Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities (31 page)

But don’t worry. I don’t strain – in either sense of the word – myself, but leave the orange-glowing, red jelly cheerfully freckled with the bits of chilli and sweet pepper, and, instead of getting my jellied set from preparing, cooking and sieving bucketloads of high pectin fruit, I simply cook the chillies in vinegar and pectin-added sugar, an essential ingredient I buy from the supermarket where it is labelled “jam sugar”. It could scarcely be easier.

I make the “chelly” with equal weights of hot and sweet peppers, but if you wanted a bit more fire in your jelly, you could up the amount of chilli peppers and reduce the amount of bell pepper. But this proportion provides enough tingle for those who like it hot, but without burning more sensitive palates.

Makes approx. 1.5 litres

150g long fresh red chillies, each deseeded and cut into about 4 pieces

150g red pepper, cored, deseeded and cut into rough chunks

1kg jam sugar

600ml cider vinegar

6 × 250ml sealable jars, with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or reusable pickle jar

• Sterilize your jars and leave to cool.

• Put the cut-up chillies into a food processor and pulse until they are finely chopped. Add the chunks of red pepper and pulse again until you have a vibrantly red-flecked processor bowl.

• Dissolve the sugar in the vinegar in a wide, medium-sized pan over a low heat without stirring.

• Scrape the chilli-pepper mixture out of the bowl and add to the pan. Bring the pan to the boil, then leave it at a rollicking boil for 10 minutes.

• Take the pan off the heat and allow it to cool. The liquid will become more syrupy, then from syrup to viscous and from viscous to jelly-like as it cools.

• After about 40 minutes, or once the red flecks are more or less evenly dispersed in the jelly (as the liquid firms up, the bits of chilli and pepper start being suspended in it rather than floating on it), ladle into your jars. If you want to stir gently at this stage, it will do no harm. Then seal tightly.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the jam up to 1 month before using or giving. Store in a cool, dark place for up to 1 year. Once opened, store in the fridge and use within 1 month.

CHRISTMAS KETCHUP

I’ve made a lot of chutneys in my life, but very few ketchups. I love homemade brown sauce (and the one I made in Domestic Goddess really came about as a way of rectifying a rhubarb chutney I’d attempted and overcooked), but I think that red sauce – tomato ketchup – is so loved in its industrial form, that I have never been able to face the sneer and snub of my children were I to offer my own version. This is a red sauce, but a deep, garnet red, a ketchup that’s made primarily with cranberries and just begs to be added to the Christmas-leftover table. It’s also – for what it’s worth, and I think a tip in the right direction is always good for a slight detour – fantastic dribbled over some seared scallops, or mixed with mayonnaise to make a dip or dressing for cold pink prawns. It’s a strangely gratifyingly, versatile little number.

You will need a Mouli or food mill for this ketchup; you could always push it through a sieve, but a food mill is easier and faster (and it’s not an expensive piece of equipment).

Makes about 2 litres

1kg fresh or frozen cranberries, thawed if frozen

2 long cinnamon sticks, or 4 short ones

3 star anise

1 × 5cm piece fresh ginger (unpeeled), sliced into thin coins

1 fresh long red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped

1 orange

1 teaspoon ground cloves

500ml cider vinegar

500ml water

500g packed light brown sugar

2 teaspoons salt

1 × 400g can chopped tomatoes

100g caster sugar

4 × 500ml sealable bottles

• Sterilize your bottles, and make sure you’ve got a funnel.

• Put the cranberries into a wide, medium-sized saucepan, and add the cinnamon sticks, star anise, ginger and chilli.

• Finely zest the orange over cranberries and spices, then squeeze out the juice from the orange and pour that in.

• Add the ground cloves, cider vinegar, water, brown sugar, salt and chopped tomatoes.

• Stir well with a wooden spoon, then put on the heat and bring to the boil.

• Once it’s started boiling, turn down the heat to let it simmer, uncovered, with steady gusto, for 30 minutes, then take the pan off the heat and let the contents cool a little.

• Work the mixture through a Mouli, or other food mill, into a fresh pan. Or mouli it into a batter jug and then into the washed-out pan.

• Add the white sugar to the smooth ketchup, stir well, then reheat till it comes back to the boil and let it boil vigorously for about 10 minutes or until it becomes thick and glossy. Stir occasionally to ensure an even heat.

• Pour, through a funnel, into your warm, prepared bottles and seal well.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the ketchup up to 1 month before using or giving. Store in a cool, dark place for up to 6 months. Once opened, store in the fridge and use within 4–6 weeks.

CORN CHOW-CHOW

Just in case you’re wondering, this bears no resemblance to the sugary, vinegary corn relish you find in burger joints. Or perhaps that’s not quite accurate: it bears a resemblance, but tastes so much better.

The term chow-chow comes from the Pennsylvanian Dutch (those Low German speakers who settled in America) but the relish has its counterpart, too, in American cooking of the South. I’ve slightly made it my own by using hot English mustard rather than the milder one that would be used Stateside.

It isn’t as set as the shop-bought stuff, but I prefer it this way, and I find the tumbling beads of corn, sweet, sharp and glossed in its dressing, utterly addictive; moreover, its sunny yellowness is an uplifting sight on a winter’s day.

I use frozen sweetcorn, since you need plenty and it makes more sense than canned, but if you forget to thaw it, just sit it in a large sieve over a bowl and pour boiling water from the kettle over it.

Makes 2 litres

900g frozen sweetcorn, thawed

8 teaspoons hot English mustard, from a jar

300g honey

500ml cider vinegar

3 teaspoons celery salt

50g caster sugar

8 spring onions, sliced into 5mm rounds

4 red peppers, deseeded and cut into 1cm dice

8 × 250ml sealable jars, with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or reusable pickle jar

• Sterilize your jars, following the instructions. (I favour a 350ml wide-necked bottle, so I use 5 of those plus 1 × 250ml jar, but 8 of the smaller jars might be wiser.)

• Take the sweetcorn out of the freezer and let it begin to thaw in a sieve over a bowl. If you need to speed the process, pour boiling water over it.

• Put the mustard, honey, vinegar, salt and sugar into a saucepan, and place it on a low heat, stirring with a wooden spoon to help everything dissolve.

• Stop stirring, and turn up the heat so that the mixture comes to the boil, then let it boil for 5 minutes.

• Check the corn is thawed and drained, tip it into a bowl, and add the spring onions and diced peppers.

• Once your liquid has boiled for 5 minutes, take it off the heat and pour through a sieve (so you get a smooth syrup) onto the corn, spring onion and pepper mixture.

• Ladle equal amounts of corn mixture and liquid into your warm, prepared jars. The syrup should cover the chow-chow; or rather, no corn should sit above the syrup but it doesn’t matter if the syrup comes up over the corn a bit.

• Seal the jars or screw on the lids, and store in the fridge.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the chow-chow and store in the fridge for up to 2 months before using or giving. Once opened, use within 1 month.

PEANUT BRITTLE WITH ART AND SOUL

This title isn’t a boast, but a name to denote provenance. It’s a recipe given to me, at my greedy request, by the cook-and-a-half, Art Smith. True, I’ve slightly simplified it, but only because I don’t have his deserved confidence, so I make my batch smaller, and leave out the difficult technical bits.

But even so, what this makes is fabulous: you really have to steel yourself to give it away.

Makes approx. 400g

200g caster sugar

60ml water

150g golden syrup

150g salted peanuts

1½ teaspoons vanilla extract

25g soft butter

1¼ teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

• Get out a large sheet of Bake-O-Glide and place on a baking sheet (or put some foil on the sheet and butter it). Sit it by the stove, waiting to receive the brittle once it’s ready to pour.

• Put the sugar, water and syrup into a pan, bring to the boil gently, then turn up the heat and let it boil seriously for 10 minutes. It will be smoking by then, so be warned!

• Take the pan off the heat and, with a wooden spoon, stir in the nuts, followed by the vanilla, butter and bicarbonate of soda. You will have a golden, frothy, hot and gooey mixture.

• Pour this briskly onto the waiting parchment or foil, using your wooden spoon to coax and pull it to make a nut-studded sheet, puddle-shaped though it may be, rather than a heap.

• Leave it to cool, then break into pieces and store in an airtight container or box; or bag up to give at once as presents. You’ll get about 400g in total, and it’s up to you how much you want to put in each packet, really. I find it easier to do several small batches like this, rather than multiplying quantities as I cook.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the brittle up to 1 week before eating or giving. Store in airtight bags or containers in a dry, non-humid environment. Once opened, eat within 7 to 10 days.

CHRISTMAS PUDDINI BONBONS

I know there aren’t many sweet things in this chapter – strictly speaking only two – but that is mainly because, as I suggested in the introduction, there are lots of sweet treats, just waiting to be wrapped and beribboned (see here). And the truth is, apart from baking, making sweets is a lot harder than making savoury edible presents. These bonbons, however, are almost alarmingly easy. I was inspired by a picture I saw in The Australian Women’s Weekly, fell in love with their cuteness and had to have a go myself. This isn’t quite their recipe, but the idea – and the decoration – is the same, which is to say, these are delectable little truffley bonbons made by mixing up cold Christmas pudding, liquor, syrup and melted chocolate, rolling them into small balls, then melting white chocolate over them and arranging small pieces of red and green glacé cherries on top to make them look like miniature Christmas puddings themselves.

I made this just after last Christmas, using some leftover pudding, foil-wrapped and waiting to be gratifyingly recycled (though you could buy a mini one, microwave it and leave it to get cold) and adding a slug of my beloved Pedro Ximénez – since that was the alcohol I’d originally put into the pudding – and an ooze of golden syrup before compacting it with melted dark chocolate, but you could just as easily add rum or brandy and, as the original recipe also does, 40g icing sugar.

The hard part – in the sense that you need superhuman patience, rather than any special skills – is dripping over the melted white chocolate and snipping the cherries and arranging them to evoke a sprig of berried holly. I am not really cut out for this work, and you will curse my name as you do it, but, afterwards, you will be thrilled with what you’ve done.

And, although they look like baby Christmas puddings, they taste like meltingly rich, spiced chocolate truffles. These babies have got everything going for them.

Makes about 30

125g best-quality dark chocolate, finely chopped

350g leftover, or freshly cooked and cooled, Christmas pudding

60ml Pedro Ximénez sherry (see

Stockists

)

2 × 15ml tablespoons golden syrup

FOR DECORATION:

100g white chocolate, finely chopped

6 red glacé cherries

6 green glacé cherries, or 6 short lengths angelica

• Line a baking sheet (that will fit in the fridge) with clingfilm, baking parchment, foil or Bake-O-Glide, and set it to one side while you make the bonbons.

• Melt the dark chocolate in a heatproof bowl suspended above a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave according to the manufacturer’s guidelines.

• Crumble the cold Christmas pudding into a bowl, add the Pedro Ximénez sherry and golden syrup and stir briskly till all is incorporated.

• Pour in the melted dark chocolate and stir again: this will make the mixture much more cohesive.

• To make this step easier, put on a pair of those disposable vinyl gloves sold in hardware stores and supermarkets, pinch out small lumps of mixture and roll so that you have little rounds about the size of a chocolate truffle. You should get about 30 out of this mixture; fight the impatient urge to make these balls larger as you go.

• Cover with clingfilm and slot into the fridge to firm up.

• To decorate, melt the white chocolate either in a heatproof bowl suspended over a pan of simmering water, or in the microwave according to the manufacturer’s guidelines, then let it cool for about 5 minutes, to make it easier to work with, while you chop the red cherries into small pieces (to evoke berries), and snip the green cherries (or angelica) into miniature lengths, to represent leaves.

• Using a teaspoon, drip a little of the melted but slightly cooled white chocolate on each bonbon, then arrange the infuriatingly sticky pieces of cherry on top.

• Place in boxes to give away – if you use small boxes that will fit 6 bonbons each, you will get 5 adorable presents out of this – or on a plate to hand round with coffee, instead of dessert, after a post-Christmas dinner.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the bonbons up to 2 weeks before eating or giving. Pack in boxes and store in a very cool place. If made 2 weeks ahead, add a label to say “keep cool and eat within 1 or 2 days”.

A CHRISTMAS BRUNCH FOR 6–8

MUCH AS I LOVE COOKING, and derive perhaps more pleasure from feeding people than is altogether decent, at this time of year it can make sense to think of how to curtail kitchen activity. I don’t wish to sound lacking in seasonal cheer or sociability, but I know from experience that if you overstretch yourself, it’s hell for everyone: you suffer, growing more resentful by the meal; your family ditto, as they bear the brunt of your probably self-imposed martyrdom. Sometimes – and I know I shouldn’t project on to all of you my flaws, inherited with almost ironic precision down the maternal line – the domestic overload is an unavoidable feature of the festivities. But a little mealtime merging can lessen the load. And this is where brunch comes in.