Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities (8 page)

FOR THE BASE:

8 egg whites (reserved, perhaps, from

The Boozy British Trifle

custard)

500g caster sugar

4 teaspoons cornflour

2 teaspoons white wine vinegar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

FOR THE TOPPING:

650ml double cream

10 passionfruit

10 fresh or canned lychees, drained if canned

300g raspberries (frozen are fine)

25g icing sugar

• Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4. Line a baking sheet with baking parchment and draw a rough 25cm diameter circle on it; I pencil round a cake tin that size.

• Whisk the egg whites until satiny peaks form, then whisk in the sugar, a tablespoonful at a time, until the meringue is stiff and shiny.

• Sprinkle the cornflour, vinegar and vanilla extract over the egg white, and fold in lightly with a metal spoon. Mound the meringue on to the baking parchment within the circle and, using a spatula, flatten the top and smooth the sides.

• Put in the oven and immediately reduce the heat to 120°C/gas mark ½. Cook for an hour. Then turn off the oven and leave to cool completely. Once it’s cool, take the meringue disc out – and you can keep it in an airtight container for a couple of days or freeze for a month.

• When you are ready to assemble the pavlova, invert the cooled meringue disc onto a large plate or a stand you can serve it on, and peel off the baking parchment.

• Whip the cream until thickened but still soft, and pile onto the meringue – on the squidgy part that was stuck to the baking parchment – spreading it to the edges in a swirly fashion.

• Cut the passionfruit in half, and scoop out the seeds, and any pulp and juice, into a bowl. Peel the fresh lychees (if using) over the bowl to catch any juice, then remove the stones, tear the lychees into pieces and let them drop into the passionfruit. Tear the drained, canned lychees (if using) likewise, and drop them in, too.

• Leave the passionfruit and lychees sitting in their bowl for a moment, while you liquidize the raspberries with the icing sugar in a blender.

• Dollop the cream-topped pavlova with the passionfruit and lychees, and their juices, then zig-zag some red, red, red raspberry sauce over the top, putting the rest in a small jug for people to add to their slices as they eat.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the meringue disc and store in a deep, airtight container for up to 2 days. About 3–4 hours before serving, top with whipped cream and keep in the fridge. Just before serving, add the fruits and raspberry sauce.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make and freeze the meringue disc for up to 1 month. Thaw in a cool room and finish as recipe.

SEASONAL SUPPORT

SOUPS, SALADS, SAUCES AND SERVE-LATER SIDES

THERE IS AN ABSENCE in this book, an absence that is at the heart of this very chapter – and that is a roast chicken. To some extent, its exclusion makes sense. After all, this is the turkey’s time; a chicken, puny by comparison, doesn’t seem to deserve much of a place in a Christmas book. But, for me, there is no kitchen, no life, without it: no way a roast chicken is not always central. It is the simplest feast: the oven cooks it without interference from you. You just need to be there to put it in the oven, and to take it out. And it’s not just lack of time or laziness that makes it crucial: a roast chicken is the taste of home.

Still, there’s nothing wrong with laziness or lack of time as motives for cooking particular sorts of food. So long as greed is rewarded at the same time, I am happy. This really is what the recipes in this chapter are all about. Not every meal, even at Christmas, can be a full-on, time-consuming procession of courses. Sometimes I need to know that all I have to do is bung a chicken in the oven and, with one of these salads or soups beforehand or, indeed, the same salad or one of the dishes alongside, a proper dinner can be served. You don’t need to make the soup or vegetable dishes in advance, but I find it helpful to do so. For me, cooking in advance is the way of tackling Christmas, and all the meals it involves, express-style. There’s too much to do to manage everything at the last minute (though the salads are the work of moments), so what makes life simpler is to stagger tasks, to get food cooked earlier, only to be idly reheated at the last minute.

The salads, too, whether brought out as a first course or side dish to bulk out a dinner, or to add tang and flourish to a tableful of leftovers, are the nearest, neatest thing to a stressbusting, seasonal shortcut.

Maybe it goes without saying – a quick glance at the ingredients list and all is made clear – but my approach at Christmas is “scatter with pomegranate seeds”. Their jewelled beauty gives instant Christmas oomph. And I’m unembarrassed about buying the seeds, already popped out into packages, from the supermarket.

So, the roast chicken I mentioned may exist, or may be just the notional main part of the meal you’re planning, without a lot of time to fuss over it; the recipes that follow are what make this meal, and others like it, possible.

SOUPS

CHESTNUT SOUP WITH BACON CRUMBLES

ROAST SQUASH AND SWEET POTATO SOUP WITH BUTTERMILK BLUE CHEESE SWIRL

TORTILLA SOUP

CHESTNUT SOUP WITH BACON CRUMBLES

This is not a million miles away from the chestnut soup in my first book, How to Eat, but the fact that I can’t leave it behind tells you not only how good it is, but how important familiarity, tradition and continuity are, especially at this time of year.

I confess, I’d planned a celeriac and chestnut soup to go here: I’ve cooked it; I’ve loved it; I’d written the recipe. But as I sit writing, I find it’s my older, more basic soup that writes itself into the page. Taste it and you’ll see why: a meal in itself with a hunk of warm bread, or a make-ahead starter to bring some cold cuts to party-life, this soup manages to be comforting, elegant and simple all at the same time.

Much as I love the golden intensity of chicken stock (and I’ll take mine from concentrate; it doesn’t always have to be homemade), I do think when you’re catering for groups of people it’s wise to make up meat-free soups with vegetable stock, so you can keep the vegetarians happy. Thus the bacon crumbles are, I suggest, better served apart, for those carnivores who might like to sprinkle them over their sweet, grainy soup.

Enough to fill 10 soup bowls or 20 cups or small (200ml) mugs

1 onion

1 leek

3 carrots

2 sticks celery

3 × 15ml tablespoons garlic oil

500g red lentils

3 litres vegetable stock (or chicken stock if preferred)

500g vacuum-packed peeled chestnuts

125ml amontillado sherry

salt and pepper

FOR SERVING:

small bunch of parsley (optional)

1 teaspoon garlic oil

10 rashers American-style or other thin-cut streaky bacon

• Either by hand, or using a processor, finely chop the onion, leek, carrots and celery.

• Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based pan, and add the chopped vegetables, cooking for about 10 minutes on a medium to low heat, until softened a little.

• Add the lentils, and turn them in the vegetable mush.

• Add the stock and bring to the boil, then, with the heat down a little, let simmer for about 40 minutes or until the lentils are soft.

• Add the chestnuts and liquidize the soup in batches, adding more water if it’s too thick. However, if you’re going to serve this at a later time, I wouldn’t bother to add water now, as the soup will inevitably thicken as it stands.

• When you want to eat the soup, heat it in the pan along with the sherry, adding more liquid if needed, and season with salt and pepper to taste.

• While the soup’s getting warm and ready, finely chop the parsley (you will need approx. 3 × 15ml tablespoonfuls), and heat the garlic oil in a large frying pan for the bacon.

• Fry the bacon until it is crisp and scorched and remove to some kitchen paper. Crumble the bacon into a bowl or a couple of bowls and put them on the table.

• As you serve the hot soup, sprinkle with parsley if wished.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the soup and liquidize. Cool, cover and keep in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat with the sherry, adding more stock/broth if needed. Check the seasoning before serving. Fry the bacon, cool and crumble into a sealable bag. Keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make the soup as above and freeze in an airtight container for up to 2 months. Thaw overnight in the fridge and reheat as above.

ROAST SQUASH AND SWEET POTATO SOUP WITH BUTTERMILK BLUE CHEESE SWIRL

It may seem a bit fiddly to have a soup prepared in two parts: one in the oven; one in the pan. But I do this not only because I think it intensifies the flavour dramatically, but because it actually makes my life easier.

The thing is this: when you roast a butternut squash, you can go ahead and liquidize it without ever having to peel it (I found this out when I made the Butternut Orzotto) and when I’m thigh-deep in cooking season, this is a real boon. Plus, I love the slightly flecked look that the spice-sized specks of skin give the soup, as well as the hint of texture.

The robust sweetness of this soup is countered by the buttermilk and blue cheese drizzling-mix that I swirl over the soup as I serve it and, indeed, I think it’s the two together that really make it.

Serves 8–10 as a starter, 6 as a main course

1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped

1 butternut squash (unpeeled), halved, deseeded and sliced into 3cm × 2cm chunks

500g sweet potatoes (unpeeled), cut into 3cm rings

60ml olive oil

teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

salt and pepper

FOR SERVING:

125g crumbled blue cheese

250ml buttermilk (if you can’t find buttermilk, use a plain, runny –
i.e.
not set-yogurt, such as Activia)

• Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6. Put the chopped onion, chopped butternut and sweet potato (again, don’t worry that neither of these last two are peeled) onto a baking sheet.

• Drizzle the oil over them and sprinkle with the cinnamon and nutmeg, then roast in the oven for about 1–1¼ hours, by which time all should be tender. Remove from the oven.

• While the vegetables are still warm or at room temperature, liquidize them in 2 batches, adding 500ml of vegetable stock to each batch.

• Pour the blended vegetables into a saucepan. Swill another 500ml of vegetable stock in the blender to get out all the remnants of the soup, and pour into the pan. You have now added 1.5 litres of liquid to the vegetables.

• On reheating to serve, add the marsala and taste for seasoning. You may need to add up to another 500ml of water if the soup’s too thick for your liking.

• As the soup warms up, liquidize the blue cheese and buttermilk in a clean blender and spoon into a jug or bowl.

• On serving, drizzle some of this mixture over each bowl. Leave the jug on the table for your guests to have more if they wish.

NOTE:

If you have any buttermilk-blue-cheese mixture left over, put it into a clean jam jar with a fierce squirt of lime juice, and seal. It will keep for a day in the fridge and serve as a good salad dressing with or without an avocado blended into it.

MAKE AHEAD TIP:

Make the soup and liquidize. Cool, cover and keep in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat with the marsala, adding more water if needed. Check the seasoning before serving.

FREEZE AHEAD TIP:

Make the soup as above and freeze in an airtight container for up to 2 months. Thaw overnight in the fridge and reheat as above.

TORTILLA SOUP

When I went to Dallas, I became somewhat obsessed with ferreting out this Southwestern speciality and, although I was nominally there to work (under the auspices of Janet McLeod who had, fantastically, been Elvis’s publicist), my overwhelming concern was this soup. However, my version is not attempting to ape the various ones I tried on my travels; I don’t want to enter into the debate as to what is authentic or not. For one, I lack the credentials. I’m probably about as far from a southern belle as you could get, though I love the twang, adore the manners and could eat tortilla soup until the cows come home.

If you don’t know what this is, the name is probably misleading. The tortilla refers to the soft corn tortillas which are cut into shreds and fried to be tossed into a spiced chicken broth, along with some shredded cheese, diced avocado and chopped coriander. Naturally – and it has a particular bearing, given the season – this can be made with turkey in place of chicken.

The chicken stock plays such a part here, it’s worth making sure you use a good one. That doesn’t have to mean homemade, though it’s not difficult to make. Either follow the method (see here) or cover the fresh carcass and leavings from a roast chicken with about 4.5 litres of water and boil with onion, leek, carrot, bay and salt for about 3 hours. With a turkey carcass you could make double this, easily.

Serves 6 as a main course

2 teaspoons ground cumin

3 bay leaves

1 small clove garlic, peeled and minced

2 fresh red chillies, deseeded and chopped

4 spring onions, finely sliced

300g cooked shredded chicken (or turkey)

FOR SERVING:

2–3 × 15ml tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon chilli oil

1 packet (8) soft corn tortillas

200g cheddar, or red Leicester, grated

1 avocado, peeled and diced

3 × 15ml tablespoons chopped coriander

3 limes, cut into quarters

• Heat the stock in a large pan, and add the celery salt, cumin, bay leaves, garlic, chillies and spring onions.

• Let the soup boil gently for about 10 minutes, then take off the heat and add the shredded chicken.

• While the soup’s bubbling, put about a third of the vegetable and chilli oils into a frying pan to heat. Take a pair of soft corn tortillas, roll them up like a cigar and, with scissors, snip into approx. 1cm strips. Do likewise, in pairs, with the remaining 6 tortillas.