Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities (30 page)

For me, pomegranate is the quintessential Christmas fruit, bringing back memories of a time when it appeared only at Christmas, bulging in my stocking, and I’d spend captivated hours winkling the seeds out with a pin and a kirby grip. And I say this even though I find packets of the seeds, freshly popped out for me, in the supermarket pretty well all year round now.

You don’t have to be as lazy as I am: by all means buy the whole fruit and deseed it yourself, but make sure you drain them (and you can drink the juice) before putting in the vodka bottle.

I defy anyone to look at the pretty pale-pink vodka and not to smile: it is indisputably happy-making. The steeping pomegranate seeds don’t, it’s true, make as emphatic a difference to the taste as to the colour, but that floral sour-sweet fragrance does make itself delicately, mysteriously felt. I don’t think anyone drinking this would be able to say exactly what the flavour was, but it’s plainly not straight vodka: perhaps it’s more accurate to think of it as scented rather than flavoured with pomegranate. But, whatever, you can tell the lucky recipient that it lends itself, iced, to petal-coloured shots, or fragrant martini-mixing or even the building of long, pink drinks.

Makes 700ml/70cl

150g pomegranate seeds

1 × 70cl bottle of vodka

1 large sealable jar, approx. 1 litre for steeping

1 × 70cl sealable bottle for presenting

• Sterilize your jar and leave to cool.

• Add the pomegranate seeds to the cooled, prepared jar, followed by the vodka. Seal and give the jar a safe shake before putting it in a cool, dark cupboard, or anywhere out of the light.

• Leave it for 4 days, shaking it any time you remember to, before sieving it into a measuring jug. Sterilize your 70cl bottle (or indeed the original vodka bottle with the label freshly soaked off), pour in the steeped vodka and put the lid on tightly before storing.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the fragrant vodka. Store the bottle in a cool, dark place and use within 1 year.

HONEYED FIG VINEGAR

I have to confess, I have never been one for flavoured or fruity vinegars, which became such a cliché of the late Eighties – when I first started going to restaurants, and even reviewing them – that I developed something of an aversion.

But in the right circumstances I can reconsider. And am humbly happy to do so now: the mellowness and warm depth that the honey and figs bring to the vinegar make this perfect, with nothing more than a little oil and salt added, for dressing a seasonal salad; and in terms of flavour and present presence, so to speak, you really do get a lot of bang for your buck.

Makes 1 litre

1 litre white wine vinegar

250g soft dried figs, chopped fairly fine

75g runny honey

2 teaspoons dried thyme

1 teaspoon white peppercorns

1 large sealable jar, approx. 2 litres, with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or reusable pickle jar

2 × 500ml sealable bottles

• Sterilize your jar and leave to cool.

• Pour the vinegar into the cooled, sterilized jar, then add the figs, honey, thyme and peppercorns, seal tightly and give a good shake.

• Put the fig-steeping vinegar into a cupboard, or anywhere out of the light, and leave for 4 days. It will begin to look like some strange specimen jar, the sort of freak-show medical curiosities collected by the tzars and now stored in that spooky museum in St Petersburg, the name of which I’m too traumatized to remember. But try not to let this put you off.

• Sieve into a large measuring or batter jug, taking care that no dusty spikes of thyme get through the net.

• Now, sterilize your 2 bottles, let them cool, then pour the vinegar in. Seal tightly and set aside in a cool, dark place until you present them.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the fig vinegar. Store the bottles in a cool, dark place and use within 1 year.

CHRISTMAS CHUTNEY

Chutney is not the most obviously festive, seasonally indulgent, must-have foodstuff, but it is the cornerstone of my Christmas pantry. I begin to hyperventilate, now as I write, even at the idea of not having a stock of it. My need is threefold: cold cuts and Christmas Day leftovers are impossible to contemplate without chutney (and the Christmas ham first-time-out must have it as well); it is what I make, annually, and with very, very little effort for the children’s school Christmas Fairs; and since it is easy to prepare a lot at one time, you can get a tidy number of presents seen to out of one under-an-hour stint in the kitchen, too.

Four of my favourite chutneys are recorded here, but this first, unsubtly named Christmas Chutney, is the one – in jars decorated as they are here, with squidgy, cut-out snowflake ribbon – that I box up and heave over to the Christmas Fair, along with as many cupcakes as I can muster.

Of course, any of the chutneys in this chapter would do, and gloriously, but this one is just so full of Christmassiness, crammed as it is with dates, cranberries and clementines, and spiced with cloves and cinnamon.

Makes approx. 2.2 litres

750g cooking apples, peeled, cored and chopped small

1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped

500g fresh or frozen cranberries, thawed if frozen

250g soft pitted dates, each date cut into 3

zest, pulp and juice of 2 clementines/satsumas

400g caster sugar

½ teaspoon ground cloves

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

500ml white wine vinegar

2 teaspoons Maldon salt or 1 teaspoon table salt

9 × 250ml sealable jars, with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or reusable pickle jar

• Sterilize your jars (see instructions). You get about 2.2 litres from this recipe, so you can either fill 9 × 250ml jars or go (as I do) for a variety of jars of differing sizes, amounting, give or take, to the total volume.

• Put the apples, onion, cranberries and dates into a large pan.

• Zest the clementines/satsumas over the top, then squeeze in the juice and scrape in the pulp.

• Add the sugar, ground cloves, ginger, cinnamon and cayenne pepper, then pour the vinegar over and sprinkle in the salt.

• Now all you have to do is give a good stir, turn on the heat, bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and let it bubble cheerfully, uncovered, for about an hour or until you have a pulpy mass.

• Spoon into your warm, prepared jars and seal.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the chutney up to 2 months before using or giving (the longer it has to “mature” the better). Store in a cool, dark place for up to 1 year. Once opened, store in the fridge and use within 1 month.

RICH FRUIT CHUTNEY

This could be described as a soft-set, savoury take on Christmas pudding. But as someone who has always liked a slab of un-iced fruitcake with a slice of sharp cheese, I see that as a good thing. What gives the richness, and the reminder of the pud, is that this chutney is made with dried fruits. What you end up with is a rich, dark, fruity, deeply-spiced chutney with a slightly more luxurious taste and texture than you might expect. This, of course, makes it an ideal present.

It also happens to be the easiest of the chutneys to make (not that it would be possible to find one that’s difficult) because you don’t have to peel or chop anything: all the dried fruit goes, as is, into the pan, and then, only when cooked, is gently processed to turn it into a sticky, spoonable preserve.

Makes 1.5 litres

250g dried apricots

250g pitted dried dates

250g dried pears

250g dried cranberries

125g light muscovado sugar

300ml cider vinegar

300ml water

1 teaspoon Maldon salt or ½ teaspoon table salt

zest of 1 lemon, finely grated

¼ teaspoon ground cloves

½ teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

3 × 500ml sealable jars (or 6 × 250ml jars), with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or reusable pickle jar

• Sterilize your jars. The amount of chutney you’re making here is enough to fill 3 × 500ml jars (as I’ve done) or 6 half that size, or, indeed, any permutation in the middle.

• Put all the ingredients into a decent-sized saucepan and bring to the boil.

• Once it has begun to bubble in earnest, turn down the heat, partially cover the pan (unlike the other chutneys, this one has no fresh fruit to give off liquid as it cooks) and simmer for 15–20 minutes or until all the fruit is soft.

• Take the pan off the heat for about 10 minutes to let it cool a little, before scraping it into a processor fitted with the double-bladed knife.

• Process for approx. 3 seconds, then open the lid to scrape down the chutney before pulsing again in short bursts. You want this chopped but not like untextured pulp or mush.

• Fill your warm, prepared jars and seal.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the chutney up to 2 months before using or giving (the longer it has to “mature” the better). Store in a dark, cool place for up to 1 year. Once opened, store in the fridge and use within 1 month.

BEETROOT AND GINGER CHUTNEY

Some people of my generation were put off prunes at school; I developed an antipathy to beetroot. For those of us who grew up eating it at its worst, beetroot can conjure up an almost putrid sweetness and corrosive vinegariness. But to borrow, almost, a famous phrase: the past is another country; they cook things differently there.

So now I find myself on the verge of becoming a born-again beetroot lover: I admire the beauty (and the taste) of them raw; I look for ways to celebrate them in my cooking. This chutney, which marries the earthy sweetness of the beet with the pepperiness of fresh ginger – the sourness of the apple, like a useful go-between, providing balance – is a triumph of prejudice overcome.

You need give nothing but a small jar of this gorgeous stuff as a present, but if you wanted to pair it with anything to amplify the gift, may I suggest a snowy log of sharp but creamy goat’s cheese.

Makes approx. 1.5 litres

500g fresh beetroot, peeled and finely chopped

1kg cooking apples, peeled, quartered, cored and roughly chopped

275g (1 large or 2 small) red onion, peeled and finely chopped

1 × 2.5cm piece fresh ginger

75g crystallized stem ginger, each cube fairly finely chopped

350g soft light brown sugar

2 teaspoons Maldon salt or 1 teaspoon table salt

1 teaspoon ground allspice

750ml red wine vinegar

6 × 250ml sealable jars, with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or reusable pickle jar

• Sterilize your jars (following instructions).

• Take a large saucepan and tip in the beetroot and apple – the beetroot takes a lot longer than the apple to cook, so the latter doesn’t have to be chopped as small. Add the red onion.

• Grate in the fresh ginger, tumble in the chopped crystallized ginger and sprinkle the brown sugar, salt and ground allspice over.

• Pour the vinegar over and stir to mix.

• Turn on the heat, bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and let the pan simmer steadily for approx. 1 hour, stirring every now and again, until the beetroot pieces are tender. The apple will have turned to mush long before this.

• Spoon into your warm, prepared jars and seal.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the chutney up to 2 weeks before using or giving. Store in a cool, dark place for up to 6 months. Once opened, store in the fridge and use within 1 month.

CRANBERRY AND APPLE CHUTNEY

Apple is – generally – the basis of a chutney, as it’s the sourness and pectin-rich nature of a Bramley, or indeed all cooking apples, that gives chutney its soft set and its sour-sweet tang. The Rich Fruit Chutney, is an exception, but deliberately so. Apple can be used, therefore, as a binding vehicle for other ingredients but it can, indeed, be the only fruit. The cranberries that dot this chutney are dried, so they stand in for sultanas, providing punctuation rather than adding flesh, as the fresh ones do in the Christmas Chutney.

I add dried cranberries in preference to any other dried fruit, simply because their redness, their celebratory seasonality, makes this feel more Christmassy; the whole of the chutney’s cheery hue does its festive bit, too.

Makes about 1 litre

750g cooking apples, peeled, quartered, cored and chopped small

250g dried cranberries

1 onion, peeled and finely chopped

350ml cider vinegar

200g caster sugar

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground turmeric

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

2 teaspoons Maldon salt or 1 teaspoon table salt

4 × 250ml sealable jars, with vinegar-proof lid, such as Kilner jar or reusable pickle jar

• Sterilize your jars.

• Take a medium-sized (not too big) saucepan and chuck into it all the ingredients. Stir with a wooden spoon and then put the pan on the heat.

• Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat a little to let the pan cook, uncovered, on a fast simmer for about 45 minutes, or until the chutney has thickened slightly and the fruit is soft.

• Spoon into your warm, prepared jars and seal them.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the chutney up to 2 months before using or giving (the longer it has to “mature” the better). Store in a dark, cool place for up to 1 year. Once opened, store in the fridge and use within 1 month.

CHILLI JAM

Although I call this chilli jam, I don’t mean that it’s the sort of thing you’d spread on your toast at breakfast (though smeared inside a bacon sandwich, it could be a real help one hungover morning) but rather a chilli jelly – chelly? – that glows a fiery, flecked red and is fabulous with cold meats or a cheese plate. And just a small pot of it makes a gorgeous present.

In the traditional run of things, jellies are incredibly hard work to make, or at least I find them so. If I tell you that jelly-making tends to involve tying jelly bags or muslin to the leg of an upended stool and straining stuff through the fine cloth into a bowl sitting in the underside of the stool’s seat for at least 12 hours, you’ll get the picture.