Three Bird Roast!
Stephen and I have been wanting to make this for some time, since seeing it originally done by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. He did a 10 bird version for a Medieval feast which, although I’m sure is lovely, is just too much for the two of us. We opted for the smaller three birds and chose partridge, pheasant and guinea fowl.
We layered stuffing in between to prevent the birds from drying out.
They were then layered inside each other before being trussed up with string and cooked for two hours.
The end result was tasty but a little dry, our cooking time was slightly over as we had tried to allow for the fact that the birds were tightly packed.
Happy new year!
Roast Lamb
Today we decided on roast lamb for dinner. We didn’t have any anchovies and neither did any of our local shops so we bought some anchovy paste as an alternative and mixed it with rosemary and garlic before spreading on top of the lamb. It worked brilliantly and resulted in tender, tasty lamb.
We also had roast potatoes, roast parsnips, brussels sprouts, purple sprouting broccoli and peas. And gravy. Lots and lots of lovely gravy.
We have Christmas pudding and brandy butter to come too. What was that I said about salad earlier in the week?!
Smoked Trout Pate and Guacamole
Although we should have been eating salad last night, we didn’t. Instead, we had some smoked trout pate (smoked trout, cream cheese, lemon juice, s&p, cayenne) with brown bread and some guacamole (made to our usual recipe) with nachos.
Salad
Tonight we had salad. It wasn’t worthy of a picture. If we go quiet for a while you’ll know it’s because we’re eating salad. See you soon 🙂
Boxing Day Bubble and Squeak
Unsurprisingly, we had a huge amount of leftover food on Boxing Day. This pleased me though because as much as I love Christmas lunch, I also love, love, love leftovers. Particularly leftovers that can be turned into Bubble and Squeak. Luckily I’m not alone, my family agree (my mum says it was always an easy way to increase our vegetable intake when we were small) so that’s what we did.
I don’t think this picture adequately reflects just how much Bubble and Squeak there was, I should have used a matchbox for scale. There was five of us though and two hungry little people.
We served this with the leftover chicken, some ham that mum had cooked on Christmas Eve and the roast pork we should have had on Christmas Day but forgot about until we cleared the table.
Some people had brown sauce too. Not me though, obviously.
Christmas Lunch
We spent Christmas with my mum and cooked lunch for the three of us there. As there was only the three of us we had chicken instead of turkey which we prefer anyway.
The chicken was cooked in our usual way, rubbed with oil and salt and pepper and stuffed with herbs, lemon, onion and garlic. Mum made the stuffing which was excellent but sadly lacking in quantity! We had roast potatoes which we roasted in goose fat (the first time I’ve had them cooked this way – they were good but not a huge amount tastier than our normal potatoes I don’t think), roast parsnips, brussels sprouts with chestnuts (tinned this time, I didn’t want to risk blinding someone as a Christmas present!) and Pancetta, carrots, cauliflower and Jamie’s cabbage – three types of cabbage sauteed in herby butter. We also used Jamie’s method to make the gravy; adding the giblets to the roasting tray instead of boiling them seperately.
It was all delicious, I think we all had thirds and still had space for June’s Christmas pudding (my mum’s 80 year old neighbour) later in the day.
Mackerel Tart
On Christmas Eve, we travelled to my mum’s and took along with us the ingredients to make mackerel tart. We forgot the cream though so had to make do with milk which worked ok but resulted in a slightlier runnier tart than normal.
Sweat off some onions and garlic, add mackerel, spinach, Feta, s&p, nutmeg and cream. Add mixture to a lined pastry plate (we used filo pastry) and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
Pre-Christmas Dinner
Yesterday, Kerri and I visited my sister’s family, where we had a sort of pre-Christmas dinner. To start with, my sister cooked some asparagus wrapped in Parma ham. These were cooked in the oven until the ham was just a bit crispy, which turned out rather well.
For main course, we had brought along salmon and salsa verde. We have cooked it before and when we saw Rick Stein recommending it as a possible Christmas dish recently, we thought it would be appropriate. The salsa verde was from Rick Stein’s recipe: parsley, mint, anchovies, capers and garlic. We roasted it on top of sliced tomatoes and more capers, which went very well as an accompaniment when we served it. Also served with new potatoes and broccoli. The salmon was organic salmon from our local fishmonger and the quality was excellent, both in flavour and texture. We presented it in slices, so it looked a little more civilised than our previous attempt linked above.
That was followed by Christmas pudding and brandy sauce, which was really tasty and a fitting end to the meal. Although it wasn’t quite the end because a little later we had some Vacherin, which was of course really brilliant too.
Pork and Paprika Casserole
This was a Spanish-inspired dish, but not made from any particular recipe. Winter has very definitely set in and we have been craving all sorts of comfort stodge, which is unfortunately at odds with our attempts at eating healthily. This dish seemed like it would give us the comfort factor without the calorie-high and vitamin-light qualities of something like sausage (mmmmmmm sausages…) and buttery, mustardy mash (mmmmmmmmm mash…).
What we did was: Browned some diced pork, then removed it from the pan and then put in a large sliced onion, sliced red pepper and two crushed cloves of garlic. After letting these cook down for a while, we added rosemary, bay, parsely stalks and paprika (a whole teaspoon of rather hot paprika which gave it quite a warm kick) and cooked it some more. Then we returned the browned pork to the pan and added chicken stock, tomatoes and olives and put it in the oven at 180 degrees for an hour or so. Ten minutes before the end, we added chopped parsley.
Served with brown rice, this was warm and filling and the flavours had combined very well, but the pork was a bit dry. The pork was diced leg, so if we do it again we’ll try it with a different cut or vary the cooking time. It was lean though and definitely in the healthy eating half of the spectrum. So something to try again with some tweaks.
Chicken and Roasted Vegetables
Stephen bought some chicken legs and thighs for a casserole a couple of weeks ago but we didn’t get round to making it so froze them. In an effort to clear out the fridge before Christmas, we used them up this evening.
We browned the chicken pieces before adding them to some vegetables, wine and stock. They were roasted in the oven for about half an hour before being served with some brown rice. It’s a similar dish to this which we cooked some time ago. It’s quick and reasonably tasty but there’s something missing – not sure what.
