Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities (11 page)

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1kg diced leg of lamb

250g soft dried pitted dates, or pitted Medjool dates

250ml pure pomegranate juice, from a bottle

250ml water

2 teaspoons Maldon salt or 1 teaspoon table salt, or to taste

• Warm the goose fat (or oil) in your cooking vessel of choice and scrape in the onions from the chopping board, letting them cook gently over a low heat for 10 minutes or until softened, stirring occasionally.

• Add the ground cinnamon, turmeric, ginger, cumin and allspice, and turn well in the onions.

• Turn up the heat and add the meat, turning it patiently in the pan so that it sears equally; this is why a wide, shallow pan is better than a narrow, deep one.

• Drop in the dates, pour in the pomegranate juice and water, then add the salt and bring to a bubble. Put the lid on, turn down the heat to an absolute minimum; it’s important that this cooks ultra-gently for 2 hours. Or choose the oven option (see left) if appropriate.

• I prefer to cook this a day or two in advance and reheat; on serving, top with some of the Red Onion and Pomegranate Relish (see next recipe), transferring the rest to a small bowl.

NOTE:

If you’re not using a funnel-lidded tagine, but a regular, preferably shallow, casserole, then you do have the option of cooking this for 2 hours in a 150°C/gas mark 2 oven.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the tagine, then transfer to a non-metallic bowl to cool. Cover, and store in the fridge for up to 3 days. When ready to serve, return the tagine to the pan and add 75ml water. Bring slowly to the boil, stirring occasionally, and let it bubble very gently for 2–3 minutes. Reduce the heat to a bare minimum and simmer the tagine, still stirring, for 15–20 minutes or until piping hot. Be prepared to add a little more water to thin it out as it reheats.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make the tagine as directed and freeze in an airtight container for up to 1 month. Thaw overnight in the fridge and reheat as above.

RED ONION AND POMEGRANATE RELISH

I don’t normally like raw onion much, but the pomegranate and lime juices take any acrid sting away. I could eat this by itself, frankly. It gives a fruity, sharp edge to the gratifying richness of the tagine – and is worth bearing in mind whenever you need to add glorious seasonal adornment to a meal fast; it is as delicious with some cold turkey as heaped onto a hot, fluffy-fleshed baked potato.

1 red onion

60ml lime juice

juice and 40g seeds from 1 large pomegranate, or 60ml pure pomegranate juice from a bottle and 40g pomegranate seeds from a tub/packet

2 × 15ml tablespoons chopped coriander

salt to taste

• Peel and cut the onion in half, then slice into very thin half-moons.

• Put the onion slices into a bowl with the lime juice and pomegranate juice, and let them steep for half an hour.

• Drain the steeped onion into a little bowl, discarding the too-oniony juice, and add the pomegranate seeds.

• Toss with the chopped coriander and season with a little salt.

• Strew a little relish on top of the tagine and put the rest in a small bowl for people to add to their own portions.

GLEAMING MAPLE CHEESECAKE

I’ve broached the sweetness issue earlier, but know that this pudding makes converts of even those who claim never to want something sweet: it’s a cheesecake (baked in a bain-marie, which is the smartest route to the lightest, most delicate set) sitting on a base made of digestives, crushed pecans and a dash of maple syrup, the cheese layer itself smokily sweetened with the syrup. This cheesecake is best made well in advance, so you can sit back at dinner and enjoy the feast.

The one thing I need to be strict about is that the cream cheese be taken out of the fridge a good 2 hours before you start. I know you’ll obey me when I tell you to bake the cheesecake in a tin of water (don’t worry, it’s perfectly straightforward) but I suspect that the stipulation for room-temperature cream cheese may not be as dutifully observed. But it must be: you will never get the requisite voluptuously smooth texture if the cream cheese starts off cold.

FOR THE BASE:

8 digestive biscuits

75g pecan halves

75g soft butter

FOR THE FILLING:

3 × 200g packets cream cheese, at room temperature

50g sugar

2 teaspoons cornflour

125ml maple syrup, plus more for drizzling

4 eggs

½ teaspoon cider vinegar or lemon juice

• Preheat the oven to 170°C/gas mark 3.

• Blitz the biscuits in a food processor until they turn to crumbs, then add the pecan halves and blitz again to a crumb mixture. Add the butter and process everything together until it clumps up, and then press into the bottom of a 20cm springform tin to make a smooth base. Sit the tin in the fridge to chill while you get on with the topping.

• Put the cream cheese into the cleaned processor bowl with the sugar, cornflour and maple syrup.

• Turn the motor on and, with the engine running, break the eggs down the funnel, processing until you have a smooth mixture. Add the vinegar or lemon juice, and pulse to mix.

• Take the springform tin out of the fridge, and line the outside with a layer of special ovenproof clingfilm, bringing it up around the top outer edge of the tin; this is to make a waterproof layer for when the cheesecake is cooked in a water bath. Do the same again, over the plastic wrap, with a double layer of foil, making sure that this, too, is brought right up to the top edge of the tin.

• Sit the foil-wrapped springform in a roasting tin, then pour in the smooth filling. Fill the roasting tin with freshly boiled water, to come about halfway up the wrapped springform.

• Bake the cheesecake in the oven for about 1¼ hours, though start checking it after an hour; it should be set on top but still have a hint of a wobble in the middle.

• Take the whole shebang-marie out of the oven and carefully lift the cheesecake out of its water bath. Peel away the foil layers and let it cool in its tin on a rack. Once cooled, refrigerate the cheesecake for at least 4 hours, or ideally overnight.

• The following day, or up to 2 days later, let it come to room temperature before springing it out of the tin.

• Sit it on a serving plate and pour some maple syrup over the top of the whole cake, drizzling a little more over each slice as you serve the cheesecake.

NOTE:

If you can’t get ovenproof clingfilm, just use the double layer of foil.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the cheesecake and leave to cool as directed. When cool, cover the tin with clingfilm, making sure the film doesn’t touch the top of the cheesecake, or pop a plate on top. Keep in the fridge for up to 2 days. Add maple syrup only on serving.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Only cheesecakes made with full-fat, softened cream cheese will freeze. Leave the cheesecake in the tin to cool, cover with clingfilm, as above, and freeze for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the fridge. Add maple syrup only on serving.

GROWN UP NURSERY SUPPER FOR 6

PARSLEYED FISH GRATIN

PROSECCO AND POMEGRANATE JELLY

I have never much liked formal entertaining. I love cosiness: I want people to feel welcomed, not impressed and I want to feel happily surrounded by my friends rather than wind myself up into a frenzy of hissing, self-loathing panic because I’ve got people coming for dinner.

And this time of year, above all, should be about relaxed expansiveness, about succour as well as celebration. This menu says it all: the supper you want to eat to make you feel that all will be well.

The fish gratin is the lazy person’s answer to a fish pie. I love fish pie, but mashing a sinkful of potatoes is no one’s idea of a low-effort enterprise; of course, it’s not hard, but it takes time when time itself is at a premium. Topping the fish with finely sliced, unpeeled baking potatoes is the easy answer. And as for the fish itself, rather than cook and flake it and then make a sauce, I simply make an extra-thick white sauce (my version is too basic, really, to be called a béchamel), turn it green with a garden of freshly chopped parsley and leave it for up to 3 days before snipping in some smoked and unsmoked fish, giving it a stir-up, topping with the sliced potatoes and whacking it in the oven. You don’t have to make the sauce in advance, but I find it makes my life easier. If you’re not making it in advance, slice the potatoes before you put the fish into the warm sauce so that the minute the raw fish is in the sauce you can top with the potatoes and put the gratin straight in the oven.

This is best eaten with a big bowl of buttery peas, fresh from the freezer. I love to add a few handfuls of mangetout to the pea-cooking water for the last minute of cooking time, before draining and dousing them in butter and a fresh grinding of white pepper.

The pudding must be made up in advance; though, again, this is a boon not a burden for me.

PARSLEYED FISH GRATIN

FOR THE SAUCE:

50g butter

50g plain flour

1 × 15ml tablespoon dry white vermouth or dry white wine

¼ teaspoon ground mace or nutmeg

½ teaspoon Maldon salt or ¼ teaspoon table salt

¼ teaspoon Dijon mustard

350ml full-fat milk

1½ × 15ml tablespoons finely chopped chives (or 1 spring onion, finely chopped)

75g flat leaf parsley, finely chopped (to give about 50g chopped weight)

FOR THE FISH MIX AND POTATO TOPPING:

2 medium-sized (400g total) baking potatoes, unpeeled

300g pollack or other white fish fillet

750g smoked haddock or cod fillet

FOR THE GLAZE:

1 teaspoon garlic oil

25g butter

good grinding of white pepper

• Make a white sauce by first melting the butter in a large saucepan and then adding the flour, stirring together for a minute or so. Then, off the heat, whisk in the vermouth (or wine), mace (or nutmeg), salt and mustard.

• Next, whisk in the milk, and put the pan back on the heat, continuing to whisk the sauce as it thickens. Once the sauce appears to be getting thicker, which will be a matter of 3 or so minutes, keep cooking it for a further 3 minutes until very thick.

• Take it off the heat and stir in the chives and parsley. Then decant into your gratin-type dish (mine is a round shallow casserole about 26cm × 5cm deep).

• Once cool, you can leave this dish covered, in the fridge overnight or for up to 3 days.

• When ready to cook, preheat your oven to 200°C/gas mark 6 and slide a baking sheet in as you do so. Take your gratin dish out of the fridge and uncover it.

• Slice the unpeeled potatoes as thinly as you possibly can.

• Scissor or cut both types of fish into large bite-sized pieces (approx. 6cm × 4cm), and mix into the parsley sauce.

• Layer the potatoes in concentric circles over the fish in parsley sauce, overlapping halfway across each potato slice as you go around the dish.

• Melt the garlic oil and butter in a small pan, then paint the circles of potato with this mixture, using a silicone pastry brush (or just dribble it over), to slick the top of the gratin.

• Grind some fresh white pepper over the top and place in the oven to cook for 50–60 minutes; the top should be golden and the underneath of the gratin bubbling.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the parsley sauce up to 3 days ahead. Decant into gratin dish and cover directly with clingfilm or the lid to prevent a skin forming. Cool and keep in the fridge.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

For fresh, not previously frozen fish, make the parsley sauce, and leave to cool in its dish. When cool, stir in the fish, then cover and freeze for up to 1 month. Thaw overnight in the fridge, then, when ready to cook, finish with the potatoes and cook as directed.

PROSECCO AND POMEGRANATE JELLY

I love wine and liqueur jellies, and I think I’ve had a version – sauternes and lemon balm, gin and tonic, slut red raspberries in chardonnay jelly, blackberries and Muscat – in pretty well all of my books. They are delicate, luscious and incredibly easy to make, providing, that is, you use leaf gelatine: I have never been able to make the powdered stuff work for me.

There’s no absolute need to use Prosecco: any good white wine would do. What’s important is simply to make this: the pale glint of the jelly against the red jewels of pomegranate makes it as beautiful to look at as to eat.

1 × 75cl bottle Prosecco or other white wine

250ml water

300g caster sugar

8 leaves gelatine

½ teaspoon vanilla

3 teaspoons Cointreau, Grand Marnier or Triple sec, plus more to serve

seeds from 1 pomegranate, or 75g pomegranate seeds from a tub/packet

flavourless oil for greasing

double cream to serve (optional)

• Lightly grease a 1-litre jelly mould with flavourless oil and sit it on a small tray so it’s easy to convey it to the fridge later.

• Pour the Prosecco and water into a saucepan, add the sugar and stir to help it dissolve (but do not stir once the pan is on the heat). At the same time, put the gelatine leaves into a dish and cover with cold water, letting them soak for 5 minutes.

• Put the pan on the heat, bring to the boil and let it boil for a minute.

• Add the vanilla and keep the pan bubbling gently for another minute, before taking it off the heat.

• Carefully ladle about 250ml of the wine–sugar mixture into a measuring jug.

• When the gelatine leaves have had a good 5 minutes’ soaking, lift them out, squeezing and squelching them to remove excess water (this is curiously pleasurable) and whisk them into the jug of hot wine–sugar mixture to dissolve.

• Pour the jugful of liquid back into the pan (which must be still off the heat), whisk again, and tip it all back into the jug, before pouring it into the prepared jelly mould. (This may sound a kerfuffle, but it ensures the gelatine is thoroughly dispersed.)

• Put the filled-to-the-brim mould, still on its tray, into the fridge and leave to set overnight. It has a gentle set, which is what makes it so delectable.