Christmas Planning

To paraphrase the old nursery rhyme, Christmas is coming the lists are getting fat!

I’m a big list person; lists help me feel like I’m in control.  They allow me to organise my thoughts and, with my increasingly addled brain, they remind me of what needs to be done and what I have already done!

My Christmas planning lists are legion I’m ashamed to say!  There’s a list of cards I need to send, a list of gifts I need to send and another of gifts bought and for whom, a list of what we are doing and when and then the food lists ...... yes, lists ...... plural!

·         The first list is constructed from an afternoon perusing my Christmas cookbooks and magazines, selecting recipes I want to try, or enjoyed last year. 

·         The second list is distilled from that, and roughs out what I want to make in the run up to Christmas and broadly what I want to make on each day of the holiday from Christmas Eve through to New Year’s Day. 

·         A third list, built from the second lists recipes and ingredients needed.

·         A fourth list (yes, I know!) itemises ingredients needed into a shopping list broken down into categories (fresh veg/fruit, meat/fish, dairy, tins/dried ingredients, storecupboard, baking). 

·         A fifth list (ready for a brandy yet?!) breaks the shopping list into three outings : things needed to prepare in the run-up to Christmas; things needed for the first half of the Christmas holiday and finally fresh stuff needed for the second half of the Christmas holiday.

Aside from de-cluttering my mind these lists remind me of what I need to buy, and crucially, when I’m peering at a box of chestnuts, what I wanted them for!  They help me to feel in control and remind me what I need to be doing and when. 

Most importantly, especially in today’s straightened times, it cuts waste on two fronts as firstly shopping is no longer a hit and miss trawl of the supermarket and secondly, there is no waste as everything I buy is needed for something specific and doesn’t migrate to the back of cupboard or fridge like a sad time capsule!

Now all that’s left is to face the horror that is supermarket shopping in the run-up to Christmas.

To borrow from Spartacus : ‘We who are about to do Christmas salute you!’

Shepherd's Pie

My absolute number one favourite pie!  Probably better known as cottage pie as I make it with beef mince and not lamb mince, it’s always known as shepherd’s pie to me!

A very versatile dish, it is traditionally made with minced leftover beef.  Indeed, my mother keeps leftover meat of all descriptions for her shepherd’s pie – chicken, lamb and beef.  I have to say, odd as that combination sounds, it is absolutely delicious!

I have made various toppings over the years, a combination of any of the following: mashed potato, swede (rutabaga in the US), celeriac, carrot, parsnip.  I usually just make it with mashed potato though, very buttery mashed potato.  I always sweat the green part of a leek in a little butter and mix that in with the mashed potato to top the pies too.  A grating of cheese finishes the dish beautifully.

You can also finish it with a rosti topping (part boil and grate some potato and mix with a little butter) or a Teviotdale topping (see earlier blog post on this one).

Like most pies this improves on keeping and can be made well ahead of time, a day or even two in the fridge won’t do it any harm at all.  I usually make this pie filling in the morning and prepare the topping later in the day.

The recipe I generally use is below, but is never cast in stone, just go with what you like and what you have to hand.  It will serve four people and will freeze.

500g minced beef (or lamb)

1 onion

1 carrot

Half a small swede (rutabaga in the US)

Chopped mixed herbs to taste (I usually use a mix of rosemary, thyme, parsley, a little sage)

1 bayleaf

1 anchovy

Worcestershire sauce

1tb flour

Half a pint of beef stock (or a little more depending on how much gravy you like with your pie, if using lamb mince use lamb stock)

Salt and pepper to taste

Chop the onion, dice the swede and carrot and add both to a pan with a little olive oil.  Sweat over a low heat for around 10 minutes or so. 

Add the anchovy and push around the pan until it ‘melts’. 

Add the minced beef and brown in the pan, cooking until the juices cook off. 

Add the tablespoon of flour and mix into everything.  Gradually add the beef stock stirring well. 

Add the chopped herbs and a dash of Worcestershire sauce and stir, season to taste with salt and pepper and pop in a bayleaf. 

Leave to simmer quietly on a very low heat for 20 to 30 minutes, stirring from time to time so that it doesn’t stick. 

Decant into your pie dish (or dishes if you are freezing some for another day).  If you are making this ahead of time, allow the dish to cool and then cover and pop in the fridge until you are ready for it. 

To make the topping simply slice the green part of a leek in half lengthways, and then in half again, chopping the quarters to dice them.  Soften in a little butter for 5 – 10 minutes.

At the same time, boil and mash some potatoes (the amount you need will depend on how you are treating the pies – making all four serves for now or stashing two, or three, in the freezer). 

Add the buttery leeks to the mashed potatoes and mix together. 

If you are topping the pie for immediate re-heating spoon onto the pie filling and fork across, the ridges made by the forking will brown nicely.  Add some (or a lot!) grated cheese and pop into the oven.   

If you are making the potato topping ahead of time too (and I often do!), leave to go cold before topping the pies. 

The hot pie filling will need 20 minutes or so, until the potato topping is nicely brown and crispy.  A chilled/cold pie filling will need 30 minutes.   

I always use enamelled pie tins to cook this so if you are using stoneware they might need a little longer.

The Decline of the Sunday Lunch

I read an article recently in the newspaper bemoaning the decline of the traditional Sunday lunch.  According to the article, many people “are turning to fast food in a bid to save time and money, shirking home-made meals”.  While I felt that claim to be somewhat inflammatory, it did get me thinking. 

I class myself as a competent cook, I enjoy cooking and am never happier than when I am pottering in the kitchen.  Yet the traditional Sunday roast and veg lunch makes an infrequent appearance on the table at our house.  When did that happen and why?

When I was a young bride, back in the mid 80’s, trad Sunday roast lunch was practically the law!  My then husband and I wouldn’t have contemplated otherwise.  So Sunday mornings found me in the kitchen cooking meat and veg, making gravy and then us rushing to eat lunch and get the dishes washed and put away so that we could spend the afternoon visiting first one set of parents and then another.  As the years went on, with the introduction of rolling shifts Sunday lunches began to make fewer and fewer appearances.   

After my divorce they faded even further into the background!  When I met and courted my (now) husband he was a keen cricketer so the time to make and eat Sunday lunches were a luxury I couldn’t afford during the cricket season as we often left the house at noon to reach various cricket grounds.  But what about the winter months?

 

When I worked I often spent Saturday or Sunday afternoons batch-cooking casseroles, lasagne/spag bol, chillies, hotpots and variations thereof, stews etc so that I could stash some portions in the freezer for weekday evenings.

Roast lunches did, of course, appear on the table from time to time, but they were a rare treat and generally only appeared on occasions when I catered for the extended family (parents, sister and brother-in-law, aunt and uncle).

I often bang on and on, as is my wont (!), about how the long working hours culture in the UK is destroying family life.  From my own, albeit very limited, experience, when I worked so much of my time was spent either at my desk or commuting to and from, that by the time I got home I was too exhausted to turn around and cook anything meaningful from scratch. 

In those days I had a repertoire of 10 minute quickies mostly dishes based around pasta; or made from leftovers; or something like a shepherd's pie, fish pie, spag bol, chilli etc made earlier and frozen.  Saturday was generally when I attempted to catch up with housework, visit friends and family and grocery shop.  By the time Sunday came around the idea of standing in the kitchen co-ordinating a roast lunch, making gravy and then (crucially!) washing up a mountain of dishes, pots and pans just too much.  How much easier is it to stick meat and veg into a casserole with some stock and push the whole lot into the oven to take care of itself.

Even today, my Sunday standby is generally a casserole or stew of some variation; Irish stew, Lancashire hotpot, Caerphilly hotpot (replace lamb with beef and onion with leek!), steak and mushroom hotpot etc.  We still have the full-on roast lunch, but only every few weeks.  I guess it’s become a habit now!

What about you?  Do you cook a traditional Sunday roast every week or are they an occasional treat?

(There is a link below to the article for anyone who wants to read it in its entirety)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2054775/Decline-Sunday-lunch-How-Brits-busy-cook-traditional-roast.html

Baking Day!

I love baking day, I don’t think anything can beat the smell of fresh bread baking!  When I worked I had a breadmaker, I used to set it with the timer so that I had fresh bread on a Saturday morning.   I found it was only OK though.  A lot of the recipes were too sweet for my taste and I hated having a hole in the middle of the loaf where the paddle used to be.  After a while I stopped baking in it and only used it to get the dough to the ready-to-bake stage. Eventually, I even stopped doing that and now make it part in my stand mixer and part by hand. 

I use my Mum’s foolproof recipe, she’s been using it for more years than I’ve been alive, and it was probably the one that her mother used before her!  She tells me that when she was growing up the housewives would make the bread dough in the morning and then send the kids off with the loaves in tins to the bakehouse for the baker to cook their bread after he’d cooked the shop bread.  Life is considerably easier today than in those days though!

The recipe I use couldn’t be easier :

·         1½ lbs strong plain flour (breadmaking flour)

·         1 good tsp salt mixed in with the flour 

·         1oz fresh yeast (I get it from the bakery in my local supermarket)

·         1tsp sugar 

·         Appx ¾ to 1 pint of blood-temperature water, which is to say water that is neither cold nor hot, you should be able to hold your finger in it without feeling cold or hot.

Mix the flour and sugar together and make a well in the mixing bowl. 

Put the yeast and sugar together in a small mixing bowl and cream by pushing the sugar and yeast together until the yeast liquefies.  Add to the flour bowl and rinse the bowl out with the water. 

I can only give an approximate amount of liquid as it depends on the make of flour you are using, and even different batches of flour will absorb different amounts of liquid.  You are looking for a dough consistency that is neither too dry nor too wet so either add more liquid, or more flour, until you get the desired consistency. 

I mix mine in my KitchenAid with the dough hook for around 10 minutes before turning out onto the worktop and kneeding by hand for about 5 minutes more.  I find this very relaxing, almost zen-like!   

Pop the dough into a large bowl, cover with a clean tea-towel and leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size.  The time this takes can vary considerably.  In the summer months it was taking less than an hour; this morning it was closer to two hours!  I use three tea-towels and a small hand-towel to cover the dough. 

When it has doubled in size turn back out onto your worktop and knock it back, i.e. kneed it some more.  I cut the dough into three similar sized pieces and kneed them separately, popping each batch into a loaf tin after kneeding.  Cover again with your tea-towel and leave until the dough has doubled in size again. 

Pre-heat your oven to 200^o and bake the loaves for appx 35 minutes.  When you turn the loaves out of the tins tap the bottoms, they will sound hollow when they are cooked.

They freeze beautifully so I always pop two in the freezer.

Just like Grandma used to make!

We’ve been away in London for most of this week, Hubby was seeing a client for a few days’ training and I went along to keep him company.  Ahh, the blessings of being a full-time housewife!

I don’t know if it was because we’ve been away, or because it’s been quite cold over the last few days, but I woke up this morning with a real fancying for proper Welsh cawl.  When I was a child this was my favourite dinner; my grandparents lived in the same street as us and my grandmother, with whom I was incredibly close, used to make it quite often.  Hers was the best!  My mother used to make it from time to time as well, but hers was never quite as nice as my grandmother’s.

Well, today I cracked it!  I’ve been making it for 20+ years, but today’s batch was the closest I’ve ever gotten to my grandmother’s. 

After shopping for all the bits and pieces I needed, I worked out that it had cost no more than £3.62 for the meat and the veg.  Add on a couple of coppers for the stock cube and the flour and suet for the dumplings and you can see it really is a cheap meal!

It doesn’t take a lot of preparation, but it does need a good 2 or 3 hours in a very low oven.  I left mine for 3 so that it got good and thick.

Quantities will vary, depending on your pot size and how many people you want to feed – and are never fixed in stone anyway (!), but this was what I used : 

3 nice big carrots, peeled and cut into rough biggish chunks, rustic style

2 small and one biggish parsnip, peeled and cut into rough biggish chunks

about the same quantity of swede, again peeled and cut into biggish pieces

1 medium sized potato, again peeled and cut into biggish pieces

1 large leek, cut into big rings

Appx 1½ lb of diced casserole beef (skirt, shin, clod – whatever)

1 stock cube

Pour about 1tb of olive oil into a casserole and add the diced beef, stirring around to brown.  Remove to a dish and add the prepared carrot, parsnip and swede, turn the heat down as low as it will go and toss the veg around the pan for a few minutes to lightly brown them.  Return the meat and any drippings in the dish to the pan, add 1tb of flour and stir well into the contents of the pan.  Add as much hot water as is needed to cover all the vegetables and meat and then season to taste, add a stock cube and the leek and potato.  Cover and pop in a low oven for 3 hours.  I cooked mine at 130^o.  Towards the end of the cooking time you can make the dumpling mix – I used 2tb flour, same of suet and a pinch of salt, adding enough water to make a very thick mixture.  Spoon tablespoonfuls into the pan and pop back in the oven for half an hour. 

Best served to a cold and hungry husband on a cold, wet and windy day!.

The Frugal Housewife

According to recent press reports energy firms have seen profits increase by some 700% since June; plunging more and more households into fuel poverty at a time when incomes are facing the biggest squeeze since the 70’s.

I remember the 70’s well.  I remember the ‘Save-It’ campaign that encouraged people to, among other things, turn off lights in rooms that are not being used; not just households, but businesses too. I remember being urged not to fill the kettle to capacity, but only to boil as much as you needed.  I remember my mum making her own bread instead of buying it (something which she continues to do to this day – at nearly 80 years of age!)   

My mind returned to all those frugal tips a few years ago when the recession first loomed upon the horizon.  I had long had a hankering for a Rayburn/Aga type cooker; maybe it’s an age thing, but how much more sensible would it be to have one of those running the central heating system in the home.  Then, since the oven would already be hot, you could be simmering a casserole or a stew virtually for free.  My grandmother used to have one when I was growing up, and there was always a kettle of water heating on there, with the amount of tea I drink I’m sure that would save me at least one mortgage payment a year!    

While I can’t take advantage of dovetailing my central heating with making our dinner, I am very frugal when it comes to cooking.  For example, any casserole that cooks for 2 or 3 hours has to provide at least four portions – two for now and two for the freezer.  In addition, I won’t contemplate having the oven on for any length of time and then cooking the accompanying vegetables on the hob – I usually either make a tray of roast root vegetables, a creamy potato gratin or boulangerie potatoes.  I always pop the peas in the microwave to cook, just as they are, as they only take 2 minutes. 

Unfortunately, we are coming at this recession on the back of 20 years of plenty when we didn’t have to think about being frugal.  Our homes today are not designed to help us live frugally.  All new-build houses are fitted with ovens with a combi-grill.  Why can’t they be fitted with double ovens, where the small oven doubles as a grill? That would be far more economical for cooking than heating up one large cavernous oven to cook a shepherd’s pie for two. 

How many new-build homes today come with a fireplace fitted as standard?  Yet on those chilly autumn and spring evenings how much more economical would it be just to turn the fire on for a few hours instead of heating up the whole house. 

We’ve also lost the skills to stretch a penny to two like older generations used to take for granted.  In those days the fire wasn’t lit as a matter of course like it is today.  People dressed warmly indoors during the daytime instead of having the heating on.  Until my husband started working from home our heating was only on for half an hour in the morning (to take the chill off the house first thing in the morning) and then for around 4 hours in the evening, always going off at around 8.30 pm – partly for economic grounds but mainly to allow the bedroom to cool down for me to sleep ...... it’s an age/stage of life thing!  Now that he works from home, as he’s deskbound all day he needs the heating on.  It’s something of a culture shock for me though, I spent all last winter in skirts and t-shirts as I was so warm!   

We’ve also lost the skills, or the will, to make the most of the more economical cuts of meat.  Oxtails, offal, skirt, clod or shin beef.  They all make the most delicious stews and casseroles.  Kidneys alone make a delicious dish that cooks in half an hour – how easy is that. 

I guess I’m lucky, I learned frugality at first-hand from a grandmother who kept house through the last depression and with the rationing of war-time.  I’m well equipped to deal with this one in my stride.  

What about the younger generation though?  Are they equipped to deal with leaner times?  Have they got the skill set to see them through?

What about businesses?  Are prices higher because we, the consumer, are paying the price for their profligacy in having lights burning all night long and stores heated to the degree that staff are wearing sleeveless blouses in December while the poor shopper is sweltering in her outdoor coat?

I don't know what the answer is; but sadly I foresee lean times for quite a while yet.

The Grateful Housewife

I woke up yesterday to one of those horrible, dank, windy, driving-drizzle days.  The sort of day that just makes you want to retreat back under the duvet with a mug of tea and a pile of magazines.

Looking out of the bedroom window I thought back to when I was working and having to drive to work in the rain.   No day starts well when the first challenge is trying to make headway among speeding traffic while peering through a rain-splattered windscreen!  It didn’t get any better when I’d arrived as I’d invariably have to deal with the insanity of a boss who truly thought I really ought to be able to read his mind and that knowledge could be transmitted by osmosis.  Then there was his wife who thought I could see through walls and could tell her what any particular piece of paper she waved around related to without actually having to see it!

As a happy housewife, my greatest challenge was stripping and changing our bed, cleaning through upstairs, trying to dry some laundry and making dinner!!

Financially, we may not be as well off as we were then; but we really live like kings now.