Midwinter Christmas part III – A sugar coma is a perfectly acceptable way to end the day

There is no way better to follow up an epic roast than with a month’s worth of sugar and saturated fat. Stop worrying about your muffin top and enjoy. Dessert teetotallers are such a downer. Most desserts can be made well before serving – if you have something warm you can always (re)heat it up when you need it.

Crumble is dead simple, and is he sort of thing that still tastes awesome even if you totally fuck it up. You can use lots of things in the bottom of a crumble – canned peaches or pears, fresh or frozen berries, raw or canned apples, preserved plums, or a mixture of fruits. If you are using quite chunky canned fruit, you will get a better dessert if you chop the fruit roughly – this can usually be done while the fruit is still in the can. If there is a lot of juice in the can, it will also pay to drain the fruit first and to then reincorporate it slowly until it’s as wet as you like it, thus avoiding plum soup. I learned long ago that I would rather pay $4.49 for a giant can of apples than spend half an hour peeling and cutting them, but if you like to put in the hard yards then go for it. Go for finely sliced Granny Smiths but be warned, you may need to soften the fruit in the microwave before putting it in the casserole dish as otherwise the fruit may not cook through.

Apple crumble

This recipe makes enough to fill the sort of square 8x8 inch casserole / roasting dish you can get cheaply from the Warehouse. If you have a larger roasting dish, upscale the crumble mix as necessary (2 ½ times seems to work for those standard non stick roasters you can get from the supermarket). The crumble can be quite crunchy and the leftovers are good for breakfast (if you go for that sort of thing).

• One large can (820g-ish) of sliced apples – Watties is a bit more expensive but the nicest
• ½ cup flour + a small handful
• 1 ¼ cups rolled oats
• 2/3 cup sugar (brown is best, raw is second best) + a small handful
• 120g butter, melted
• Optional extras for supreme tastiness: a lemon, spices like cinnamon, ginger and mixed spice

Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place the apples, the handful of sugar and the handful of flour in the bottom of the dish. For bonus points, squeeze a lemon over the apples and add some spices if you’re feeling it – for instance, 1 ½ teaspoons of ginger.

In a bowl, combine the flour, rolled oats and sugar. Some spices are good here too – try a liberal sprinkle of cinnamon and a pinch of mixed spice. Pour the melted butter over and mix everything lightly with a fork until combined. It should look a little crumbly. Press the crumble mix down on top of the fruit. Cook for 30 minutes.

Boozy butter

This is typically made with brandy but who under the age of 55 actually has brandy in the house? Brandy is only good when mixed with dry ginger ale, drizzled over a stored Christmas cake, or hidden on the back of the shelf getting dusty.

• 175g butter, softened slightly
• 1 ½ c soft brown sugar
• 5 – 6 tablespoons of liquor – brandy, dark rum, cognac, whiskey, kahlua, etc

Whisk together the butter and the sugar. This is significantly easier if you have electric beaters, a stick blender or a food processor, but otherwise just use a regular whisk, incorporate the sugar slowly, and get yourself some Popeye arms. One it has gone pale and creamy looking then add the liquor slowly, beating after additions. Don’t add it too fast or it might curdle. When everything is combined and tastes the way you want it, store it in the fridge in a clean container. Serve cold with warm winter puddings or, if you’re an alkie with a sweet tooth, on toast for breakfast.

Gingernut log

This recipe is boozy and sweet, funny to look at and very, very dated. It was a last minute inclusion in our Midwinter Christmas because I like the sort of retro food we’d get served at family dinners when I was tiny. Also, it takes about zero cooking ability. If you’re using a liqueur that doesn’t go with orange juice, replace the juice with something else – for instance, if you’re using a chocolate or coffee liqueur, use some strong black coffee.

• One packet (250g) gingernuts (or chocolate chippies)
• Liquor – bourbon, liqueur, whiskey, or similar
• 4T orange juice
• 300ml cream
• 1t vanilla
• 3T icing sugar (optional)
• Some sort of garnish – shaved chocolate, sliced almonds, whatever you like

Make sure you have a serving dish prepared. You’ll need something long enough to take all the gingernuts lying (upright) next to each other so perhaps measure it by the length of the packet. Serve on two plates if you need to. In a small bowl, combine the orange juice and 4 tablespoons of booze.

Pour the cream, the vanilla, the icing sugar and 2 tablespoons of booze into a large, clean bowl and whip until it forms fluffy peaks when you lift the beaters out. Electric beaters are helpful here – the cream needs to be firm enough that it won’t run all over the place. Warning: doing this by hand may take a long time and give you wanker’s cramp.

Time for messy stuff. Dunk two biscuits in the juice and booze mix, then sandwich them together with cream. Stand the sandwich vertically on the plate – you may need to put some cream on the plate to help anchor them. Keep going until you’ve used up all your biscuits or run out of room – you should have a long log of biscuits all stuck together. Neatly spread cream over the log and garnish. Refrigerate for at least 6 hours, preferably with a loose cover so that the cream doesn’t end up tasting like refrigerator – the biscuits will start to disintegrate and go all fudgey. Eat, enjoy and pretend it’s 1982.  

Next week: BOOZE.

Midwinter Christmas part II – Vegetables are good for you

Like generations before me, I didn’t much like eating half the vegetables I was given when I was small, largely because my parents didn’t cook them they way I (later discovered) I liked them. Newsflash, Grandma, cabbage tastes fine without being subjected to cruel and unusual punishment in the pressure cooker. Also, brussels sprouts are now and shall ever be rank and disgusting. It took me a while out of my meat eating home to be convinced that you don’t have to have dead animal in most meals and the halls of residence didn’t much help. While something like a Christmas nut roast is a bit beyond my ken (also, who wants to pay for a pound of brazil nuts?) past flatmates have shown me the light re: hearty wintery meat-free food.

Field mushrooms, when roasted or barbecued, taste wonderfully meaty and rich – when cooked in garlic butter and a few drops of soy sauce they often taste better than many mysterious meat-dusty sausages (see: Sizzlers) or burger patties. A couple of these giant stuffed mushrooms can easily take the place of the meat course in a roast, and they don’t much resemble their 70s throwback cousins. Hopefully my future hypothetical children won’t disown me and my cooking and decide that the only good sort mushrooms are the sorts they found in Rawhiti Domain.

Roasted stuffed mushrooms

As with most of these recipes you can adjust quantities or ingredients without too much to worry about – for instance, if you hate capsicum, replace it with some courgette. If you hate dairy or want to kiss a vegan, swap the butter for marg and the (admittedly expensive) ricotta for (not as expensive) hummus, cut out the cheese and don’t use Worcestershire (it has anchovies in it, ew).

·       

• 6 of the biggest, widest flat mushrooms you can find
• Soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce
• 3 tablespoons softened butter
• Two cloves of garlic
• Half a red onion
• Half a red capsicum, without the seeds (they make you sick)
• A handful of rocket or spinach leaves
• A small handful (10 or 12 leaves) of basil – adjust to taste – or a teaspoon of dried (but it won’t be as nice)
• 1/2 cup of fresh breadcrumbs
• 1/2 cup ricotta or cream cheese
• 1/2 cup grated cheese
• a little grated cheese or extra breadcrumbs

Sort the mushrooms: Preheat the oven to 200°C Finely dice the garlic and mix it with the butter in a little bowl or on a saucer. Remove the stems from the mushrooms and arrange the mushrooms top-down on a baking dish – it’s helpful to have some baking paper underneath. Juices will run from the mushrooms so prior warning, a tray might get a bit messy. Dot the mushrooms with lots of drops of soy or Worcestershire sauce and little blobs of the garlic butter, saving a small amount.

Make the stuffing: Chop the mushroom stems, the red onion and the red capsicum as finely as you can. Cook them very gently in a frying pan in the remaining garlic butter until the onions start to wilt. Mix it all in a bowl with the basil and spinach. Add the ricotta / hummus and mix it all up – you might need to use your hands. Add the breadcrumbs slowly until you get a good stuffing-y consistency. Divide the stuffing mix between the mushrooms and sprinkle a little grated cheese or some more breadcrumbs on top. Bake for 20 - 25 minutes, until the tops look lovely and golden and feel a bit firm.

Rosemary and garlic roasties

You don’t have to cook roasties at the same time as everything else – they’ll be just fine if you precook them then pop them in the oven for 10 minutes before serving. You can also prep the whole thing the night before, just cover it up with a tea towel to keep critters off. Leftovers can be used on top of pizzas, in toasties or in roast veggie lasagne.

• Your choice of lovely wintery vegetables - potatoes, kumara, swede, pumpkin, yams, parsnip, carrot, beetroot and onions 
• Oil 
• Rosemary (fresh sticks of a large pinch of the dried stuff) 
• Garlic bulbs

Chop the veggies into pieces that are around about the same size, with the exception of the onions (these should be twice as big as everything else) and the parsnip (they take forever to cook and should be a bit smaller). This can be anything from small ice cube sized bits to big quarters or chunks. Arrange them in the largest roasting dish you have available to you – you don’t want all the veggies squished up together. I usually base my quantity of vegetables on what dish I’m using.

Break a head of garlic into cloves and throw as many as you like in with the vegetables, the insides will go sweet and almost creamy upon cooking. Arrange or sprinkle the rosemary over the top. Give everything a small drizzle of oil and shake it about a bit. You don’t want it greasy, just lightly coated. Finish it up with a big crack of pepper and some salt (that smoked salt from the Riccarton markets is ace). 

Cook at whatever temperature you’re cooking your roast, or 180°C if you’re doing this solo. Give them a shake or a stir once every 20 minutes or so. Depending on how large your pieces are, you will need to take anywhere between 40 and 70 minutes to cook – give them a poke with a knife and pull everything out when the knife passes through smoothly, or, when a piece you’ve snuck out tastes about right, watch for burned tongue though). If you’re also cooking meat (and have no vegetarians to cater to), you can spoon some of the roast juices over the veggies for the last 15 minutes.

A word about breadcrumbs: these are a bloody annoying ingredient I’m afraid. The bought ones are dry and mealy and only good for sprinkling on top of pasta bakes before cooking. To make your own, leave slices of white or wholemeal bread out overnight or toast them lightly, then remove the crusts and very lightly grate them until you have the right amount of stuff. You can also grate a stale baguette. If you are fancy and have a food processor to chop with, then make sure your bread is very dry or you will get Bread Lump (TM). If this is all too hard, use those awesome Japanese panko ones.

Midwinter Christmas part 1 – A Big Bit of Cow

One of the best meals I’ve ever had was an epic Midwinter Christmas dinner for 25 people at my last flat. A friend and I cooked up a few chickens, a roast beef and more roast potatoes than we knew what to do with. Everyone else was instructed to bring a vegetable dish (or vegetarian main), a dessert, or snacky snacks, and something helpful like cream or plastic plates. Each person also brought a little present which found a home under a zombie-themed Christmas tree, and later Dodgy Uncle Santa (reeking of bourbon and cigarettes) took each person on his sticky knee and gave them a mystery gift while everyone else watched offensive Christmas films and listened to Stan Kenton singing “What is a Santa Claus?” (it’s hilarious - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JTpzCftiXE). It sleeted outside while people got seriously merry on a (literal) bucketful of alcoholic eggnog and a tureen of mulled wine, all with minimal damage to glassware or carpet. Best flat dinner ever, and an excellent antidote to living in a cold ugly house.

Roasting meat is a piece of piss – however, it does take a bit of space, a bit of maths, and a bit of gear (a roasting dish, some tongs, and a big sharp knife at the very least; extras for experts = a baster and a carving fork). If you’re feeding a lot of people, something like a beef roast is probably your most economic bet. Roast lamb is lovely and all but hideously expensive, and a pork roast is great if you can master the crackling, but I can’t, so I kinda gave up as it didn’t quite seem worth it any more (suggestions and protips to alongbean@gmail.com). Roast chicken goes far for a potluck, but if it’s just you and a couple of others, and you want to be satiated, ignore the packet and assume that a chicken which allegedly feeds 6 – 7 people actually only feeds 4. On the other hand, depending on the size of your oven, you might be able to get two or three chickens roasting simultaneously.

Roast beef

You can roast beef in a slowcooker, but I can never get it to work properly (I choose to blame the cooker) so I’ve gone back to cooking the beef in the oven, and this is easily the best and simplest recipe I’ve found. You’ll also need to have a large frying pan (an electric frying pan is perfect) on hand.

• One bit of cow (homekill is amazing, if you can source it, otherwise butcher > supermarket)
• White flour
• Salt and pepper
• Oil
• Onions

In a small bowl mix together approximately 2 tablespoons of flour with a few good shakes each of salt and pepper. Take your roasting dish and swoosh a little oil around it, just enough to cover. Preheat the oven to 230°C (210°C fan forced).

Take your meat. Thank the cow. Check the weight. Rub oil all over it. Pat the beef with the seasoned flour until it is well coated. You may need to use more or less flour depending on the size of your cut. Heat up your frying pan to a high temperature. Using skill and finesse, and possibly a large pair of tongs, sear the beef all over. You’re not trying to cook it, just to make the outside lovely and brown and flavoursome with a good texture. (Geek corner: some people tell you that searing is to seal in the juices. This is utter nonsense. What is really happening a wonderful thing called the Maillard reaction, that lovely browning that makes things taste rich and toasty and complex. Science is fun.) Place the seared beef into the roasting pan. Loosely surround it with onions – peel them and chop them in half, but don’t pack them in tight.

Time for maths and time management. The beef needs to cook for 15 minutes at 230°C, then reduce the heat to 190°C (170°C fan forced) and cook for 17 minutes per pound (~450g) for rare. If you want it medium, add 15 minutes on to the total cooking time; for well done, add 30 minutes. Sounds complicated, but luckily you probably have a calculator on your phone. Baste the meat with its juices a few times during cooking – jokes about artificial insemination aside, this is easy if you have a baster, otherwise sacrifice a spoon by bending it into a little ladle shape as pouring the juices out of a hot pan courts disaster. If you’re a bit fancy pants you can splash a little red wine into the roasting dish during cooking, but in general it all works fine without you fucking with it too much.

Once you’ve done cooking, pull the beef out and let it stand – this is compulsory, and will make it taste better and carve easier – at least twenty minutes for a 450g cut, but up to 40 for anything larger. This means a 1.5kg cut of beef is going to take nearly 90 minutes to cook, and another 40 to sit. The meat will cool but not go cold, and if you’re serving on heated plates like a real grown up then it won’t matter anyway. Most people, when presented with the perfect roast, aren’t going to start moaning.

Next week: something for the vegetarians.

A word on cooking times: Rare means soft and red inside, medium means pink and firm, perhaps a little brown round the edges, and well done means grey-brown throughout and (if it’s a steak) will probably get your food spat on by a chef. Squeamish types: the red juices aren’t blood, they are myoglobin and water, so stop your moaning.

Harvest pie, or, pastry is your ally in the war against hypothermia

The fresher ten happens for a reason – it’s your body’s way of protecting you and your vital organs from the cold and the damp in that ice box you call a flat as your body suffers through the shock of leaving your family home (just don’t start believing the lie that moving back home is a great idea). Being a student in winter sucks, so for the rest of the term these columns will look at filling, dense winter food, and will lead up to an epic Midwinter Christmas feast complete with boozy, creamy eggnog (in bulk). Start taking notes.

My mum used to make this freeform pumpkin and feta pie (oo fancy) when I was little and it ticks all of the winter comfort food boxes – cheap stodgy vegetables, cheese, pastry – and can be kept simple or flashed up depending on your preferred wank factor. Under perfect conditions, the onions caramelise and leak lovely sweet sticky goo out the holes in the pastry. It all needs a bit of organisation, and you still might need to wear your overcoat indoors, but this will warm up your puku. While the oven’s hot bake some potatoes and a crumble, for you are truly a kitchen deity.

Harvest pie

• One block of ready made puff pastry (or prerolled if you’re feeling lazy, but you might have to join the sheets together)
• 500g (ish) pumpkin
• 1 big onion (or more)
• 2 cloves of garlic (or more)
• ¼ cup white rice (uncooked)
• 1 egg
• A small block of feta (not the creamy stuff) – only use half a block if you find it a bit strong
• Oil, pepper

Getting sorted: Preheat the oven to 220°C. Prepare the pumpkin -  remove the seeds, cut off the skin, and chop the pumpkin into pieces (about the size of half an ice cube). Dice the onion and peel then chop the garlic – I usually use heaps more than asked for.  Parboil (halfway cook) the white rice – put it in a smallish bowl or jug with about half a cup of boiling water and microwave it for 5 minutes; drain it and let it cool. In another bowl , whisk up the egg. On a clean, floured surface, roll out your pastry into a something resembling a big circle. Place it on a baking tray ready to go – you can flour the tray or lay down some baking paper if you’re worried about things sticking. Have a beer, you’ve been very organised, well done.

Cooking things: Heat a splash of oil in a large frying pan and over a moderate heat cook the onion and garlic until they are tender and beginning to go a little transparent. Add the pumpkin and cook until it’s beginning to go tender – give it a poke with a wooden spoon, and if the outside is a bit mushy and the inside is still a bit firm, you’re pretty much there. Take it off the heat and let it cool slightly. Mix the egg and parboiled rice together – yes, this sounds gross, but it acts as a binder and you won’t notice it once everything’s cooked.

Assembling things: Using nice clean hands, crumble the feta over the top of the pumpkin and give it a quick stir. Add the eggy rice mix, season well with pepper and mix everything together. (You probably won’t need any salt, the cheese is salty as it is.) Pile the whole lot into the middle of your pastry. Gently bring the rest of the pastry up over the filling, joining the edges together as you go – you should get a lumpy roundish pie with a bit of a hole in the middle. Poke the pastry all over with a fork. If you have milk and a pastry brush to hand, give the pie a bit of a glaze.

Baking things: Bake for ten minutes at 220°C, then lower the temperature to 180°C and cook until it’s done. This can take anywhere from 30 – 45 minutes, depending on how thin the pastry is. If it’s a nice golden brown, and looking flaky and a bit puffed up, you’re pretty much set. If you want to colour coordinate your meal, it works well with baked spuds and corn on the cob.

Extras: if you like vegetables, or think orange food is a bit off putting, then you can add sliced mushrooms and courgette when you start to cook the pumpkin, or some torn up spinach just before you take it off the heat. If you know your way around the kitchen, you can also use filo pastry in place of puff pastry – just be gentle, follow the instructions and work quickly or the pastry sheets start tearing. Messy fun though.

A word about gear: You can get away with an awful lot of cheap equipment in the kitchen – things like baking trays, tins and utensils can be bought cheaply from places such as the Super Shed or the Salvation Army. However, knives are a different matter. While some cheap knives are fine – I’ve been using a crappy paring knife I got from a $2 shop for about 5 years – if you really like faffing about in the kitchen the one thing you should not skimp on is a good sharp chef’s knife. Otherwise, chopping things like pumpkins, or carving roasts, or even slicing tomatoes, will end in frustration, mess and possibly blisters. A decent knife is one of those investments that will last you forever, and if you ask Santa nicely you might (like me) get one in your stocking. Creepy?

French onion soup and toasties, or, food for kids = food for grown ups

As a postgrad student, I enjoy the finer things in life. A $12 bottle of wine instead of a 6 pack of Tasman Bitter, plunger coffee instead of Gregg’s Red Ribbon Roast, a Signature Range pepper grinder thing instead of that awful sneezy powdered black pepper. As I write this, in the holidays, I have my first cold of the season and all I want is little kid comfort food – soup and cheese on toast – and as I have been earthquake-evicted from my warm office to my cold flat I have a lot of time to mooch around the kitchen. No Maggi powdered soup and cruskits for me, I’m writing a thesis on something utterly irrelevant! I deserve better!

French onion soup is very easy to make – I first made it when I was 14 and borderline incompetent – and takes forever but tastes incredible. One recipe I found called it drunkard’s soup, as it would see you right during an epic hangover. This recipe is a bastardisation of the one made famous by the inimitable Julia Childs. The recipe asks for a dry white wine, which isn’t exactly at the forefront of any student kitchen, so here it’s optional (but recommended), and if you're stuck you could probably get away with red wine, beer or cider. It requires a brown stock, preferably beef, but mushroom or something similar will do for the vegetarians. You can also use half bought stock and half boiling water. I am a heathen and often use chicken stock for reasons outlined below. This soup is traditionally served with little floaty bits of cheesy bread or grated parmesan. Finally, lovely Julia also requests that a small amount of rum or cognac be added to the soup immediately before serving, but I drank all the spirits so left that bit out. Verdict: good for what ails you.

French onion soup – makes 6 small portions or 4 comfort-sized portions

• 5 – 7 onions (approx  700 grams)
• 50g butter
• 1 tablespoon oil
• A big pinch of white sugar (approx ¼ teaspoon)
• 3 tablespoons of flour
• ½ cup dry white wine (optional)
• 2 litres of stock or stock-type substance
• Salt and pepper

Slice the onions thinly – you will need about 5 cups worth. Have a cry. Place the onions, the butter and the oil in a pot, and over the lowest heat possible melt it together. Give it a stir, put a lid on it and let it cook for 15 minutes. Go check facebook.

Add the sugar and a little salt and turn up the heat a little. Cook the onions until they are a rich golden brown, like the colour of fudge. This will take a while, around half an hour or more, and you need to stir frequently to make sure they don’t burn or catch. Don’t leave out the sugar – it helps the onion caramelise.  This is the most important part of the recipe and will smell so good that your nosy scabby flatmates will start appearing to see what you are up to.

When the onions have caramelised, add the flour and cook for three minutes, stirring the whole time. If you are using the wine, add it all in one go and give it a big stir. Everything should look a little pasty. Add the stock, slowly at first, stirring between additions (it helps if you have heated it up first but if not oh well). Add pepper and salt if you think it needs it – be careful though, ready made stocks can be quite salty as it is. Simmer the whole lot for around 30 – 40 minutes. Eat it with cheese toasties.

Cheese toasties

Don’t turn up your nose, adding an egg to cheese toasties makes the topping light and fluffy and a bit more filling. This is enough for 3 – 4 bits of toast bread, depending on how much cheesiness you like and how big your bread is.

• 1 egg
• A couple of big handfuls of grated cheese
• Something to spread – eg, sweet chilli sauce or tomato sauce
• Thinly sliced bits for on top – eg salami, ham, mushroom, courgette, tomato

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Toast the bread lightly, enough to dry it out a little so that the toasties don’t go soggy. Whisk the egg and add the cheese until it is totally covered but not looking gloopy or snotty. If you want some sort of sauce, spread it sparingly on the toast. Smoosh the cheese mix on to the bread with a fork, going right out to the edges. If you want bits on top, arrange them over the top, then crack some pepper over the top. Bake the toasties on a tray for 15 – 20 minutes – the topping should puff up a little and go a nice golden brown, and feel firm if you poke it with your finger. You can also grill these but they can burn quite quickly as it takes some time for the egg to cook.

A word about stock: You can buy ready-made stuff, but it’s expensive (~$5/L) and you can use oxo cubes, about 1 to every 2 cups of boiling water, but be careful about salt. We make our own chicken stock whenever we have a roast or chicken legs for dinner. Take the carcass / bits, put them in a pot with a quartered onion, some broken up carrot, some celery and enough water to just cover it all and simmer for a couple of hours. When it looks and smells good, let it cool, drain off the fluid using a sieve (or similar) and either freeze it or use it. Easy as.