite has been binned as we lie on the sofa, Rob with frozen peas on his knee, Scrap coated in calamine and me with a box of tissues and now a bucket. Still, at least by next week we'll be right as rain and ready for action. I hope.

Mulled Wine

We went to our neighbour Noel's for mulled wine, mince pies and present sharing at the weekend. And very nice it was too. I do think on the whole, mulled wine is very hit and miss and it's more often horrid than lovely, which is a shame.

Here are my top five tips
1 Use a ratio of 1:1 wine to water. Don’t make it too strong or it will taste furry.

2 Only use whole spices not ground as they spoil the texture. Allspice berries, star anise, cinnamon are good. So are slices of root ginger. Cloves are okay but don’t use too many.

3 Make sure you balance it out with enough sugar.

4 Don’t let it boil. Keep it below a simmer – it’s better for flavour and prevents the alcohol burning off

5 Add a tot of brandy or sherry at the end for a bit of depth.

Saturday Night Feeder

We had our work's Christmas do last night. There's only three of us so we always just go for drinks and dinner somewhere new. As the years pass we've dropped the nightclub part of the evening and started to dress more for the weather than the season and last night the silver shoes and skirts were replaced by trousers and boots which considering we started with a walk over a bitterly cold bridge to my favourite London building, the Royal Festival Hall was no bad thing.
Skylon is a stunning bar and restaurant with an amazing view over a twinkling Thames. The service is good, the cocktails are fabulous (I had a Marcus Way and a NZpolitan) but something is not quite right. It's a tiny bit flat, a little bit cold maybe. Years ago we'd been before when it was The People's Palace and it wasn't quite right then either. Some places just never are.
The exact opposite can be said about Great Queen Street where we had our dinner reservation. From the moment we opened the door and stepped from the cold into the cosy hustle and bustle, the wafts of roasting meat surrounding us, there was an unmistakable feeling that you're somewhere a bit special. We take seats at the bar, study the menu and sip a glass of Prosecco as we wait for our table. We ask the barman what he recommends and as he talks about his favourite dishes, we all fall quiet. "There's something about that bar man isn't there" one of us whispers. "Mmm" we other two reply, unable to look up in case we catch his eye and fall off our stools.
Tom Norrington-Davies is the chef/owner and he's a Peckham lad. I only know him a bit, his books line up next to ours in the window of the local Review book shop and he writes often for delicious magazine of which one of us, Angela, is the food editor so she knows him well. He sends Maldon oysters to our table which is a great start. Most of the things on the menu are for sharing, rib steak, bearnaise and chips for two, a leg of lamb for four and even a 'goose feast' for eight! It's tricky for three but we share a steak pie for two (which would have served four) and a confit of belly pork followed by pear sorbet with a cheese biscuit, a yummy muscat creme caramel and St James cheese. Anyway, the food is fabulous, it's very reasonably priced and the service is excellent but there is something more than all of that here - I think it might be passion. Anyway, you should go there - it's not posh, it is very dark and rather romantic so take your loved one and share a pie.

Anyway, Saturday Night Fever was 30 years old yesterday, so we're going to have a dance to this before we set off for the Frost Fair this morning...

Icing the Cake: Part 2

Knead 1kg of ready-to-roll-icing into a ball then roll out on an icing sugared surface to make a circle large enough to cover the cake. Brush the marizpan with a little water then drape over the icing and smooth into position. Trim off the excess icing. Mix together some icing sugar and a little water to make a paste and use to stick the festive shapes you made earlier around the outside and on top of the cake. Leave to set for a few days.

Icing the Cake: Part 1

This is the weekend to ice the Christmas cake. It's best to do it in two stages, the first is to cover the cake in marzipan and make a few icing decorations.

For a 23cm cake, roll 800g - 1kg of marzipan into a circle large enough to completely cover the cake - use a bit of icing sugar when rolling to stop any sticking. Melt 3 tablespoons of apricot jam in the microwave then brush over the cake. Drape the marzipan over the cake and using your hands, gently smooth and rub it into position. I like this bit best and could spend hours caressing out all the lumps and bumps but actually they're part of what makes a home-cake so lovely so leave a few showing. Trim off the excess marzipan at the bottom and position on a board.

Next, roll out 300g of ready-to-roll icing on an icing-sugared surface and stamp out some festive shapes. I'm keeping my cake simple and traditional. Decorate with a few silver balls if you like, then leave both the cake and shapes out to dry for two days, ready for the final icing.

Christmas Presence

Simone White: Christmas Makes Me Blue (Honest Jons, 2007)
More truly excellent Christmas music - this time from the very lovely Simone White who is a lady from America and everything. She plays guitar, she sings, she sounds a little glum, but she doesn't really mean it!

This is a sanctioned, seasonal give-away from the nice people at Honest Jon's up there in fashionable west London. Oh yes.

A Taste For Advent-Ure

Scrap's grand-parents gave him an advent calendar at the weekend. It's very lovely but it's got no chocolate in it. When I was a child I didn't get a single advent calendar and would have been delighted to open a little window and find a picture of little robin on a snowy branch. Not so sure about Scrap though. He's already learned to expect a foil compartment with a tiny Mars bar in it...

Cake On Me

So, the vote says make a Christmas cake, and here it is! I don't much like candied peel so I've left it out and used ginger instead and I'll be feeding it with Courvoisier until it's time to it ice it.

Makes 1 family-sized cake
250g sultanas
250g raisins
250g currants
100g glace cherries, halved
100g chopped glace ginger
4 tablespoons brandy, plus extra for dowsing
250g salted butter, room temperature
250g light muscovado sugar
250g plain flour
1 tsp ground mixed spice
½ tsp ground cinnamon
5 eggs, room temperature
100g pecans, each snapped into 4 - 6 pieces
grated rind of 1 lemon and 1 orange

23cm round tin or 18cm square tin, greased and lined

1 Place the fruit and ginger in a bowl and stir in the brandy. Cover the bowl with cling film and set aside for 3 – 12 hours.

2 Preheat the oven to 140C / Gas 1. Whisk the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy then beat in the eggs, one at a time. Sift over the flour and spices from up high to get some air in then carefully fold into the mixture. Finally, stir in the fruit mixture, nuts and rind.

3 Spoon into tin and level out the surface. Cover with a sheet of buttered baking paper and bake for 4 ½ hours. Leave to cool in the tin for 1 hour then take out of the tin and transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely.

4 Pierce the cake with a bamboo skewer in lots of places then wrap in baking paper and then foil. Drip a tablespoon of brandy over the surface once or twice a week until you’re ready to ice the cake. Keep it in an air-tight container.

Christmas telly

How bad has Christmas telly been this year? ITV really excelled themselves - a two hour special of Doc Martin on Christmas night! And right now, on Boxing Day, the best they can offer is flipping Pretty Woman. Who hasn't seen it eight times before? It came out 16 years ago for goodness sake. I suppose I'd better watch it again then but I won't enjoy it.

Christmas Day

Any more fizz?!?

Christmas Eve Dinner

Mum's preparations for tonight's dinner have been going on for days. The menu is the same every year, white spaghetti then salt cod, slow-cooked in the oven with potatoes, then salt cod fried in batter with salad, then cheese and finally cannoli. The salt cod has been soaking for 48 hours and the pasta and two types of custard are ready for the cannoli. It's lot of effort but it produces the best meal of the year.



Cannoli
Mum learnt this from her mother-in-law, my late grandma, and she's now the only one left in our family who makes them. She has to make loads extra for dad to take to aunts and uncles. She makes fresh pasta, cuts out circles then wraps them around lengths of cane that she had made in dad's village. She then deep fries them until crisp and golden. She gave me my own set of cannoli canes when I left home but I have never used them. Shame.

Make the pastry using 1lb strong flour, 4 large eggs and a pinch of salt then knead for 10 minutes to make a smooth dough. Roll out very thinly then cut out 4 - 5in circles. Wrap around cylindrical moulds and fry in a couple of inches of vegetable oil, turning until puffed and golden. Drain on kitchen paper.

For the custard, place 3 pints of milk in a very large pan. Using a knife pare the rind off a lemon and add to the milk and warm gently. In a bowl whisk, 12 tablespoons of sugar with 12 eggs yolks until smooth and light then whisk in 12 tablespoons of flour. Whisk in the warm milk then return to the pan. Bring it to to the boil, stirring continuously until thick. Remove from the heat then divide in half. Melt a large bar (200g) of dark chocolate and stir into one half of the custard, leave to cool. Add a small glassful of Strega to the other half and leave to cool.

A few hours before serving, spoon the custards (avoid the peel) into the cannoli, so one side is white and one side chocolate. Leave in a cool place. Drizzle with clear honey or dust with icing sugar before serving.

The Grumpy Shepherd

"Me no like want Baby Jesus"