Christmas at Random

The run-up to Christmas has been characteristically busy and shot through with some worry over whether we'd get flooded (we did not and are very grateful to Fate for sparing us -- others weren't so lucky).

But that aside, our Christmas shopping experience has been rather pleasant. We decided not to move the car but to walk everywhere with huge backpacks and cloth shopping bags. In town, we swung into a deli that stocks only local food -- here we stocked up on five very fine cheeses (pic see below) for our Christmas cheeseboard. Then into the independent craft shop for OH's latest project involving gel medium and photographs. In town, there was a market fruit and veg stall: got a large celery there for £1. 

Then the big shop at a well-known discount supermarket, which came to a sensationally low amount, mainly because we have already dropped quite a bit at our local fishmongers for a bag of scallops and some king prawns and we'll also be handing over a wodge to our local butchers later for the Christmas meat (duck and ham) and also because we've grown and frozen so much allotment produce ourselves. Woo hoo!

Sometime ago I had picked up an ice cream maker at Lidl's for under a tenner.

I'd say the bowl takes about 1 litre of ice cream in total. Now, if you just make normal vanilla ice cream, it won't be worth it because the ingredients and the electricity will cost you more than if you bought a decent tub from the supermarket. Where ice cream makers really come into their own is when you want to make specialty icecreams that you couldn't get anywhere apart from insanely expensive delis in London. They're also a great way of poshing up bananas that are going brown.

My Christmas ice cream recipe:

For the glazed walnut:
2 handfuls of shelled walnuts
1 handful of sugar



For the base cream:
2 very ripe bananas, pureed
half a pint of double cream
a slug of milk
a teaspoon of vanilla bean paste

Mix the bananas, cream, milk and the vanilla. No extra sugar needed: the bananas are sweet enough.

For the glazed walnuts, take a small frying pan (one of those tiny two-fried-eggs jobs) and cover the base with sugar. Melt the sugar and add the walnut pieces. Stir with a wooden spoon. Don't let the caramelised sugar get too hot. The walnuts will start to turn brown, that's when they're ready. Take them off the flame and pour them onto a plate covered with baking sheet. The sugar will be insanely hot and will stick to everything so watch for splashes and do not be tempted to lick the spoon. I did that last month and burned my tongue horribly. Let the walnut pieces cool down. When they've cooled, chop them up a bit with a knife.

Two handfuls of walnuts gives you enough of a snacking allowance.

Our Christmas menu -- on Christmas Eve:

Surprise Starter (turned out to be Home-Made Breaded Scampi and Peas -- di-vine. Best I've ever eaten.)
Sauteed Scallops next to Fried Black Pudding, with Creamed Onion and Bacon Crisps
Pouilly Fumé 2011
Home-Made Banana and Vanilla Ice Cream with Caramelised Walnut Pieces
Cheeseboard of 5 Different Local Cheeses

30-Year-Old Port
Cardamom Coffee

The Pouilly Fume was from last year's Aldi haul that we'd kept back -- still very very nice. The 30-year-old port was this year's Aldi find: very affordable and lovely to drink.

On Christmas Day, OH surpassed himself again. The menu was:

Gressingham Duck
Roast Potatoes
Roast Squash
Sweetcorn

and a 2012 Cotes Du Rhone, followed by

Banana Walnut ice cream and our by now customary cheeseboard. Even Neuroticat, who really is deaf as a post but whose sense of smell continues to be very sharp, is getting her Christmas duck:

I managed to crack on with my own craft project over the holidays. This is my rag rug:

Our Boxing Day was also exceptionally lovely. Here OH had tried out a ham recipe, which he cooked in cider. Now, this cider had been a bit of an experiment: we made it out of a batch of friends' apples that were very tart, and the resulting cider, which we tasted two weeks ago, was tongue-curlingly sour. Very appley, but not really all that nice to drink. But it'd do very well for cooking. The ham turned out melt-in-the-mouth. OH then scored it crossways and studded it with cloves and kept basting it with a glaze made out of honey and mustard. It really was spectacularly nice to eat. We had the ham with boiled potatoes this time, and creamed kale from the allotment. To drink: a bottle of French cider -- very good but not nearly as nice as OH's, two massive buckets of which are still bubbling away in the apple house. Apart from the tatties, all our veg came from the plot this year.

Merry Christmas everyone!