Spiced orange cake with rum cream, yummie!

Can anybody recommend a good BP unfortunately I am not keen on the ones with meal in them, the ones I like are just made with blood, seasoning and big lumps of healthy fat, fried with some thick rashers of dry cured smoked bacon, toast and a mug of builders.

Would appreciate members version of Christmas Dinner!

One of our local butchers gets in some award winning BP that is like that Richard. Of the "other" type I've found Lidl to be the best. Grilled rather than fried but I like it a bit crisp. If you happen to be around Clent Hills the cafe there does a great sandwich especially on their granary but I usually have a BLT. No charge for parking usually in the winter months.

I've had my suspicions about the so called fresh turkey we have been getting for several years so bought one from some where else this year. First one we've had that cooked well ahead of time for years. I use an American idea for cooking them. 20mins at Mk9 245C, have to turn half way through in our oven then 20min per pound plus 20 at mk 3/4 120C checking 2/3 through. I turned it breast down and reversed 1/2 way through that. Checking with a meat thermometer a nice even 80C everywhere 2/3 through. Then rest the bird for an hour if possible. Best buy an oven thermometer to set the oven that low and check now and again. I just hang it on the dish. I check the meat thermometers in boiling water just to be sure.

Last years turkey needed an hour over that – so much for fresh.

I cook stuffing separately. 2 good sized chopped and cooked onions per packet of stuffing along with a pack of sausage meat, a good teaspoon of garlic powder, salt and pepper and extra dried sage, heaped big tea spoon of that. Mix it all up well. I bought my wife a Keenwood a couple of years ago = easy. About an hour at 220C covered in foil. Generous amount of olive oil on the onions and microwave till soft. The neck of the bird can be stuffed but we are always in a rush in the morning so prepare and cook the stuffing while the turkey is cooking.

Xmas cake – I follow a recipe from the Guardian including making the marzipan and icing. I mix in some almond extract in the marzipan to give it a bit more of a kick. Maybe 2 table spoons of brandy over night on the dried mixed fruit and say 8 soaked into the cake over a week or so. Following my wife the marzipan is stuck on with marmalade. Her mon did that. Golden caster sugar is easy to get. I make the icing sugar from it with a hand held liquidiser with a poly bag over it to save breathing in the dust.

Model engineering aspect – we have a gas oven. Older ones used to have a sort of chute around the burner to make the heat circulate. The one we have tends to get hotter at the back.

John

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Update

Rissotto superb – followed by mince pie with cream.

Now to sit down with a cup of coffee and 4 squares of Ritter Sport Chocolate Halbbitter – 50% KAKAO – bliss!

Norman

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This was perfectly repectable thread, about honest food.

MichaelG.

I should have added – heaped teaspoon of Bournville cocoa, if desired

Neil

I would not recommend topping this off with pickled eggs and beer.

Otherwise it looks a treat.

Cheers

Bill

My wife is a good cook too but she cooks more or less 7 days a week with maybe 1 ready meal a month so only fair really for me to do some and anyway she prepares and cooks the veg etc. I just do the cooking now and again – and look after the practical things.

I also get the joy of doing the turkey sandwiches – real work but for me eating them is one of the best parts of Xmas washed down with a decent bottle red. Just had 3 door steps and 1/2 bottle of read.

John

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Is it just me or can anyone else see the Rabbit hiding at the back? Presented so well I thought it was deliberate at first!

Neil

Or is it proof that Neil has spent far too much of his life looking at star maps where someone has joined up the dots to make imaginary figures……..

What big eyes you have!

Cold cuts,pickled onions and bubble and squeak for tea last night and a Manx kipper and toast for breakfast this morning.

Looking to buy a proper Weber charcoal bbq and rotisserire with attatchments for smoking food, making proper pizzas and even saw a video of someone cooking a full Christmas dinner on the bbq, a friends idea of a bbq is oven cooked chicken,sausages and burgers finished off on his £800 gas bbq because he paranoid about food poisoning but he quite happily munches away at my bbqs where everything is cooked on the coals.

Sorry about this, just couldn't help myself, with apologies to Monty Python….."Black pudding, so black, even the white bits were black…"

As we are on our own we do EXACTLY as we want. This has now evolved to, for this year, a Vietnamese Chicken Salad (boiled bits of chook, shredded chinese cabbage, carrot matchsticks, mint leaves, coriander leaves, roasted peanuts, dressing is lime juice,fish sauce, chopped red chillies, brown sugar), washed down with a few local beers, in this years case a classic South Australian West End Export.

As several people have mentioned …. yum!!

Oh and by the way, in case people are wondering about Salads for Crimble, it was 36 or 37 degrees C here!!

Happy New Year everyone

cheers

Bill