Because arbitrary traditions are important at Christmas.
As usual, I made a base of sausagemeat, celery, onion and breadcrumbs, and also as usual half of it is chestnut stuffing. But this year’s second, ad-libbed recipe has toasted almonds and dried apricots and peaches soaked in amaretto.
Now I ought to get on with roasting the ham that has been simmering away the whole time. Happy midwinter festival, everyone.
This year I made the usual chestnut stuffing and also some with apricot, cherry, almond and ginger.
Well, both stuffings were good. The (more experimental) ginger one tasted great, though a little unexpected in an otherwise very traditional Christmas meal.
The local Great Spotted Woodpecker was drumming this morning. They are always a very early sign of spring, but December still seems freaky. It’s been a weird old winter, weatherwise, and my woodpeckers are hardly the only sign of it. The newspapers have been going through one of their periodic phases of interest in climate change as a result, but I daresay they’ll move on to something else soon enough, and no-one’s behaviour will have changed much.
The other curious nature observation of the week was a heron in the garden with a pair of crows taking turns to sidle up behind it and try to tweak its tail feathers. Apparently for no reason other than a bit of fun.
The death of James Brown was sad news to wake to on Christmas morning. I listen to a variety of music – pop, soul, reggae, hip-hop, soukous, techno – but what it all has in common is that it has a bit of a groove to it. So as you can imagine, James Brown, the most sampled man in the world, has an important place in my personal musical pantheon. One of the great artists and great entertainers of the twentieth century. From a groove point of view, perhaps the greatest of them all.
I’ve been making stuffing for Christmas lunch today. So since it’s practically traditional (i.e. I did it last year), here’s what I’ve made: some chestnut and prune stuffing and some ginger and almond. Both are loosely inspired by reipces I’ve seen somewhere but with a bit of tweaking by me. Both are made with a base of sausagemeat, onion, celery, breadcrumbs and egg.
The chestnut and prune was made with the addition of the liver from the turkey, chestnuts, prunes, brandy, and fresh parsley and thyme.
For the other, I added crystallised stem ginger, toasted flaked almonds, some lemon zest, mixed spice and Cointreau.
I’ll report back on how they are to eat. Happy Christmas, everyone.
My apricot, cherry and almond stuffing worked out well. If anything it slightly removed the need for cranberry sauce – the sour cherries have a similar fruity/sour thing going on, so you don’t really need both.
Today I shall mostly be making wild mushroom soup.
I’ve made like, really a lot.
But it should freeze OK. One batch is a chestnut stuffing from a Good Housekeeping book (sausagemeat, onion, celery, chestnut mushrooms, breadcrumbs, herbs, chestnuts, egg and brandy), which I’ve made before and is nice. The other is my own invention – sausagemeat with onion, dried apricots, dried sour cherries, egg, brandy and a little mixed spice. On Christmas Day I’ll let you know how it turned out.