Christmassy cooking!!

Merry Christmas, Bloggers!! And I'd also like to wish you a Happy New Year!!
I had a lovely Christmas this year. I got the present I've been wanting since I was 10, a Kenwood mixer! An excellent present for me and my baking!!

I love this time of year. It's the only time you can stuff your face full of delicious things without anyone judging you. You can drink from 9am and continue drinking till the early hours, you can have pudding for breakfast, you can pop off to the kitchen and come back with a plate piled high with cheese, ham, pickles and a cheeky slice of cold turkey with nobody batting an eyelid- in fact they're jealous of your plate and go and assemble their own.
And so, while this Christmas is now drawing to a close, it's never too late to whip up some sticky toffee puddings, glaze a ham or make a pork pie. 
I'll start with the glazed ham as it keeps the longest. It will quite happily sit in your fridge for two weeks just waiting for late night nibblers to come and hack off a slice. It's delicious hot and cold so you could have it hot with some chive mash and a little apple sauce and then you can have the rest cold.
Start off by boiling your joint in water for 20 minutes per half pound plus an extra 20. Add in a cinnamon stick, bay leaves, pepper corns and juniper berries to enhance the flavours. There are many recipes kicking around where you cook your gammon in coke or apple juice or ginger ale and while I'm sure these all taste beautiful, I'm not one to spend money where it's not fully necessary so I stick with water and aromatics.
Once it's boiled, remove it from the water (but keep it as this hammy water makes a delicious stock to enhance gravy, soups and sauces). Remove the skin carefully with a sharp knife an then score the fat. Stud with cloves if desired (my mum hates cloves and so I don't but they will add extra flavour). Place the joint in a deep roasting tin. Pre-heat the oven to 180oC.
To make the glaze, mix together 2 tablespoons of mustard (English or French is fine but not wholegrain) with 4 tablespoons of honey and the zest and juice of an orange. Pour all of this over the joint and use a pastry brush to get the glaze into the scored lines. There will be a lot of glaze in the bottom of the pan but this will reduce in the oven and be used to baste the ham. Cook the gammon in the oven for half an hour, basting every 10 minutes with the glaze in the bottom of the pan.

The honey will caramelize and create delicious blackened bits that while they don't look the most appealing, definitely get fought over.
Onto pork pie! We love a good pork pie in our house and we've made one at Christmas for the past few years. We change the recipe every year, trying to find our favourite. This year we used pork shoulder, smoked bacon and sausage meat along with herbs and seasonings inside a hot water pastry crust:
450g plain flour 
150g lard
50ml milk
50ml water
Salt and pepper
Pre-heat the oven to 180oC.

Place the lard, milk and water into a small pan and heat until the lard has melted.

Sift the flour into a large bowl and season with salt and black pepper and mix well.

pour in the warm lard mixture to the flour. Mix well to combine, until the mixture comes together to form a dough. Knead for a few minutes, then form into a ball and set aside.

For the meat, you'll either need an incredibly sharp knife and lots of patients or a food processor along with:

A small bunch of sage leaves

3 anchovy fillets

400g pork shoulder

50g smoked bacon

50g sausage meat 

1/2 teaspoon all spice

1/2 teaspoon ground mace

Firstly, add the sage and three anchovy fillets to the processor bowl and finely chop. Then gradually add the meat and then the spices along with some salt and pepper.

Line a 7 inch tin with 2/3 of the pastry. Fill with the meat and then make a lid with the remaining pastry. Decorate and glaze with egg wash. Bake for an hour.

The meat will shrink within the pastry so you can make up a pork jelly to fill in the gaps (1/2 pint hot stock- perhaps from the gammon above- with 1 sachet gelatin) but this isn't strictly necessary.  

And now, my signature bake, little sticky toffee puddings.

I've been making these beauties since I was thirteen and they're a family favourite. I have to make double quantities of the sauce on request for my brother as it's so good! 

For the puddings:

175g stones dates, chopped

1/2 vanilla extract

2 tbs coffee extract

3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

75g butter at room temperature

150g caster sugar

2 eggs, beaten

175g self-raising flour.

Preheat the oven to 180oC.

Begin with the dates which need to be put in a bowl with the vanilla, coffee, bicarbonate of soda and 175ml boiling water. Leave to one side.

In a large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Gradually add in the eggs, beating well between each addition. Then fold in the flour before adding the date mix, including all the water. 

The mix will look very sloppy but this is correct - the wet mix is what makes the puddings so light and moist.

Divide the mix between 8 greased metal ramekins, place them on a baking tray and bake for 25 minutes.

When you're ready to serve, release the puddings from their tins and place in a serving dish. Place the dish under a warming grill. For the sauce:
25g chopped pecans
175g soft brown sugar
110g butter
75ml double cream

Melt the butter and sugar together with the pecans. Once it's all dissolved and bubbling, add the cream and whisk. Take the now warm puddings from the grill and pour over the sauce. Knock any nuts off the tops to stop them burning. Return the dish to the grill and let the sauce begin to bubble. 

Serve with pouring cream.

So there you have it!! Three little beauties to have in your back pocket for any occasion. 

Hope you enjoy!!

Merry 2014 one and all!!!!