what to do with Stilton

I bought a big lump of Stilton for the festive table. It’s untouched.

www.stiltoncheese.com looks very useful.

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another year over

we had a very quiet festering season, which is exactly what we wanted. We collected kalunina from Temple Meads on Friday afternoon, and apart from a brief foray to North Street for veg and brunch on Saturday, we didn’t stir out of the house again* until we returned her to Bristol Parkway (why she used two different stations, lord knows). And we saw nobody apart from Pat and Dave (WANOLJ) who popped over on Xmyth Eve with some home made gifts of fudge and damson vodka.

mostly, we cooked and ate, as follows:

• Friday: lasagne with embedded spinach, something that I tried once when we had some of the green stuff to use up, and it worked fabulously well. Just bung a load of fresh washed spinach in between the last meat and bechamel layers.
• Saturday: lunch in cafe in North Street, boeuf stroganoff and chips for supper. I know, I know: chips. In my defence, it’s Rick Stein’s idea, and it works so well …
• Sunday was 24 hour roast chili and lemon pork. I was so looking forward to this - and I was all geared up to do all the fiddly stuff on Saturday night. But it was disappointing - very dry, and no gravy juices. Don’t think I’d bother again. We had it with sweet potato/ordinary potato mash, which was delicious. And some sprouts.
• The Day bought forth roast goose with apple sauce, red cabbage, sprouts, roast parsnips, roast spuds, home made sage and onion stuffing. All cooked as a team effort, dished up right on time at 3 p.m., and all perfect. I was well chuffed. We were far too stuffed for pudding, and barely managed anything else all day!
• Boxing Day - cold cuts, including a gammon boiled and baked in spices according to the blessed Nigella, which was beautiful.

we also consumed home made sossidge rolls (go me), mince pies (dozens), walnut bread (go pete), grapes, and god knows what else.

tonight perlmonger is cooking his wonderful indian lentils with spinach - we’ve eaten *far* too well over the past few days, and we’re both suffering from it :)

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I said I wasn’t much of a baker

But I’m quite pleased with this - it’ s a work in progress, but it’s coming along nicely.

it has a sort of amateur charm, don’t you think?

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Go me!

I’m a good cook, but I’m not great at baking. And I’m lousy at pastry.

however, inspired by this recipe which claimed to be “easy flaky pastry”, I thought I’d give it a go.

I had to get perlmonger to come and grate for a while - it was hard work. But *I* rolled out the pastry, and rolled out the sausage meat, and brushed it all with eggy stuff, and put it in the oven, and baked them. And they were *gorgeous*.

The sage plant in the garden had died, so I made do with some rosemary, and a hefty grating of nutmeg.

Go me, I think. And we only ate three - the rest have gone in the freezer.

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Stepford Wife

Today, I have been mostly baking. I made a fabulous gruyere and cracked peppercorn bread. Or, at least, it would have been fabulous had I had a decent loaf tin instead of the ancient old things I use. It wasn’t quite cooked through, but we toasted it, and it was delicious.

And I made some shortbread bikkies, and cut them out with my festering xmas tree and star cutters. And I made some walnut shortbread, and cut them out ditto, except the recipe said to leave the dough in the fridge for half and hour,and I left it in there for about 5 hours, and had to soften it all up again. But they’re out of the oven now, and they’re gorgeous. I’m going to bung a bit of icing and some glittery balls [fnaar] on the shortbreads tomorrow.

Tomorrow - marzipan the cake, have a bash at sausage rolls {dear god - pastry; I can’t do pastry …), maybe some banana muffins.

I got Pete to drive me up to the Kitchen Shop this afternoon (I can’t park the Thaab, try as I might) and bought two new loaf tins, and another heavy duty baking tray - now I’m doing lots of this stuff, I want better quality tins, cos it makes all the difference.

And we called in at the local off licence on the way home and picked up 26 bottles of wine (including some vintage Pelorus - hurrah, and some pink fizz just for kalunina. There are six assorted bottles of fizz on the top row of the wine rack, which should do us through to next year.)

Now I’m sitting here while perlmonger cooks me a lump of Dexter steak before settling down to the X-Factor (which the Tivo is recording.

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yum

We had homemade walnut bread for lunch.

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weekend 2/3 dec 06

Saturday evening was a tub of mutton and date tagine from the freezer, and X-Factor. Good riddance to the dreadful McDonalds, I say.

Sunday morning I made a batch of carrot and coriander muffins for breakfast, then faffed about for a bit before being Good, and taking the plastics to Sainsburys for recycling, and doing the shopping.

Made a pot roast out of a piece of topside and half a bottle of red wine that had gone over a bit, then out on the monthly Village Walk, yomping up very steep and very muddy fields and paths - I found this hard going, and my knees were Not Happy, but at least I did it. I think the glucosamine are helping quite a bit.

Home for a rest, and to consume the pot roast, with potatoes and cabbage from the Riverford box - it was utterly delicious; probably the best I’ve made evah. And then - astonishingly - the Jordans sallied forth to meet Pat and Dave (WANOLJ but are known to many of my readers) where we formed a team for the Quiz Night at the British Legion Club in the village. We had a whale of a time, although what inspired Dave to play the joker on the Classical Music round, ghod only knows. We called ourselves The Aliens, and we will be making a regular event of this, I’m sure.

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a book review

In Search of Perfection, by Heston Blumenthal, reviewed by John Crace in the Guardian.

Glorious stuff - read it here.

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