This is my new Christmas stuffing recipe, which I adapted from a recipe in GoodFood magazine. Mix sausage meat, herbs, breadcrumbs and chopped chestnuts, then form into patties. Wrap the patties in bacon and roast alongside your spuds. I like this method because the turkey/chicken does not take as long to cook, resulting in moister meat.
Ingredients
- 200g good-quality sausage meat
- 100g white breadcrumbs
- 1 tsp sage, finely chopped
- 1 tsp parsley, finely chopped
- ½ tsp rosemary, finely chopped
- 50g chestnuts, coarsely chopped
- 1 egg
- 1 apple
- salt & pepper
- 8 slices streaky bacon
- 8 sage leaves
Method
- In a mixing bowl, combine the sausagemeat, breadcrumbs, apple, herbs, chestnuts and egg.
- Remove the core and skin from the apple and grate into the mixing bowl.
- Season with black pepper and a little salt (remember that your sausagemeat will already be well seasoned). Mix well with your hands.
- Form into 8 patties and wrap each patty with a slice of streaky bacon, tucking a sage leaf under the bacon.
- Place on a baking sheet (or alongside your roast potatoes) and roast at 180°C for 45 minutes.
Serves 8.
This bread is made in homes all over Ireland. It uses bicarbonate of soda as a raising agent and the buttermilk gives it a subtle tang.
Ingredients
- 450g plain flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 300-350ml buttermilk
Method
- Pre-heat the oven to 230°C.
- Sift the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda into a mixing bowl. Mix well with a fork to ensure the salt and bread soda are well incorporated into the flour.
- Add 300ml of buttermilk and mix through the flour. Add another 50ml if necessary. You want a soft dough, but nothing too wet and sticky.
- With floured hands, turn the dough out onto a floured board. Knead the dough into a round loaf but don’t overwork it.
- Place the dough on a buttered and floured baking sheet. Cut a cross in the top of the dough. According to legend, this allows the fairies to escape. (No, I don’t believe it either…)
- Place the baking sheet in the centre of the oven for 15 minutes then turn the oven down to 200°C and cook for a further 25 minutes.
- Remove the bread from the oven and wrap in a tea towel and leave to cool slightly on a wire rack before cutting. Slice and serve coated with salty butter.
If you want to try another type of traditional Irish bread, try my Griddle Bread recipe. It’s much quicker to make and very moreish.
Here’s a recipe for a rich and unctuous potato dauphinoise - perfect for using up your leftover Christmas ham and red cabbage. Unlike a lot of recipes I’ve seen for dauphinoise, I don’t start mine on the hob. I prefer to cook from scratch in the oven which allows me to season each layer of potatoes individually. This means the dauphinoise will always be perfectly seasoned.
Purists will tell you that a proper dauphinoise should not contain any cheese, that the potatoes and cream form their own golden crust. Well, I’ve tried both, and I prefer this with cheese. Of course, you don’t need a mandoline to cut the potatoes, but it certainly speeds things up. Using a mandoline also has the advantage of ensuring all of your potato slices are of the same thickness and therefore cook evenly.
Ingredients
- 6-8 medium potatoes
- butter
- 250ml double cream
- 250ml whole milk
- ½ clove garlic, grated or minced
- salt & freshly ground black pepper
- Parmesan cheese (or Gruyére)
Method
- Pre-heat the oven to 200°C.
- Slice the potatoes, using a mandoline if you have one . If doing this using a knife, ensure the slices are of a similar thickness, about 3-5mm.
- Add the milk, cream and garlic to a saucepan. Season with salt and pepper. Bring to a gentle simmer and take off the heat.
- Butter a baking dish (about 24cm squared) and add a layer of potatoes. Give the potatoes a light sprinkling of sea salt and a few turns of black pepper. Keep adding layers of potatoes, seasoning each layer with salt and pepper. I normally get about 6 layers from this amount of spuds.
- Add the cream and milk mixture then top with a couple of handfuls of grated cheese and some more black pepper.
- Cook for about 1 hour at the bottom of the oven. You might want to place some buttered foil on the baking dish for the last 15 minutes if you don’t want the top to get too brown. I don’t bother, as the crispy bits are very tasty.
Notes
- Nigel Slater (as always) has some great variations on dauphinoise in his book, Real Food - including a tasty looking version made with smoked mackerel fillets.
- You could use a full clove of garlic, but I prefer to keep the garlic flavour subtle in this one. Make sure the garlic is grated or ground to a paste though, you don’t want to end up with chunks of garlic in this one.
Serves 4.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the majority of Indians did not know how to make a cup of tea and were reluctant to drink one. Now that India is both the world’s major producer and consumer of tea, this seems incredible. It confounds the myth that the British acquired their love of tea from their Indian subjects. In fact, it was the British who introduced tea to the Indians. Although they barely changed the way Indians eat, the British radically altered what they eat and drink. While the introduction of a wide variety of European and American vegetables to India was an inadvertent by-product of British rule, the conversion of the population to tea-drinking was the result of what must have been the first major marketing campaign in India. The British-owned Indian Tea Association set itself the task of first creating a new habit among the Indian population, and then spreading it across the entire subcontinent.
Extract from “Curry - A Biography” by Lizzie Collingham.
If like me, you tend to “over-indulge” when you eat Indian food, chai is a great option for dessert when you’re too full, but you still want to satisfy that sweet tooth. The fragrant spices are infused in boiling water and milk before the tea is steeped. Chai is also believed to be great for tummy upsets and generally aiding digestion.
Even if you’re not accustomed to taking sugar in your tea, don’t skip on the sweetening. You need it to bring out the warmth and flavour of the spices.
Ingredients
- 350ml water
- 100 ml milk
- 5 cardamom pods, lightly crushed
- 5 black peppercorns
- 3 cloves
- ½ tsp fennel seeds
- piece of cinnamon stick (about 5cm)
- slice of ginger root (about 2cm thick)
- 1 tsp tea leaves (black tea)
- 1-2 tsp sugar
Method
- Heat the water, milk, ginger and spices in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and leave simmer gently for 15 minutes.
- Take off the heat and add the tea leaves. Leave to stand for 3 minutes before straining into a mug and sweetening to taste with a little sugar. A teaspoon or two should do it.
Serves 1.
