Have Your Cake & Eat It… Just not until Christmas!

Last year I posted a blog on Stir Up Sunday with a recipe for Christmas Pudding. Click on this link ‘Christmas Pudding’ if you want to see it.

This Year I’m giving a recipe for Christmas Cake. You may think it’s a bit early but this cake tastes better for a bit of maturing. Put it this way. Last year we made two cakes. We started the second in the Summer holidays it was superb and still lovely and moist (something to do with the alcohol content me thinks!). In fact this year I’m wondering whether to do extra so we have a cake for next Christmas too!

Crimbo Cake 1

This recipe will give a large 10″ cake and a smaller one. Or you could try two 8″ size tins. It depends on what sort of depth you want on your cake.

You can use whatever dried fruit you like in your cake. I put mainly vine fruits in mine with a little currants and angelica. If you want to push the boat out a few dried Morello  cherries and cranberries make a luxurious addition.

 

Traditional Christmas Fruit Cake

 

800g Mixed dried fruit

300g nibbed almonds

200g glace cherries

100g crystalized ginger (roughly chopped)crimbo cake 2

 

Soak the above in 350ml of port, 350ml brandy and 1 bottle of Kreik overnight (or whatever alcohol you like)

 

4 medium eggs beaten

zest and juice of 2 oranges

200g melted butter

2 teaspoons of cinnamon and a good grating of nutmeg

1 teaspoon of all spice (pimento)

200g Muscavado sugar

2 tablespoons of black treacle

300g self raising flour

 

crimbo cake 3

 

Method

Once your fruit has had it’s alcoholic bath simply put all the ingredients in a very big basin and give a very thorough mix.

Pre-heat the oven to 150°C/gas mark 4.

Grease and line your baking tins/moulds.

Fill your tins leaving at least 3cm gap from the top.

Bake in the oven for 2 hours 20 minutes to 2 hours 40 minutes.

If the top is browning a bit too quickly loosely cover with a little baking parchment.

Too check if the cake is done pierce the centre with a bamboo skewer. The cake is done when the skewer comes out virtually clean.

Leave the cakes to cool in the tin then take out.

Pierce the bottom of the cake with a skewer. Now you can feed your cake with whatever spirit you like! I find Brandy works the best but Whiskey also gives a great result. Simply spoon some alcohol over the cake and let it soak in. This can be repeated every 2 to 3 weeks or every week as it nears Christmas. Once the cake has had it’s first feed, wrap in greaseproof/baking paper then tin foil and then cling film. We keep ours in a cool box in a cool place.

We don’t ice our cake as we tend to enjoy it with a nice slab of vintage Cheddar and glass of wine, Port or Madeira but of course you can cover it with marzipan and icing of your choice or try glazing with some warmed apricot jam and decorating with nuts or glace fruit.

The only hard part I find about making this cake? Waiting until Christmas to eat it!

I wish I could have my cake and eat it now!

crimbo cake 4

 

 

 

Curried Bakers Oven Lamb

Here’s a traditional English dish given an ‘Ome Made twist, to be fair it was Kits’ idea. I was just going to do the plain English dish of lamb shoulder baked on top of layers of potato and onion, which in it’s own right is delicious. Add some spice, herbs and a curry sauce though and it takes the dish to a completely different level… This really was scrumptious! This is a fantastic dish to prepare the day before so that you can bang it in the oven the next day, forget about it and get on with all those things you need to catch up on, take the kids out or… go to the pub!

  It really is simple. You will need a full or 1/2 shoulder of lamb. Some White potatoes, onions and garlic. I also used some dried mint, fresh coriander and some red chillies.

 

 

First of all slice some potatoes (skin on) thinly and some onions. These need to be layered in a deep buttered baking dish. I did about four layers adding seasoning as I went along. On the middle layer I put a heap of chopped fresh coriander, a couple of chopped red chillies and some dried mint. On the top layer I sprinkled some more mint and some black cumin seeds.

 

 

I then fried some mild curry masala in a little oil and added some chicken stock and let this cook for twenty minutes or so. Next prepare the lamb. With a sharp knife make a few slits in the meat and push in some pieces of garlic. Now rub the lamb all over with some Kashmiri Chilli powder and some ground cumin. Sit the lamb on top of the layered potatoes and onions and give it a good grind of black pepper and a good sprinkling of salt. Pour your curry sauce into the corners of the baking dish. You want enough so that it comes about 1/2 way up your potato and onion layer.

 

 

Now cover the whole baking dish with a double layer of foil, creating a tight seal.

 

 

When your ready to cook pre heat your oven to 200°c. Put the lamb in the oven and then turn the temperature down to 165°c Which means the lamb will be ready after about four hours (but should be fine up to six). If you want to cook it for longer (or your having a really long session in the pub!) then you can cook the lamb on 145°c. The lamb will then be ready after six hours but be even better after around eight hours. To finish the dish off, remove the baking dish from the oven. Carefully remove the lamb to a warmed plate or dish. The meat should be falling off the bone. The layered potatoes then need to go back in a hot oven to brown and start to crisp up. If the liquid is above the potatoes just spoon some off ’till you can see the top layer. Put the baking dish back in the oven for about twenty minutes.

 

 

To serve, pull apart the lamb, spoon out some potato into a dish and place the lamb on top, spoon a bit more of the curry sauce over. A nice dollop of natural yoghurt goes nicely with the dish but that’s all it really needs.

 

 

A tasty, warming and comforting dish for a lovely lazy Sunday. Give it a go!

 

Don’t forget you can buy ‘Ome Made Curry Masalas at www.omemade.co.uk

‘Ome Cured Bacon

Who doesn’t like bacon? I’ve even heard of vegetarians succumb to the smell of bacon frying on a Saturday morning from the local greasy spoon.

ome cured bacon blog

One day I was thinking ‘well how hard can it be to make my own bacon’. So I got a piece of belly pork from the butchers, took the bones out and fat off then rubbed it with liberal amounts of salt and other seasonings, put it in a plastic container in the fridge and left it there for a week, pouring off the moisture and rubbing a little more salt into the meat every other day or so.

After a week I rinsed the piece of meat thoroughly under cold water, patted it dry and then sliced it as thinly as possible. The meat certainly had the texture of bacon. The colour though was slightly off putting and even after it was cooked it was a slightly pinkish-grey colour. However it tasted fantastic!

Of course in commercial curing they use a curing salt which contains, amongst other things, saltpeter or potassium nitrate although this compound has more recently been replaced with sodium nitrate (E252) and it’s this that gives the bacon the characteristic pink colour.

You can get curing salt quite easily, it’s available on line. I however thought ‘I’ll ask my butcher for some’. Sure enough, as I was buying a big hunk of belly pork from him, he was happy to oblige. I think any decent butcher would do the same, they may charge you for it but it would be better than buying a big batch and they will even tell you how much to use for the piece of meat you’re curing.

And that’s all you need, a piece of meat to cure and some curing salt.

I tend to use belly pork for my own bacon. Simply because it’s reasonably cheap and it’s great when used in cooking sauces such as Bolognaise (Pancetta is made using the same cut of pork)

I take the bones out of the piece of meat (these go in the freezer until we have enough for some nice sticky ribs), and then I rub my curing mixture into the meat. I stick a freezer bag over my hand. You really don’t want curing salt on your hands!

 'Ome cured bacon meal blog

I enhance my curing mixture with some spices and sugar. I’ll use some muscavado sugar for sweetness, a little allspice, a tiny pinch of chili powder and a little smoked paprika. You can use whatever you fancy though or just leave it plain.

And that’s it. Place in a non metallic container, cover and stick in the fridge. It should be ready after a couple days but I’ve left it up to a week before. It’s best to drain the excess water that comes out of the meat, however sometimes I’ve forgotten and it’s still turned out fine.

Once your meat is ready you need to rinse it and then dry it. I take the rind off the meat and roast it in one piece for the ultimate crackling! The Kids go mad for it! The meat can then be sliced, diced or left in big pieces to roast (if your doing this leave the rind on). We normally slice some and dice some and freeze it in small batches.

Believe me, your own home-cured bacon will taste amazing and will be a fraction of the cost of shop bought.

Of course the best way to enjoy it is to have a couple slices of cooked, crispy homemade bacon and a squirt of tomato ketchup sandwiched between two slices of home made bread and a nice cup of tea… Perfect!

bacon and egg sandwich blog

Sweet Potato & Red Chili Soup

 

Sweet Potato and Chilli Banner

Soup… We absolutely love it in our house. Not the tinned variety of course. It has to be ‘Ome-made! And it’s so easy to make. You take your favourite ingredients sweat them off in some butter add some stock, cook for a bit and then blitz. Not leek and potato soup though, that can’t be blitzed. That’s completely breaking the rules, that has to be… ‘lumpy’.

 

If you make your own stock it’s even better. Even if it’s chucking the bones from the leftover roast chicken in a pot and boiling for an hour, you will be left with a nicechicken stock blog base for a soup. Of course if your one of those non-meat eating types you can make a stock from those manky left over carrots at the back of the fridge any veg trimmings and some onion. If you roast the veg for 20 minutes or so you’ll get more flavour and a deeper colour to your stock too.

 

So heres a recipe for a soup I made the other day along with a recipe for some cumin, ginger and garlic croutons. If you don’t have the croutons with this soup I suggest putting the spices used to flavour them in the soup. Although this recipe has chillies and spices in it it is no way spicy. If you prefer it spicier just up the amount of red chili in the recipe.

  croutons blogcoriander and chilli blog

Sesoning Blog

 

 

 

Sweet Potato & Red Chili Soup

 

Ingredients 

 

50g butter                                                       Diced Potatoes Blog

1 medium onion roughly sliced

2 cloves of garlic roughly chopped

200g (a large baker) potato cubed

700g sweet potatoes (4 small or 3 medium)cubed

1 large carrot diced

1 teaspoon ground white pepper (or extra black if you haven’t)

1 teaspoon salt

1 heaped teaspoon mild curry massala (or curry powder)Diced Carrots Blog

1 teaspoon ground allspice

1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 litre of stock

2 medium sized red chillies deseeded and finely chopped

1 tablespoon chopped coriander

Ground black pepper and salt to taste

 

Method

 

Melt the butter in a heavy bottomed pan. Gently fry the onion and garlic for about 10 minutes.

Sweet Potato Sweating Blog

Add both types of potato and carrot to the pan along with the white pepper, salt, curry massala, allspice and thyme. Gently sweat all the veg off for a further 10 minutes stirring so the spices don’t stick and burn.

Add your stock which should just cover the vegetables. Bring to a simmer and cook for approximately forty minutes or until all the veg is cooked through and soft. Take off the heat and carefully blitz with a hand blender, blender or food processor.

Put back on the heat and add the remaining ingredients. The soup will be ready after 20 minutes.

 Sweet Potato Soup Blog

 

Cumin Ginger & Garlic Croutons

 

8 slices white bread

Olive oil

2 teaspoon crushed garlic

2 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon ground ginger

Salt and black pepper

 

Method

 

Cut the bread into cubes and put in a shallow roasting/baking tin.

Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with the garlic, cumin and ginger. Give the croutons a good toss and then sprinkle a little more olive oil on them and toss them again.

croutons cooking blog

Put in an oven preheated to 165°C on fan setting (185°C for conventional)the croutons will take 30 – 40 minutes but you need to regularly check on them and give them a shake or turn every 10 minutes or so.

Once the croutons are cooked they can be used straight away. Once the croutons are completely cool they can be put in a sealed container where they should be good for up to five days.

Sweet Potato Soup Banner

Happy soup making!