Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities (23 page)

Obviously all pumpkins come in different sizes, and if yours is radically smaller (unlikely, I’d think, to be much bigger and still edible), here is an easy way to work out how much rice you need to stuff it: once you’ve sliced a “lid” off the top of your pumpkin and taken all the seeds out, put a freezer bag in the hol-lowed-out cavity. Now fill it with enough rice to come halfway up the cavity. Tip the rice into a measuring jug to see how much you’ve got, and simply use double the amount of stock to rice. If you’re boosting rice quantities, augment the other ingredients accordingly.

You are slightly taking pot luck with pumpkin – it’s very difficult to tell before you eat one whether the flesh is succulent and sweet or tasteless and grainy – but you should certainly avoid all Hallowe’en pumpkins, and try to buy from a trustworthy greengrocer who takes pride in his, or her, produce.

Serves 8–12

1 × 3–3.5kg preferably French pumpkin, unprepared weight

1 onion, finely chopped

1 × 15ml tablespoon vegetable oil or olive oil

3 cloves garlic, 2 minced plus 1 left whole

150g dried cranberries

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground allspice

good pinch of saffron strands

zest of 1 clementine/satsuma

approx. 400g basmati rice (but see intro left)

approx. 1 litre hot vegetable stock

salt and pepper to taste

• Slice a lid off the top of the pumpkin, and remove the seeds and fibrous flesh from the inside, keeping the top to put back on later.

• In a large saucepan (with lid), fry the onion gently in the oil until softened, then add the 2 minced garlic cloves, the cranberries, spices and clementine/satsuma zest. Stir in the rice, turning till it becomes glossy in the pan.

• Pour in the stock and let the pan come to the boil, then clamp on the lid and turn the heat down to the lowest it will possibly go. Cook for 15 minutes.

• Cut the remaining clove of garlic in half and rub the inside of the pumpkin with the cut side of each half, then, using your fingers, smear some salt over the flesh inside as well.

• The rice stuffing will be quite damp and not very fluffy at this stage, but check it for seasoning – adding more spice, salt or pepper if wanted – and then spoon it into the garlic-and salt-rubbed pumpkin cavity and tamp down well. Press the pumpkin lid back on top and squeeze it down as firmly as you can (it will sit up a bit proud of the top).

• Stand the pumpkin on a double layer of foil, wrapping the foil 4cm up around the sides and scrunching it there, to keep the pumpkin out of direct contact with the water later.

• Place the stuffed, partially wrapped pumpkin in a roasting tin and pour in freshly boiled water to a depth of 2cm. Cook the pumpkin for about 2 hours by which time it should be tender when pierced.

• Meanwhile, get on with the Gingery Tomato Sauce, (next recipe).

• Take the pumpkin out of the roasting tin and let it sit for about 10 minutes before you slice it into segments like a cake.

GINGERY TOMATO SAUCE

1 onion, peeled and halved

2 cloves garlic, peeled

1 teaspoon dried ginger

3cm length fresh ginger, peeled

15g butter

1 × 15ml tablespoon olive oil

1 × 700g (700ml) bottle tomato passata

500ml water

1 teaspoon caster sugar

salt and pepper to taste

• Put the onion, garlic, dried ginger and fresh ginger into a processor and blitz to a pulp.

• Heat the butter and oil in a deep, wide pan, then add the onion-garlic mixture. Cook over a low heat for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally so that it doesn’t burn.

• Add the passata and water to the pan, and season with the sugar, salt and pepper.

• Cook for 15 minutes, at a gentle simmer, then taste for seasoning before decanting into a warmed jug or gravy boat and taking to the table, for people to pour over their slices of stuffed pumpkin.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the sauce up to 3 days ahead and keep chilled in the fridge. Reheat gently before serving.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make and freeze the sauce for up to 1 month. Thaw overnight at room temperature and reheat as above.

AUSTRALIAN CHRISTMAS PUDDING WITH HOT CHOCOLATE-CHESTNUT SAUCE

My great aunt used to make something called Australian Christmas pudding, which was, in effect, all the ingredients from a Christmas pudding stirred into vanilla ice cream and set in a pudding basin. It was rather curious, but I have fiddled with it to turn it into something I love. First step: remove the candied peel; for me this is crucial. And I’ve reduced the bits and pieces, using only a mixed bag of dried fruit (without the peel), but otherwise go for currants, raisins and chopped glacé cherries. Importantly, for the look and taste, after soaking the fruit in rum, I fold it into chocolate ice cream rather than vanilla. Thus it looks like Christmas pudding – and it tastes divine, even before it’s been swathed in the thick, rich, hot chocolate-chestnut sauce.

Serves up to 12

375g luxury mixed dried fruit

175ml dark rum

2 × 500g tubs chocolate ice cream

1.7 litre/3 pint plastic pudding basin with lid

• Put the dried fruit and rum into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Turn down the heat and gently simmer for 5 minutes, then take off the heat and allow to cool. Or just pour cold rum over the fruit and leave to steep overnight.

• Add the slightly softened, but not runny, ice cream and mix to combine and spoon into your plastic pudding basin, cover with the lid and freeze.

• When it’s almost time to eat, take it out of the freezer and let it stand for 20 minutes or so, to help unmoulding, then unmould and, if desired, put a sprig of holly on top or scatter flaked or chopped chocolate over on serving.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make pudding and freeze for up to 1 month. Thaw and serve as recipe.

HOT CHOCOLATE-CHESTNUT SAUCE

This chocolate-chestnut sauce is so divinely rich, I think – unless it’s Christmas Day – you don’t need more than a tub of good vanilla ice cream to serve with it, which also makes this a fabulous seasonal standby.

250g sweetened chestnut purée

125g dark chocolate, chopped into chips (or use little cooking buttons)

250ml double cream

2 × 15ml tablespoons dark rum

• Spoon the chestnut purée into a heavy-based pan, tip in the chopped chocolate chips or buttons and pour in the cream and heat gently to melt together.

• Take off the heat, stir in the rum, then take to the table, and let people pour it generously over their pudding. You may have some left over. Don’t complain.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the sauce up to 1 week ahead and keep, covered, in the fridge. Reheat gently to serve.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make and freeze the sauce for up to 3 months. Thaw overnight in the fridge and reheat as above.

JOY TO THE WORLD

CHRISTMAS BAKING AND SWEET TREATS

I AM NOT, I ASSURE YOU, any kind of self-proclaimed Domestic Goddess. True, I conjured her up, but when I did so, it was with gentle irony. It seems cruel to say that she doesn’t really exist, and I don’t wish to disown her; indeed, I still believe there are times when we need to feel like her. And Christmas, more than any other, is one of those times. In fact, the title of this chapter might easily be “The Return of the Domestic Goddess: This Time It’s Personal”.

But I stick to “Joy to the World”, which is what the mythical Domestic Goddess wants to bring, and which we could all hope for at this time of year. Baking a Christmas cake or a batch of mince pies, mixing up muffins or a meltingly mouthwatering chocolate cake may not carry any moral weight, and it’s not going to win you the Nobel Prize, but it makes you, and those around you, feel blissfully immersed in the sort of Christmas we’d like to believe in, all log fires, hushed snowfall and harmony.

Yet, if the picture-perfect Christmas is a dream, or an illusion, baking brings an irrefutable sense of satisfaction, and helps to bridge the wistful gap between fantasy and reality. The edible tree decorations you bake and ice and hang from the tree, the richly fruited pudding you stir up, or the dark, dense sticky gingerbread you give to friends who drop in for tea – these are all real components of that Christmas we want to feel exists beyond the mania which threatens to envelop us at this time of year. I don’t promise you can cook yourself calm, but I believe it makes sense to snatch moments when you can quietly busy yourself in the kitchen – frankly doing nothing much more effortful than stirring – and give yourself up to the encompassing warmth that comes from a sense of purpose, the benediction of productivity.

If this book celebrates anything, it is the central, perhaps quintessential, feast of Christmas: it is the time when overindulgence is not just encouraged, it is pretty well ordained. But it also needs to be relished. So don’t quibble over cake now: consider, deeply, pie crammed with nuts and gooey with eggy, amber caramel; all that is richly fruited, warmly spiced, luscious with chocolate beckons. Let the scent of Christmas baking fill the air and bring joy, if not to the whole world, then to your world. For Christmas, like charity, begins at home.

TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS CAKE

Grateful though I am to Hazel Hook for giving me her foundation-stone recipe for a traditional Christmas cake, with its all-important table for weights, measures and tin sizes, so many Christmasses ago, I have departed somewhat from her strictures. To be honest, I don’t always get it together to make a traditional Christmas cake (which needs a bit of time to stand and mellow to be as good as it can be) so I tend to rustle up either the Incredibly Easy Chocolate or Gorgeously Golden Fruit Cake (or both) at the last minute. But a traditionally iced and comfortingly decorative Christmas cake is a lovely thing, and if efficiency allows, should be embraced. This version builds on the Time-Honoured Christmas Cake of earlier books, but cuts down on varieties of dried fruits, augments alcohol (bourbon for preference, but brandy or sherry will also do), and adds ground almonds and chopped pecans. It bakes well, and can be iced beautifully, and is a satisfying way to get Christmas really going in the kitchen.

• Place all the dried fruit in a saucepan, and add the bourbon or brandy. Bring to the boil, then take it off the heat, covering once cooled, and let it steep overnight, covered. And make sure you take your eggs and butter out of the fridge so that they will be at room temperature for the making of the cake tomorrow.

• The next day, preheat your oven to 150°C/gas mark 2, and prepare your tin, see right.

• Cream the butter and sugar together, then beat in the grated lemon zest.

• Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition, then beat in the black treacle and almond extract.

• Sift the dry ingredients together, then mix the soaked fruit alternately with the dry ingredients into the creamed mixture, combining thoroughly. Fold in the chopped pecans.

• Put the cake mix into the prepared tin and bake in the oven, following the table above, or until a cake-tester or skewer inserted into the cake comes out cleanish.

• When the cake is cooked, brush with a couple of extra tablespoons of bourbon or brandy or other liqueur of your choice. Wrap immediately in its tin – using a double-thickness of tin foil – as this will trap the heat and form steam, which in turn will keep the cake soft on top.

• When it’s completely cold, remove the cake from the tin and rewrap in foil, storing, preferably in an airtight tin or Tupperware, for at least 3 weeks to improve the flavour. And see the Make Ahead tip, too.

• To prepare your tin, line the sides and bottom of a deep, round, loose-bottomed cake tin with a double layer of greaseproof paper or baking parchment. The paper should come up a good 10cm higher than the sides of the tin; think of a lining that’s about twice as deep as the tin. Cut out 2 circles of paper, and 2 very long rectangles that will fit along the sides of the tin and rise up above it like a top hat. Before you put the 2 rectangular pieces in the tin, fold one long side of each piece in towards the centre by about 2cm, as if turning up a hem, then take some scissors and snip into this hem, at approx. 2cm intervals, as if making a rough frill.

• Grease the tin, lay one paper circle on the bottom and get one of your long pieces and fit it down one side, with the frilly edge along the bottom, then press down that edge so it sits flat on the circle and holds it in place. Press the paper well into the sides, and repeat with the second rectangular piece. Now place the second circle on top of the 2 pressed-down frilly edges, to help hold the pieces around the edge in place.

• If you’re making a big cake, it’s worth wrapping the outside of the tin with a double layer of brown paper (also coming up about 10cm above the rim of the tin) but I don’t bother if I’m making a normal-sized one (20cm–23cm).

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the cake up to 6 weeks ahead and wrap in a double layer of greaseproof paper and then a double layer of foil. Store in an airtight container in a cool, dry place. (You could add a bit more bourbon or brandy over this storage time to feed the cake and keep moist.)

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make the cake and wrap as above. Freeze for up to 1 year. To thaw, unwrap the cake and thaw overnight at room temperature. Rewrap and store as above until needed.

CHRISTMAS CAKE ICING AND TOPPINGS

SNOWSCENE ICING

SMOOTH HATBOX ICING

GLOSSY FRUIT AND NUT TOPPING

GORGEOUSLY GOLDEN FRUIT CAKE

INCREDIBLY EASY CHOCOLATE FRUIT CAKE

CHRISTMAS-SPICED CHOCOLATE CAKE

STAR-TOPPED MINCE PIES

CRANBERRY-STUDDED MINCEMEAT

RUM AND BRANDY BUTTERS

BOURBON BUTTER

YULE LOG

EDIBLE CHRISTMAS TREE DECORATIONS

PANFORTE

SPRUCED-UP VANILLA CAKE

STICKY GINGERBREAD

SCARLET-SPECKLED LOAF CAKE

PECAN-PLUS PIE

CHRISTMAS CHOCOLATE BISCUITS

CRANBERRY AND WHITE CHOCOLATE COOKIES

CHRISTMAS CORNFLAKE WREATHS