Monthly Archives: November 2011

Rum Ganache for Breakfast

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Feeding the Family aired today at 1pm so at 9am I was busily prepping rum truffle mixture with David Greenwood-Haigh’s wonderful Haitian Rum.  It’s not actually David’s rum but David, who is the chocolatier at Divine Chocolate, does a lot to raise money for Haiti and he kindly brought me back this fabulous rum.  As David was coming on my show today I thought it only polite that I’d make up his Rum Truffles so we could try them on air.

To make sure I had the right quantity of rum I had to try the mixture (well, it would be rude not to) and it took me back to skiing, days before children, when we’d stop mid morning for a hot chocolate and rum. Actually rum ganache goes really well with porridge, with porridge in one hand and the spoon to lick out the bowl of ganache in the other it went down a treat.  A little dubious about rum at 9am but the sun is past the yard arm somewhere in the world and as long as I pretend I’m there it’s OK.

David was a fabulous guest as always, and give us insight in the invention of truffles and ganache by the world’s first celebrity chef, Augustus Escoffier, if you’d like the hear the show and the wonderful story of truffle invention and where the word ‘ganache’ came from you can listen again to the show on BBC Oxford

My edible Christmas recipes are up on the site too to download, I’ll be making some more of the savoury spicy nuts for a do tomorrow night, they’re yummy.

 

 

 

 

 

Foodie Advent Calendar

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Splat Cooking have just launched a Foodie Advent Calendar, from 1 December they’re going to be putting up a different recipe a day for the 24 days running up to Christmas. The recipes will be related to Christmas and could fall into the following categories:

  • Edible Christmas presents
  • Christmas tree decorations
  • Nibbles and canapes for Christmas entertaining
  • Edible table centrepieces
  • Lovely Christmas food
Splat Cooking are looking for people to send in their favourite recipes for adults and for children to make and are running a competition to award a bag of Splat Cooking goodies to their favourite adult and children’s recipe so please start sending, you can either tweet to @splatcooking using the hash tag #foodieadventcalendar or email to info@splatcooking.com or post on Splat Cooking’s facebook page http://www.facebook.com/splatcooking.

Croque en Bouche

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My big girl (15 years old) has just made croque en bouche as part of her Food Tech GCSE practical.  First time attempting spun sugar and she’s done a marvellous job, in fact, her little brother thinks she’s an absolute star as he’s got to eat the left overs – I hope his dentist isn’t reading this (!).

The photos tell the story and she did say that her profiteroles have never turned out as well as they did tonight – that’s an AGA for you.  She’s now realised that spun sugar isn’t difficult, it’s not even that fiddly but you do have to work quickly and you need to keep it company but at the end you have a real show off dish.  Wonder if I can get her to do pudding for New Year.

The profiteroles are filled with a blackcurrant cream and drizzled with blackcurrant coulis and chocolate shavings.  It tasted heavenly too.

Stir Up Sunday – Traditions

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The term Stir-up Sunday comes from the opening words for the day in the Book of Common Prayer of 1549.  The collect is the prayer of the day that ‘collects’ up the themes of the readings during a church service.  The original prayer used to start:

‘Stir up, we beseech thee’, - hence the term Stir Up Sunday.

‘Stir-up Sunday’  is the Sunday before Advent – the end of November – and everyone in the family takes a turn to stir the pudding with a wooden spoon from East to West (clockwise) in honor of the three Kings making their journey, with their eyes closed whilst making a secret wish.  The sprig of holly is a reminder of Jesus’ ‘Crown of Thorns’.  Holly also was supposed to bring good luck and is said to have special healing powers.

Another custom is to put silver or gold items into the pudding; each has a special significance:

-    Silver coins are supposed to bring luck to whoever finds them in their slice of pudding on Christmas Day.

-     A gold ring signifies that the finder will be married before the year is out.

-     A silver thimble or button signifies that the finder will never marry and remain a spinster or bachelor forever, or if people didn’t want to upset whoever pulled out the thimble the meaning was changed to ‘having a lucky life’.

There should be 13 ingredients in the pudding to signify Jesus and his 13 disciples; my recipe has more ingredients because I think it tastes better.

Legends surround holly go back much further into human history.  It’s one of the few evergreen trees abundant in England in the winter and as such was considered magical as remained green and bore fruit throughout the darkest, coldest season.  The Druids believed that it kept it’s leaves and shiny red berries to help keep the beautiful throughout winter when the sacred oak lost it’s leaves.

It’s Stir Up Sunday today so gather the family together and make your Christmas Puddings and Mincemeat, I have some lovely recipes on my recipes pages, so check out

Chocolate and Ginger Christmas Pudding

 

 

Classic Christmas Pudding

Cranberry and Orange Mincemeat

Traditional Mincemeat