"Vinda-vents"

It was something I'd been meaning to do for quite some time - make vindaloo filled vol au vents. I like curry, I like pie, I like curry pies, and I was quite proud of the "vindavent" portmanteau. Christmas seemed like a pretty good occasion to give these a go.

Obviously at Christmas, the meat of choice has to be Turkey. So I visited my local free range butcher and asked him to source for me the finest Turkey money could buy.

When it comes to curry, I do usually prefer to make mine from scratch. But time was short, so I settled for a jar of Pataks Vindaloo curry paste, which I thought would do the job. However, I did add some extra garlic and a couple of home-grown-dried chillies, just in case the paste wasn't powerful enough.

I cooked the curry in oven on a low temperature overnight. In the morning, I was glad to see that my meat of dubious origin was now nice and tender, and had completely fallen away from the bone. Separating out the pieces of bone and inedible gristle was a quick and simple job after this.

I cut out the vol au vent cases from a sheet of puff pastry, and of course, made little "hats" for the tops. When the pastry was almost cooked, I stuffed them with the curry and put them back in the oven.

 It was then time to rush them to the Band of Baker Christmas event, before they got cold!

I gotta say - the vindavents were pretty good, but needed more heat. I cursed the shop bought curry paste. The real stars of the evening were not one but TWO "Christmas pies". Turkey, stuffing, sausage, cranberry sauce and more crammed into a gargantuan pie crust. So if there sufficient leftovers after the Fishbiscuits Christmas dinner, I may well be making one of these myself.

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Leftover Christmas Cake - three ways

I like Christmas cake. I do. But you can have too much of a good thing. And when my mother presented me with a whole cake on boxing day (complete with 1970s decorations), I knew I would struggle to get through the whole thing.

So here are three ideas for using up all that extra fruit cake.

1. Fridge Cake

This is a simple one. Melt down some leftover Christmas chocolate with some butter, and stir in chopped Christmas cake, and whatever other stuff you have lying around. I threw in some chopped pistachios and hazlenuts, some "Festive Friend" chocolate biscuits, and chocolate covered cherries.

Not forgetting my special ingredient - dried cherries soaked in brandy and sugar.

I poured into a lined tin, and left in the fridge until set.

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2. Baked Alaska

I started by soaking some frozen raspberries in brandy (my old friend, Tesco Napoleon Brandy, £10 for 1 litre) and sugar. I stirred the raspberry mixture into some vanilla ice cream, and the returned it to the freezer to set until hard.

Meanwhile, I pressed some slices of cake into a ring, and soaked with some of the remaining alcoholic raspberry juice. I put it in the oven on a fairly high heat, until it became quite hard and biscuity. Once it was cooled, it was the perfect base for the baked alaska.

I put the ice cream - now laced with booze and raspberries - onto the base, and covered with meringue. Then put in the oven on a high heat until brown.

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3. Trifle

I lined a bowl with slices of Christmas cake, then poured over the remainer of the juice from the cherries and the raspberries, along with an extra glug of brandy. I added a few spoons of jam, and the rest of the fruit.

I topped with custard and whipped cream. Finally I sprinkled it with some chopped hazlenuts and some grated chocolate.

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Conclusion

The chocolate fridge cake was the definite winner. A big lump of chocolate and butter with a hit of brandy was always going to be tough to beat. It also requires the least effort of the three desserts!

Filthy Xmas pt2 - Deep Fried Christmas Pudding

I had a medical the other day. As if almost feinting during the blood test wasn't bad enough, I received an email shortly afterwards - "Dear Mr Fishbiscuits, the results show that you have raised cholesterol". I'm sure this will come as no more of a surprise to you than it did to me, given some of the stuff I shove into my gob. But Christmas is not the time of year to be worrying about weight, cholesterol, and blood pressure. It is a time for indulgence, a time to spoil yourself after another year at the grindstone. Salads, gym, and the general abstinence from pleasure can wait until January.

So, concentrating firmly on the present, no dish embodies Christmas indulgence quite like the Christmas pudding does. Thick, dense, rich, sweet, spicy, fatty, reeking of alcohol, and containing half* of our normal daily calories in a single slice, it is regarded throughout the rest of the world as an eccentric (and even unpleasant) British oddity... a medieval legacy that has somehow survived into modern times. It is frankly remarkable that we can squeeze it in after a full roast with all the trimmings. But I love Christmas pudding. And it is the perfect candidate for my final deep-fried installation of 2012.

The traditional home made Fishbiscuit family pudding is a wondrous thing, but unable to procure one, I had to settle for a shop bought version. It smelled OK, but not boozy enough. I looked at the packet again... disaster! I had bought an "alcohol free" pudding! So I poured some brandy (Tesco own brand... nice) and Cointreau over the top, and stabbed it repeatedly with a skewer to allow the booze to soak in.

After a few minutes, I fashioned two large balls of pudding. I had limited success with an ice cream scoop, so I ended up rolling them between my hands, until I had two balls. Big. Sticky. Smelly. Balls.

The batter is my tried-and-tested recipe of self raising flour, cornflour, milk, and beer. Cheap lager would be fine, but I used Hoegaarden, because I thought it might be nice to drink the remainder. I rolled the balls-o-pudding in flour, before dunking into the batter.

I'm pretty sure this stuff comes already cooked, but nevertheless, these are pretty big chunks of pudding which take a while to heat through. So unlike my previous high-temperate frying exploits, these needed to be fried at a moderate temperature for a longer duration.

The batter did not puff up that much, and I am assuming that this was because of the lower temperature. But even so, the batter formed a satisfyingly crunchy crust around the pudding.

Obviously you have to have brandy butter (or "hard sauce", as our American friends call it for some strange reason) with Christmas pudding. So I whipped up some butter with a glug of brandy and some icing sugar. And if the doctor doesn't like it, she can shove it!

The Samuel Smiths cherry beer went reasonably well with the pudding, and felt somehow appropriate and Christmassy. Then I started wondering how a cherry beer batter would turn out... maybe next time...

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*probably not accurate... I'm not a dietitian, OK?

Filthy Xmas pt1 - Ultimate Turkey Sandwich (Fuzzy's Grub)

Finding out that there was a branch of Fuzzy's Grub just a five minute walk from my office was one of the best early Christmas presents I could wish for.

I used to be a regular customer, and I was a big fan of their absurd roast-dinner-in-a-sandwich concept. It was just about the most filling, satisfying, messy, and utterly ludicrous lunch option available. But the chain hit financial trouble, and most of the stores closed a few years ago. So I'm sure that you (my dear readers) can imagine my pure joy at finding a branch alive and well in a tiny alley in the middle of the City.

 
So here we have a Christmas dinner sandwich. Roast turkey, stuffing, carrots, roast potatoes(!), cranberry sauce, and gravy(!). All squashed between two very thick slices of white bread, resulting in a monstrous sandwich that I could only just fit into my mouth.

They have several other roast meats available, along with all the usual condiments, yorkshire pudding, crackling, peas, mash, parsnips, mashed potatoes... even sausages and bacon. My tip - whatever you go for, make sure you order yours with gravy and salt & pepper.

Now I know what I'll be eating on boxing day.

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