Stuffing rolls

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I think I may have mentioned this before but I’m fond of Christmas. Presents are lovely, family time is great, but a holiday that exalts stuffing is my idea of heaven! If there’s one thing I like more than stuffing things, it’s actually making stuffing itself. So imagine my glee when I was invited to a seasonal soiree with lots of people who don’t eat pork and I got the chance to try out my idea of vegetarian ‘sausage rolls’ using stuffing as a filling instead…

Inspired by last week’s Christmas doughnuts, it was essential that the stuffing would be based on chestnuts for a festive feel. To compliment their slight sweetness, I decided to pick up a parsnip and a sharp-sweet Bramley, both of which are in season and useful to have round the house anyway at this time of year. The kitchen essentials of some rye breadcrumbs from the freezer, an onion and some kale would complete the recipe nicely and make a delicious and fast stuffing when seasoned with mace and nutmeg.

 

While the finely diced onion caramelized down and the chestnuts roasted in the oven, I turned my attention to the pastry for the rolls. I’m a relative newbie to pastry having only made it a couple of times and never having tried to make puff or flaky pastry so I turned to the recent thread on the perfect sausage roll over at the Word of Mouth blog on the Guardian from a few weeks ago for some pastry tips and decided to follow Felicity’s recipe as I realised how awkward puff pastry really is to make.

I had no mustard powder to add to the pastry, but otherwise this was to the letter and very straightforward to make. Five minutes later it was resting in the fridge and I was adding grated parsnip to the onion mix and letting it cook down a bit while I peeled and grated a large Bramley, finely chopped some kale and turned my attention to peeling the chestnuts. This isn’t difficult, but it a bit time consuming and must be done while the chestnuts are still a bit warm, otherwise it is a nightmare to do. I then blitzed them in the hand blender with the remains of the chestnut puree from the doughnuts and then combined everything together with a beaten egg and some seasoning. It would be an excellent idea to mix and season everything, taste it and then add the egg, otherwise it’s difficult to sample the stuffing. I, of course, didn’t do this so this was a bit of a risky recipe as I just made the quantities up as I went along!

I left the stuffing to cool and got cracking rolling out the pastry. It’s a stiff pastry so didn’t need too much flour and rolled nicely. I did end up with some oddly shaped sections so trimmed them down to proper strips and re-rolled the trimmings. I then wet the edges with egg wash and rolled the pastry round the stuffing, sealing the edges with some serious crimping. I then cut the giant stuffing roll into bite sized sections, egg washed the top and popped them in the oven. With a bit of practice, this would be extremely quick and easy and since the stuffing and the pastry can be prepared well in advance, you can make these fresh when needed.

They take about 15 minutes in the oven which is less than the meat version and stops the edge of the stuffing becoming unpleasantly crispy. I left them to cool on a rack in order to carry them more easily, but you could serve them oven fresh as they are much nicer warm. We reheated them at my friend’s house and they were pretty good. The stuffing was quite sweet, more than I usually go for and when making them again, I’ll probably swap the parsnip for some mushrooms instead, but it’s a minor quibble. The pastry was lovely and short and crumbly, but overall they were a little dry and would definitely be lifted from nice to brilliant with a dip on the side. I’d go for something with chilli and in fact ate my leftovers with some crabapple and chilli cheese!

Team these with a lovely sauce or selection of condiments and they make a great meat free canape that everyone will enjoy. You’ll also look very impressive having made them from scratch, but you could use pre-bought pastry as long as you roll them yourself for an authentically wonky look!

Lebkuchen plate

Lebkuchen

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Christmas is one of the times of the year I like best. Mainly because it gives me the chance to buy presents for other people, drink alcohol in the middle of the day everyday and go to parties on a fairly regular basis. However one requires fortification for all these activities along with something to bring to all those parties, so to prevent you having to worry a minute longer about how to keep your energy up and impress the neighbours, I bring you a recipe for the easiest Christmas cookie around, German spiced lebkuchen…

I adore these soft spiced biscuits so much that I normally raid Lidl this time and year and buy about eight boxes, eating them up until Easter when I get sidetracked again by hot cross buns. So imagine my glee when I discovered a recipe for them that is so easy, so quick and so simple, I could knock up a batch in the time it took for the yeast to get ready for my doughnuts…

Oven on, I melted the butter and the remains of a bottle of honey on the stove, topping it up to the right amount with the syrup I bought for the pumpkin pie. I measured out my ingredients, delighted that I finally had a reason to use the random bag of groung almonds I’ve had knocking around in the cupboard for about a year, and added the spices, popping a pinch of mace in for good luck too. A quick stir with the spatula to combine the wet and dry and ingredients and I had a lovely soft cookie dough in under 5 minutes.

I plucked pieces off and squashed the balls of dough to make disc shapes on a greased and paper tray and baked about half the cookies in a batch since I didn’t have enough trays for all them at once. I noticed the dough dried out a bit in between, so I’d recommend wrapping it in a bit of clingfilm between batches. You can also form the discs, put paper between them and freeze them so you always can always offer fresh cookies even if people call unexpectedly. I got about 30 cookies from this recipe.

The cookies took about 12 minutes to cook and colour and I don’t find my oven runs hot, so check after 10 minutes to make sure these don’t burn. Add a moment or two more if you’re baking them from frozen. Transfer them to a wire rack and cool them for about 15 minutes if you are icing them. I tried one (just for research purposes you understand!) without the the icing and they were lovely as they were, but look a little bit insipid when left plain.

I mixed up the icing as instructed, using only one tablespoon of water and if I’m honest, I think it was a bit runny and probably didn’t really need the water at all. I iced them using a small spatula and they dripped a fair bit as the icing set, so when I do these again, I’ll skip the water and just use egg white and icing sugar.

The icing set quickly, making this a fairly simple step as you just don’t want to complicate such a simple recipe. I sneaked another one once they had set and was very pleased with how they turned out. Soft and melting (despite the lack of fat) they were warm with ginger and left a tingle thanks to the black pepper and mace that isn’t too savoury or grown up with the hint of sweetness of the icing. I imagine these being just as popular with the kids as with the adults.

These are a fantastic biscuit. Quick and easy to make, great fun to do with the kids, keep well and are much more nuanced with festive spice than shopbought versions. I didn’t expect to be considering another contender for biscuit of the year so soon after the graham crackers, but these are definitely in the running! Maybe I’ll have a seasonal category just for these?

Christmas Chestnut Doughnuts

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I was invited to a festive soiree this weekend to get some Christmas cards prepared, drink mulled wine and generally get in the seasonal mood. I wanted to bring something Christmassy to this get together, but I couldn’t think what since I loathe mince pies with a passion and find the December obsession with dried fruit in general a bit hard to handle. Walking home from a shopping trip where I had picked up a can of purée de marron because it was such a nice looking tin, I saw a small child eating a doughnut and had a flash of inspiration. What about festive doughnuts stuffed with chestnut puree and sprinkled with nutmeg and cinnamon? Having never met someone who doesn’t like doughnuts, I decided with was a marvellous idea, because even if it went wrong, I would finally find out after 25 odd years of wondering, how they get the filling into a doughnut…

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Give thanks for pumpkin pie

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I am rather envious of the American holiday of Thanksgiving. I rather like the idea of a day dedicated to family, friends and food (all things to be thankful for) without the added pressure of sheer naked commercialism like Christmas. Unfortunately I have never had the chance to celebrate Thanksgiving and thus have never sampled some of its traditional dishes. I could happily live without ever trying green bean casserole but since I’m a bit of an Americanophile, pumpkin pie has always intrigued me.

Coming across a can of Libby’s tinned pumpkin recently at Whole Foods for a much more reasonable price than Selfridges Food Hall flogs it for sealed the deal. This is one occasion when tinned trumps fresh for me. I roasted some pumpkin last year to puree for cupcakes and it involved an hour’s cooking, draining overnight, about two hours trying to puree it in a blender and the death of my favourite silicon spatula to achieve something that looked exactly like the contents of a can of Libby’s…

The future's orange...

Pumpkin obtained, the next step was to find a good recipe for the pie. I was intrigued to see that most of them are the same recipe but with varying amounts of the products sold by specific companies and different levels of spicing. The only one that seemed to vary was a stunning sounding Nancy Silverton recipe involving real cream and brandy instead evaporated milk and generic pumpkin pie spice. However it sounded like all the ingredients involved would cost so much it would have been cheaper to buy one of the £9.99 pies that Whole Foods also had. I ended up plumping for the ‘perfect pumpkin pie’ recipe from the Guardian recently as it seemed to combine the best bits of the traditional and the more deluxe Nancy Silverton recipes.

Oddly though I struggled to find a small bottle of golden rum anywhere in Brixton. I couldn’t even get a couple of miniatures of the dark stuff. Apparently SW9 only deals in flagons of the stuff, so I left that out since I’m not sure I could manage to use of the rest of a bottle by next November. I also had problems with getting real maple syrup that didn’t cost enough to make my bank manager blink and ended up with a bottle of the maple flavoured syrup instead. Everything else was straighforward.

As was the pastry for the pie shell! A quick sweet shortcrust, it came together and rolled out easily. I did forget to make sure it covered the sides completely all round the dish though and didn’t notice until it was too late that I had a bit of a bald patch in one area. After chilling it, I blind baked it for around 25 minutes in total, ending up with a golden brown crust that had come away from the edges nicely. I had originally intended to go all out American and use graham crackers as the crust, but I was glad I hadn’t bothered.

Blind baked

I actually left it to cool overnight, preparing the filling the next day. This was also incredibly easy and basically involved stirring all the wet ingredients together before pouring into the crust. I wish I’d double checked the amount of evaporated milk needed as a small tin would have sufficed and I wouldn’t be wondering what to do with the leftovers.

Ready to bake

I sprinkled the filling with some freshly grated nutmeg and then the filled shell went in the oven at 180˚C and cooked for around 40 minutes. Once glossy and set with a slight wobble to the filling, it came out and I marvelled at how incredibly stupidly easy making a pumpkin pie is. I’d always imagined it would be a complicated affair, but if I hadn’t set myself more things to bake before people came round, I could have had time to put my feet up and read the papers from cover to cover.

Set, go...

I allowed it to cool well before serving to make sure it was properly set. You can serve it with cream or ice cream and I also happen to think creme fraiche would be delicious. Unlike most American recipes I’ve used, it wasn’t at all overly sweet with just a hint of sugar in the deliciously short and crumbly pastry. The filling was sweetened primarily by the pumpkin itself with a warm note from the syrup. A little bit like a sweet quiche, it had a distinctly vegetable-y tang and was rich with spice. I had added larger amounts of spice than recommended (by about double), including a pinch of mace and I’m glad I did as it could have been quite bland without it.

Even a previous pumpkin pie sceptic enjoyed this and there was barely any left at the end of the afternoon with a even native New Yorker complimenting it. It was super easy to make, and well worth the extra effort of blind baking the shell, looking far more impressive than the work involved suggested it should and very tasty. So while it was much more of a success than my previous dalliance with American classics, I’m still not sure I’ll be adding it to my autumnal repetoire. I think I prefer my pumpkins savoury after all!

A Gold Medal for these Grahams…

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As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of an Americanophile with a particular penchant for all American foods, so imagine my glee when I discovered an online recipe for graham crackers. Forget Oreos, these are the archetypal American biscuit. Golden and honeyed, they are light and crunchy and nothing in the British biscuit family, even the digestive, quite cuts it for me.

Graham crackers are hard to describe if you haven’t had one. Their unique texture comes from the the type of flour usually used to make them. Graham flour is the brainchild of one Reverand Sylvester Graham who believed processed white flour was a devilish abombination and that bran would cure all ills. He created a type of flour that had the wheat germ and endosperm ground separately from the flour and then added back in to create a coarser flour that none the less makes exceedingly light crackers.

This flour is difficult to come by outside the USA and so I was resigned to the fact that I would only be able to indulge my graham cracker love while on holiday or when friends brought me boxes back in their suitcases. But this recipe uses regular plain flour! Time to go crackers methinks and risk the fact the use of processed flour might inflame my carnal desires…

I was originally planning to use these crackers to make a base for a pumpkin pie. They would have been crushed and mixed with butter to make a crumb based crust somewhat like one can do with a digestive or two when making cheesecake. However on first reading the recipe seemed too complicated to start baking something just to destroy it again and I decided to go with a traditional pastry pie shell instead.

I was also pleased that upon thorough reading to see that the recipe for the crackers is actually incredibly easy. I was just thrown by the talk of different mixers with a large selection of attachments making it lot trickier than it is. I don’t have a mixer so I assembled my ingredients (all easily found in the store cupboard, nothing fancy) and decided to give it a go by hand. Apart from it taking twice as long to crumble the butter because it was frozen rather than chilled, this is was so easy I cannot understand why anyone would bother making washing up by using a mixer.

About five minutes after I started mixing it all, I had a gorgeous golden dough flecked with sugar and stiff enough to wrap easily in clingfilm and chill in the fridge overnight. The recipe mentioned it would be rather sticky, but I didn’t find that at all. I wonder if this was because I used golden caster sugar rather than a muscavado or because plain flour is slightly different to all purpose flour? Either way the dough was a dream to handle and I ddin’t need all the flour I put on the clingfilm or the work surface.

Next morning I had a well chilled dough that was still easy to handle. Deb mentions in her recipe using a pastry wheel to cut the crackers into traditional rectangles, but since no graham cracker has ever lasted long enough in front of me to notice the shape, I decided to go off piste and cut them in star shapes instead. The dough cut easily and the scraps came back together well too. I used half the dough, rolled out to about an 1/8 of an inch and got around 40 biscuits from it.

I placed them on lined trays and sprinkled the sugar cinnamon topping over them before popping the trays in the fridge for around half an hour. Cooking the dough from chilled should make the crackers even lighter and crispier so it’s not worth skipping this stage. They then went in the preheated oven at 180˚C for about 12 minutes before they were perfectly cooked. I cooled them on a rack and lasted about 3 minutes before I snaffled one of them.

And they were fantastic. Buttery but light, beautifully crisp and infused with honey, they crunched gorgeously when I bit into them. The scattering of sugar on top made them even crunchier and the hint of cinnamon was perfect with the flavour of honey. It took such willpower not to stuff my face with one after another until they were all gone (and then admit that to my now biscuitless friends what I had done). I managed to get some on a plate and serve them up.

It probably says a lot about how delicious and moreish these graham crackers are that there was only one solitary biscuit remaining at the end of an afternoon so filled with baked goods we didn’t even manage to get round to one of the cheesecakes…they might be my favourite thing to have baked this year and I strongly urge you to try them immediately. I have no idea if they keep well, but I don’t think you’ll have any left to store!