Don’t be put off by the long list of ingredients; when you’ve assembled them, making the Christmas pud is easy – and immensely rewarding. Just don’t expect to eat it the same year you make it – it’s better if allowed to mature for a year or more in repeated doses of booze.
Asda and Leiths Stir Up Sunday 2012
Stir Up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent, kickstarts preparations for Christmas over-indulgence – it’s traditionally the day the Christmas pudding mixture is made and cooked. It’s extraordinarily easy to make, as Joanna Biddolph discovered at a Stir Up Sunday event with Asda and Leiths School of Food and Wine.
Cha Cha Moon’s Christmas menu
I know it’s only November and you might not like having to face it just yet, but the time has come to talk about Christmas and more specifically, Christmas menus. Luckily for you though, dear reader, I am easing you in, as my first assignment of the festive season involves no turkey, no stuffing and no cranberry sauce. In fact, it contains virtually no discernible elements of Christmas at all…
May the Forza Win(ter) be with you
Forza Win(ter) being more of a supper club than pop-up restaurant means that you sit on communal tables of ten and there’s no choice of food. Instead a big pan of fonduta is placed onto a hotplate in the middle of the table, which you then ladle into bowls and eat with the roasted vegetables and meats, as and when they arrive.
Hungary? Eat some Goulash.
With winter nights setting in, serious comfort food is required. Time and time again I resort back to this slow cooked Hungarian favourite. Goulash with its warming paprika, meltingly tender beef and satisfying thick sauce is about as good as it gets as the nights grow longer.
James Street South – Belfast
Life outside London. David J Constable goes over the water to find that burgers and ribs are okay for jaded Londoners but in other places skill, ingredients and an interest in real restuarant food still thrives. And with a strong Northern Irish accent.
Foodepedia interviews Vivek Singh
Snaffling yet another of Cinnamon Kitchen’s smoky-as-you-like lamb seekh kebabs wrapped in roomali roti, I give silent thanks yet again that Vivek Singh decided to defy family expectation and become a chef rather than an engineer. He’s looking pretty relaxed, drink in hand, as he launches ‘Cinnamon Kitchen: The Cookbook’. So what, besides working a shift on the tandoor, gets the convivial chef all fired up?
No need to knead – Suzanne Dunaway
Kneading is the bit most home bread-makers fall down on – it’s such very hard work. Sure you can use the bread hook on the mixer but, unless you’ve paid for something serious like a KitchenAid, the thing will dance all over the worktop and probably won’t last ten minutes before emitting a smell of burning wires as a prelude to bursting into flames.
Book review: ‘Cinnamon Kitchen: The Cookbook’
‘Why are you doing an impression of Churchill?’ I’m asked by a housemate. No, I’m not puffing on a fat cigar and putting people down in a fabulously cutting manner- he means the nodding dog from the insurance ads. And, actually, he’s not far off the mark. It’s just I’ve got a copy of Vivek Singh’s’Cinnamon Kitchen: The Cookbook’ perched on my lap, and every recipe makes so much blimmin’ sense.
Interview with David Baker, brandy expert
‘Never swirl a spirit’ I’m told, as David pours a ten year old cognac into the glass and rolls it about gently. Apparently swirling the spirit releases the alcohol which blinds the delicate aromas of the drink.