Friday Sunday lunch

It's a Friday, but it seems that it's a Sunday, as we're definitely having a full Sunday roast and pudding. I don't know why and I wouldn't dare ask in the post-Christmas frenzy we seem to be experiencing in this house. But I'm not complaining. We had delicious roast beef (topside) from the village butcher, perfectly rare and tender, as you'll see in the picture, with roast potatoes and parsnips, green beans and cabbage. We served it with Suffolk Mud (the brand name - thankfully there's no mud in the ingredients) cider and horseradish mustard and other horseradishes and mustards which went well too.

For pudding we had a sort-of pavlova. Home-made meringue covered with a layer of whipped double cream, then a layer of British pears, sliced, and pomegranate seeds. Delicious. I've shown you a picture of it on my plate and a picture of it whole. It was all eaten very fast. Scrumptious.

Boxing Day Turkey Curry

And here is the Boxing Day turkey curry, made by my brother to a secret recipe - I'll get it out of him soon. We had it with daal (lentil curry - pulses aren't my favourite food, but I'll try most things), a delicious onion salad (made with white onions, tomatoes, cucumber, cumin and lemon juice, I think), yoghurt and tortillas and pittas instead of rice. I was too full to appreciate it really, but it was good.

Boxing Day lunch

This was a 'light' (hehe) Boxing Day lunch, in anticipation of this evening's turkey curry. It's a massive platter of seafood salad - and no, this wasn't all for me - it fed six people, with seconds. The salad contained romaine lettuce and mixed, locally grown salad leaves, cucumber, tomato, avocado, a few sundried tomatoes and marinated garlic cloves, smoked trout and smoked mussels from the local farmers' market and tuna and was served with wedges of lemon and mum's homemade bread rolls.

It's twenty to five and I'm still stuffed and have no idea how I'm going to find the space for some of my brother's turkey curry tonight. Let's hope it's a late one.

Grandad's Christmas 'hamper'

I gave my Grandad a pot of my homemade tomato and apple chutney, some Sainsbury's organic cheddar and his favourite biscuits for cheese - digestives - all in a wrapped-up shoebox. Who'd want a Harrod's hamper anyway?

Christmas Lunch

Turkey, roast potatoes, sausage stuffing balls, veggie (walnut and apricot) stuffing, bacon rolls, sausages, sprouts with chestnuts and pancetta, peas and gravy (not seen, but I did have some on the meat), bread sauce (not seen either as it wasn't on my plate yet).

Christmas pudding (some burning booze made a run for it and burnt along the table - a scary Christmas moment there - and it was alight for so long we thought the plate might crack) and the tastiest threesome on the Christmas table - brandy butter, oozing rum butter and cream. I don't even like Christmas pudding much, but I don't need much coercing to eat these three.

Christmas Eve super-salad supper

Ok, so this isn't our usual Christmas Eve supper, but as we had a big lunch my Dad made one of his warm super-salads in the evening. As it's Christmas, we followed it with cheese, of course. There's barely a meal around Christmas without cheese in this house, execpt maybe breakfast. This warm salad had toulouse sausage and chorizo (cooked with onions, peppers, mushrooms, courgettes and cherry tomatoes) marinated garlics, sundried tomatoes, and probably lots of other things from the fridge and larder. The only thing is, I'm not used to waking up feeling hungry on Christmas morning after our traditional gammon feast the night before... maybe that's why I can't sleep.

Angela's Christmas Eve Rum Truffles

I can't sleep. But 8.30 on Christmas morning in a child-free house is definitely a time for sleeping...

As I forgot to blog about the chocolate truffles I made last night, I thought I'd upload them now, before seeing what needs to be done in the kitchen. I made a similar batch to those I rolled for my friend's birthday on the 9th December, but this time I made sure there was a serious amount of booze in there - it is Christmas, after all. It's been sort-of a tradition over the last decade or so to make them every year if we feel like there isn't enough chocolate in the house at Christmas.

Christmas Eve gammon lunch

We normally have this meal in the evening on Christmas Eve - I'm not sure why we had it at lunchtime. Perhaps it was because this year Christmas Eve is on a Sunday, or perhaps it was to ensure my twin brother arrived home in the morning - I'm not sure. But anyway, for lunch we had delicious moist gammon, simmered for a couple of hours with an onion, peppercorns, a bay leaf and cloves, mashed potato and celeriac, leeks in a white sauce and sweetcorn. We served it with my apple and tomato chutney (really easy to make - I promise I'll put up the recipe soon) which went surprisingly well with the gammon (although I prefer it with cheddar) and lots of grainy mustard on the table.

To follow, as is our family tradition, we had mum's homemade trifle. Unctious and creamy, with raspberries from the garden via the freezer, it is wonderful. And as I write there's still loads left, slowly slipping down the side of the bowl to make a sticky, creamy, fruity mess in the middle for tomorrow or boxing day. I can hardly wait.

Venison casserole...

Made with lots of red wine, vension from the local farmers' market, mushrooms, onions and tomatoes, served with green beans and delicious jacket potatoes. I've kept mine off the plate as I like the skin to stay as crispy as possible so I prefer it if it doesn't sit on the plate getting soggy in the sauce. I did mash a bit of the fluffy potato into the sauce while I was eating it - lovely.

Warming chorizo pasta

This was my late lunch on Friday. Hungover again (damn this Christmas party season), we had had Christmas champagne at work about 11 o'clock, and by the time I reached my parents' house at about 3.00pm I was starving and needed something big. I made myself a pasta dish - penne pasta, chunky chorizo sausage, onion, red pepper and my mum's homemade tomato sauce from the freezer. It was just what the doctor ordered, so to speak. My mum asked me what I thought of the tomato sauce - I was honest and said it was delicious but very lemony (surprising as it only had a dash of lemon juice in it, I suppose to add a bit of a fresh tang) so I don't think chorizo was the best match for it. With prawns it would be fab. Great!

I was quite excited when I saw this...

Well, relatively excited, or maybe as excited as I could be seeing a new product in a supermarket that I don't care that much about. Anyway, I thought this 'panini pizza' looked like it had potential. (Roasted veg, mozzarella, panini/pizza - great!) Sadly, I was wrong. Ok, I know pictures on ready-made food boxes aren't always to be trusted, but really... this only had about 2 bits of veg in it, and a load of cream cheese (it says creme fraiche but I think they are lying).

I griddled it, as instructed 'for best results'. It was pretty horrible and I wouldn't recommend it.

You may ask, I suppose, what was someone like me who usually cooks using fresh ingredients doing even in the pizza aisle? Or maybe you wouldn't ... as I reckon quite a lot of my blog disproportionately shows me to be a bit of a fast-food eater. I'm not. At least, I don't consider myself one. Just occasionally. Anyway, it's the Christmas party season and the fridge is bare. And I had to get some food in that my boyfriend would consider cooking if he was home, hungry and in a hurry and I wasn't around to force him to eat healthily. So I bought a couple of pizzas as I could shove them in the freezer at the end of the week if they weren't eaten.

The White Hart, Drury Lane, again

This time I had a burger and chips. It was fine, but the chips weren't double-fried as I had waxed lyrical about for so long, so I did look like a bit of a fool in front of my colleagues. They were all expecting the crispiest chips in London. The pub was too busy in the kitchen so to allay our hunger pangs as we waited (not as long as I thought we would have to wait) we nibbled on spicy nuts and seeds. I felt a bit of a 'tit' (haha) as it did seem like we were pecking on bird food, and I must look up what some of the seeds were, but they did the job and were nicely spiced - a bit like a posh, Anglofied Bombay mix.

The burger was fine. It was served in a ciabatta bun with cheese melted on the bottom part which I always find disappointing. Surely both aesthetically and for maximum taste it's best melted on the top of the burger, under the top half of the bun? There was a little pot of tomato relish an enormous endive leaf and some rather underdone chips (in my opinion). I should have taken the top off so you could see the burger underneath, but I didn't. Sorry.

And they didn't have the marinated olives that they do so well. All in all, most of our party of six seemed pleased, but I know they could have done better.