A Very Foodie Lim-Mas

Happy New Year, one and all! Now that the festive season is safely behind us, I might as well tell you: my family takes Christmas incredibly seriously. More specifically: we take Christmas food incredibly seriously. I'm pretty sure that collectively, the four of us gain the weight of a small child.

We stay up late on Christmas Eve to do any food prep needed for the next day, such as boiling and roasting the traditional Christmas Day ham. This year we also decided to prepare our stomachs for the big day with a melted Camembert and sharpen our minds with a particularly taxing game of Trivial Pursuit. (Sadly, my dad tends to wipe the floor with all three of us womenfolk. T.P. is stacked in favour of old people. I'm sure of it). 

On Christmas morning my sister and I open our stockings and then go downstairs to ooh and aah over the presents under the tree. When we were kids we did all of this at 4 AM. Poor Mum and Dad. Now we tend to rise at a much more civil 11 AM...

We check that Santa has eaten his mince pie, taken his treat for the reindeer and drunk his tipple of choice. He seems to rather enjoy a tot of Baileys.

Next we make sure the dining table is attired in a suitably festal manner and start preparing food for Christmas lunch. Snacking along the way, of course. It's hard not to when you've got a prime cut of Hansen & Lydersen salmon just begging to be served with crème fraîche and blinis...

While the roast meats (duck and turkey this year!) are in the oven, we gather around the tree for the best bit: present opening!

 Here's a few of my favourites from this year...

A leather wallet and notebook that smell delicious.

Isabel Marant earrings.

A bevy of wonderful books. The Bone Clocks was my Christmas Day read and I can highly recommend it: a marriage of thriller and fantasy that had my fingers glued to the novel all the way through Boxing Day and beyond.

Susanne Kaufmann goodies.

Sunscreen from Bri. One of my New Year's resolutions is to wear this every day. More on my resolutions in an upcoming post...(maybe).

Alex and I made stockings for each other this year, and the highlight of his was this phone case! So utterly perfect for me. The boy knows me well.

And my favourite of all, this black leather rucksack. I'd been searching for one for ages but my parents found this one and it's perfect. Smart enough to take to work, but practical too - I need a bag that won't damage my back.

After present-opening merriment Bri and I worked together to make a pavlova. The meringue should really be made the night before, but this year we forgot completely. I blame Trivial Pursuit.

At about 4PM, it's time for Christmas dinner! Lunch? Feast?? It's such a weird in-between time that no one really knows...Next comes a whirl of delicious food, drink, cracker-pulling and general conviviality. 

After dinner we watch a spot of Christmas TV and movies (this year, Frozen and Miracle on 34th Street) and when the effects of our gluttony have worn off slightly, we decorate and serve the pavlova. 

And that concludes Christmas 2014! Bit of a late post on my part, but I'd love to know anyway - what did you get up to this year (well...last year?) Do you have any Yuletide traditions? 

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Late-Night Chocolate Pecan Cookies

The witching hour is upon us, and tonight I've got a short and sweet post on some chocolatey, nutty biscuits that proved a giant hit among my family (and Alex!) last week.

Anything that remotely resembles chocolate is likely to disappear very quickly in my home. The kitchen worktops are a particular danger zone. Make the mistake of putting a piece of much-anticipated chocolate down for a minute, be that a cube of Green and Black's or a salted caramel from Melt, and it'll be swallowed up forever. Usually by my father. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Chocolate biscuits are a particular favourite in the family. With these in mind, the mother and I fired up the oven a few nights ago. Following this BBC GoodFood recipe, we stuffed pecans and chunks of chocolate into mounds of sweet dough to make these truly delicious cookies. 

In the reviews for the recipe some people have complained that the dough spreads quite a bit during baking. If you want them to spread less during the cooking process, chill your dough for half an hour or so, but personally I like mine like this! They're crispy yet chewy, just the way I like them, and ridiculously easy. They take about half an hour tops to put together and bake - that's homemade cookies in your mouth in 30 minutes! And best of all, all you need to really buy is dark chocolate and a bag of pecans, as chances are you'll have the rest of the ingredients in your kitchen already.

Delicious with a cup of tea, or, even better, a glass of ice-cold almond milk.

Optimistically we put the cookies that weren't eaten straight out of the oven into a kilner jar. They lasted less than a day...Oh Dad.

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August Favourites

It's the last day of August, which means that as far as I'm concerned, we've officially reached the end of summer. August has been good to me, soothing the stress of searching for jobs and internships with a trip abroad, some good weather in Britain, delicious food and drink, and a spell in an exciting publishing house. Here's what made me happy this month. 

Harvesting the crop of damsons from the garden this year. The birds 'planted' the plum trees a few years back, and this is the first year we've harvested them. We filled a clutch of kilner jars with damson jam, and have used it to accompany vanilla ice cream as well as to fill a Victoria sponge a week or so again. It's so unexpectedly rich and delicious, and I'm excited to use it in more baking this autumn, perhaps in a galette or an apple crumble.

Watching the video for Taylor Swift's new song. I haven't really been paying attention to Miss Swift since she provided the soundtrack to the heady days of my late adolescence with tunes like 'Our Song', 'Teardrops On My Guitar' and 'Love Story'. This is such a different sound - Tay's left country firmly behind (yes, I know, I've been hiding under a rock with regards to popular music in the past year or so) and I love how the video hinges around the wonderfully gauche admission that she just can't dance. A girl after my own heart.

Playing around with the calligraphy set I bought from Cass over the Easter holidays. I definitely need to get myself to a class and learn the basic letter forms. Unskilled as I am, it's really fun and a therapeutic way to pass the time.

Listening to Alex playing from songbooks and improvising jazz on the piano. It's part of the reason I fell in love with him two years ago, and every time I hear him play it reminds me all over again why I like him. If you just gagged a little, I wholeheartedly apologise.

Grazing on my mother's homemade gluten-free orange cake, made with almond flour. One of her best bakes ever, I'd say - and perfect with a little drizzle of cream. If this were a permanent fixture in the kitchen I would be very pleased indeed (hint hint).

Unwinding in front of the TV. The BBC always cushion the end-of-summer blow with a fantastic programme of new shows, bribing us back inside from flip-flops and barbecue weather with shows like The Great British Bake Off and Doctor Who. Bake Off has seen a huge Baked Alaska-related scandal inside the bunting-festooned tent this week (such good television. I love Britain.) and Peter Capaldi has already stolen my heart by bringing fiercely knitted eyebrows and Scottish quirks to the part of the Doctor. Catching up on episode two today, and I can't wait for the return of the Daleks...

Reading the giant pile of goodies I was allowed to bring back from a fortnight of work experience at Random House. I sent myself twenty books on Friday, took two out of the charity box with me the week before, and was given six from a week at Hodder in July, meaning I've racked up 28 free books over the course of this summer. So happy. From the Random House pile I've started with Martin Amis' Booker shortlisted Time's Arrow, which is thrillingly executed, with a fantastic concept. I'm particularly excited to read the new Haruki Murakami, having witnessed the man himself signing piles of copies while at work - definitely the highlight of this week! This pile probably has me sorted for…oh, at least the next few weeks. Until the new Shopaholic comes out, which my inner chicklit-lover dictates I must buy. 

Starting a scrapbook with A. We finally went to Cass and bought a scrapbook and some washi tape, and we've been pasting in our little souvenirs from our trip to Norway in January, May Week, and our July trip to Paris. It's so fun to do, and a really nice way of keeping all the little bits and pieces in a neat place.

Goodbye, August! Some say you're a wicked month, but you've been fun. See you again next year.

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Hits And Misses In The Kitchen

In our household, we tend to while away the hours in our little kitchen. The kitchen table is my favourite blogging and job-hunting space, especially when accompanied by a cup of tea. We've also been spending more time in there of late, with my mother, fuelled by the Great British Bake Off, bringing home a shiny new KitchenAid last week to help her with her sourdough quest. August has been a wonderful month for gastronomic experimentation: here's a couple of the dishes we've been rustling up these past two weeks!

Here's a take on classic mussels, given an Asian twist with lemongrass, lime, chilli and coconut milk. Probably a little bit healthier than my beloved moules marinières, and wonderfully flavourful. This one was mainly my mother's work, with me hanging over her shoulder expectantly. 

A salmon fillet stuffed with salsa verde (and baked after these photos were taken!). I hugely enjoyed cooking this one. My knife skills leave a fair bit to be desired, so butterflying the fillet was a tense job, but garnishing it was so fun. The already delicious salmon was made even tastier by the addition of all these wonderful herbs, capers and olives, and a healthy drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

Roast lamb chops with diced potatoes and beetroots. This looked pretty before it went into the oven, but in hindsight the beetroots made everything a bit too wet, and the lamb chops ended up a bit grey, and I had to give them a bit of colour in a frying pan, resulting in them being just a wee bit overdone. They'd have been better off seared in the pan, which is how I usually cook them. 

So some high points and low points this month, but I've really enjoyed playing around with what works and what doesn't! I'm so looking forward to the flavours of the steadily encroaching autumn: pumpkin, cobnuts, wild mushrooms, celeriac, fennel, apple, swede, swiss chard and so much more. I'm also particularly anticipating the roasts that start becoming much more frequent once summer's wound down! I say bring on the cooler weather, and the wonderful produce that goes with the cold snap in the air.

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Chocolate Beetroot Cake

The idea of finding vegetables in one's cake may be slightly perturbing, but give them a chance. I'm sure carrot cake was met with horror and disdain once upon a time, after all. Well, okay. Maybe cauliflower wouldn't do so well in a cake. Or aubergines. 

Beetroots, however. Little mauve globes of joy, perfect when chopped into a salad with some goat's cheese and walnuts. Gorgeous when roasted alongside a chicken and eaten alongside caramelised potatoes on a warm summer's evening. You might not have thought of putting them in a cake. But believe me, beetroot, when introduced into chocolate cake, makes for the fudgiest, moistest bake I've made this summer. 

I've actually been pretty obsessed by chocolate beetroot cake for a while. Last autumn I cycled to Stickybeaks, a wonderful café tucked away on a back street in central Cambridge, for a little bit of headspace. (Please, please visit if you're ever making a trip to Cambridge - hands down best cake in the city.) I wandered to the counter, ordered a slice of their chocolate beetroot cake and sat down to pore over books for an essay. The waitress brought it to the table with a steaming cup of tea and a smile. I put a forkful in my mouth and swooned inwardly. The combo of chocolate with beetroot works beautifully because the beets, naturally sweet, impart both moistness and an extra layer of flavour depth to the cake. And for those who are wondering, no, the cake doesn't taste like a garden salad - the chocolate almost completely masks the beetroot taste. The beetroots give the cake a gorgeous reddish tinge which is only really discernible in the day time and through photos. It's sort of like a natural red velvet in this sense - you get the lovely chocolatey taste with the scarlet colour, but with no added food colouring!

I mentioned in my post about our homegrown veg and fruit that we've been growing a ton of beetroots this summer. We've been roasting them, slicing them into salad, trying them in pasta... I decided I absolutely had to try my hand at baking with them last weekend. I haven't quite mastered the art of beautiful bakes yet (à la The Great British Bake-Off, which I watch religiously every year), but my family and A absolutely loved the result. The cake was demolished within mere days, and now I'm being begged to make another! Give it a go and see what you think!

Chocolate beetroot cake (adapted from Nigel Slater)

Ingredients:

300g beetroot, washed thoroughly

200g good dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids)

200g butter

135g plain flour

1 heaped tsp baking powder

3 tsp good quality cocoa powder

4 tbsp hot espresso

5 eggs

190g golden caster sugar

Crème fraîche to serve

• Cook your beetroot whole and unpeeled in boiling unsalted water. They should be tender in roughly half an hour, though if you're using young ones, keep checking them after about twenty minutes. Drain them, cool them under cold running water, then peel them (this bit's messy - you might want to use gloves!) slice off their stem and root, pop in a Magimix or food processor and blitz to a rough purée.

•While your beetroots are cooking, lightly butter a loose-bottomed cake tin, lining the base with a disc of baking parchment. Set the oven at 180ºC/Gas Mark 4. 

•Snap your chocolate into small pieces and melt them in a bowl resting over simmering water, making sure that the water doesn't touch the bowl. Don't stir. When the chocolate looks like it's nearly molten, pour your hot espresso over it and stir once.

•Cut your butter into small pieces and add to the melted chocolate, using a spoon to dip the butter pieces under the surface of the chocolate. Leave to soften over a low heat.

•Sift together the flour, baking powder and cocoa, and set aside.

•Separate your eggs, placing the whites in a large mixing bowl. Stir the yolks together. Remove the chocolate from the heat and gently stir the butter until it has melted into the chocolate. Leave for a few minutes, then quickly stir in the egg yolks, mixing firmly and evenly so that the eggs blend with the mixture. When you've done this, fold in your blitzed beetroot.

•Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, then gently fold in the sugar to avoid losing the air. Firmly but tenderly (Nigel's words, not mine!) fold the beaten egg whites and sugar into the chocolate mixture using a large metal spoon, using a deep figure of 8 movement. Be careful not to over-mix.

•Fold in the flour, baking powder and cocoa, making sure it's well combined. Transfer quickly to the prepared cake tin and put in the oven, immediately turning your heat down to 160ºC/Gas Mark 3. Bake for 45 mins, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre comes out clean.

•Leave to cool (don't worry if it sinks a bit!) then loosen the cake with a palette knife around the edges after about half an hour. Try very hard not to remove the cake from its tin until completely cold (I failed at this because of hungry parents...) Serve in thick slices with a dollop of crème fraîche. 

Enjoy! 

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