The Daily Spud » Special Occasions

One Potato, Two Potatoes, …

Daily Spud — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 18:46:23 +0000

Can you believe that I almost forgot my own birthday?

Yes indeedy. I very nearly missed the fact that The Daily Spud turns two today. Shocking, huh? I just give thanks for readers who are there to remind me of such important facts!

In my defence, I will say that I was somewhat distracted by the exertions involved in last weekend’s dinner party for Project Food Blog. (Hint: if you want to make this girl feel good on her birthday, you can send a vote her way if you should feel so inclined).

As for me, I sometimes get overwhelmed by all that has come my way via the Spud channel over the past two years. Hell, I’ve even made the Irish tabloids with a write up in the Sunday World the other week. I never for a minute thought that would happen.

So there is definitely reason to celebrate. And today, I could think of no better way to do that than with an honest-to-goodness, straight up, Irish apple tart, made on an enamel plate as my Ma would do. I might even have a nice cup of tea to go with it.

Happy appley birthday to me!

Don’t Cry For Me

Daily Spud — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:25:22 +0000

Argentina.

That’s where I was supposed to be today.

Wining, dining and (as it happens) celebrating my birthday.

However, next door in Chile, which was also on the list of places to visit, they have serious earthquake-type things to contend with, so it really was for the best that I steer clear of the region.

Rather than coming over all blue – tempting though that was – I thought that I would, instead, apply the colour green to the situation. St. Patrick’s Day will be upon us very soon and I fully expect the blogosphere to take on an increasingly pronounced Irish accent in the next couple of weeks. So, if you’re food blogging something with Paddy’s Day in mind, why not join me for a little Paddy’s Day Food Parade on the 17th.

To join in, send an email to paddysday [at] thedailyspud [dot] com including:
- Your name
- Your blog name
- A link to your blog post
- A title for your dish or drink (and, boy, do we do like to drink)
- A picture of same (preferably 500 pixels wide, 72 dpi)
- Anything else you’d like to tell me about it
- Include a link back to this post and use the logo above if you like

I’ll accept submissions up until midday (GMT) on March 16th and post the roundup on March 17th. I’m kicking things off with some potatoes (of course) but don’t feel limited by that. Any food or drink that you feel appropriate to what is our Irish national holiday is welcome.

These bottles once contained carmenère and pinot noir from Chile's oldest winery, Carmen

In the meantime (and as evidenced by the extreme emptiness of the bottles in the picture above), you are likely to find me drinking Chilean wine (mostly especially the beautiful reserva carmenère from Carmen). Goodness knows their economy will need all the help it can get.

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Champ

Not only is champ a classic Irish potato dish, it also, colourwise, just looks downright patriotic – so it seems like just the thing for Paddy’s Day.

A simple milky potato mash mixed with spring onions and topped with melted butter, the recipe here pretty much reflects the formula for champ as included in Monica Sheridan’s wonderful book The Art of Irish Cooking – my secondhand copy of which was originally published in 1965. For those who have never heard of her, Monica Sheridan was our original TV chef and a wonderful writer to boot – the book is a classic.

Interestingly, she titles the recipe “Champ (for children)“, though I think adults are just as entitled to enjoy this. And because I think that champ love should be shared as widely as possible, I’m sending this over to Joanne of Eats Well With Others for what I’m sure will be a mouth-watering Irish edition of Regional Recipes.

You’ll need:

800g potatoes (4 medium specimens), preferably a floury variety
300ml milk
6 spring onions, white and green parts finely sliced
1 tsp fine salt or to taste, plus more for boiling the potatoes
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
Butter to serve

You’ll also need:

As always when it comes to mash, a potato ricer is the tool of choice, but it’s not mash-threatening if you don’t have one.

The Steps:

Peel your potatoes and cut into roughly even-sized slices, around 1-2cm thick. Rinse them under cold water.
Bring about 1.5l of water to the boil in a saucepan, add about 2 tsp salt and the potato slices. Bring back to the boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer gently, covered, for around 15-20 minutes or until just fork-tender.
When the potatoes are done, drain well and return them to the saucepan. Then either let them sit, covered by a tea-towel, for about 5 minutes or place the pan over a low heat and stir the potatoes gently for a minute or so while they dry out.
Put the cooked and still warm potatoes through a potato ricer if you have one, or mash with a potato masher or, if all else fails, a fork.
Pour some boiling water over the sliced spring onions to scald them (and preserve their bright green colour) and drain well.
Add the spring onions to the milk and bring to the boil in a small heavy saucepan. Then remove from the heat and mix into the potatoes, giving a mash with a fairly loose consistency. Add salt and black pepper to taste.
While still hot, place a mound of mash on a soup plate, make a little crater in the top, drop in a teaspoon or so of butter – more if you like – then scoop up some mash, dip into the melting butter and enjoy.

The Variations:

It’s a fairly basic mash, so of course you could add mustard, parsley, bits of bacon or whatever else takes your fancy. It is just rather lovely as it is, though.

The Results:

This amount should serve 4 to 6 people of either the child or adult variety.

The Taste Of Christmas Past

Daily Spud — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:32:59 +0000

Well, it’s about time that I got my Christmas baking boots on, now, isn’t it?

For weeks, my feed reader has been choc-a-bloc with blog postings stuffed with festive baked goods, and I can only hold out against that kind of onslaught for so long. So, having realised that resistance was futile, I closed my eyes and let my mind drift across the sea of baked possibilities. I ended up in Spain.

Huh?

While I was still, unquestionably, in Ireland, I had found myself dreaming of that Spanish confection known as turrón. It’s made primarily from toasted almonds and honey, and varies in texture from break-your-teeth hard to soft and fudgy. When I was a kid, my brother, who lived in Spain, would bring a selection home at Christmas and I have been a sucker for turrón, particularly the soft variety, ever since. It’s just as well I can’t lay my hands on it too easily here – I inhale and it’s gone. And while the brother hasn’t lived in Spain for years, in my head Christmas is still flavoured with almond and honey. So I thought that I would try to capture that in festive shortbread form. I was very pleased that I did.

Shortbread, inspired by Christmas past

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Almond, Honey and Orange Shortbreads

These little shortbread bites are crumbly and melty in the mouth and just the thing to have with coffee. They actually started out life as a recipe for pecan puffs, one of the many items covered in the Bake course with Rachel Allen, but the pecans made way for toasted almonds, vanilla was ditched in favour of orange zest and amaretto, the sugar lost out to its cousin honey and the crumbly shortbread texture was emphasised with the addition of a little rice flour. I also dipped them in chocolate, just because.

Use a nice floral honey if you can. I actually had some wonderful honey which was harvested by some friends in Spain and it seemed a very appropriate choice. The orange (which was one that I got in my regular organic veg deliveries from Absolutely Organic) was deeply orange and fragrant. I used the amaretto to underline the almond flavour but they’re also good without.

You’ll need:

100g almonds
100g plain flour
25g rice flour or cornflour (cornstarch), or substitute additional plain flour
good pinch of salt
100g unsalted butter, softened
2 tblsp honey
zest of half an orange (about 1 tsp)
1 tsp amaretto (optional)
25g icing sugar, sifted, for coating (optional)
approx. 50g good quality dark chocolate for dipping (optional) – I used Ó Conaill 70% dark chocolate

You’ll also need:

A food processor or similarly bladed instrument for grinding the almonds, plus a large baking sheet for baking the biscuits – mine was around 24cm x 30cm – and a smaller sized baking tray for toasting the almonds.

The Steps:

Preheat your oven to 150C.
Spread the almonds out on a baking tray and toast in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until the flesh of the nuts starts to brown (which you’ll see if you remove an almond and slice through it). Allow to cool a little and grind finely using a food processor.
Whisk the plain flour, rice flour and salt together well in a medium-sized bowl. Add the ground toasted almonds and whisk again.
In a separate bowl, beat the butter until light and fluffy (or use a food processor or stand mixer to do the job for you).
Add the honey, orange zest and amaretto to the butter and beat well.
Gradually incorporate the flour and almond mixture into the butter. When done, you should end up with a ball of dough which will be just slightly tacky to the touch.
Scoop heaped teaspoonfuls of the dough into the palm of your hand, roll into balls, then place on the baking sheet and flatten slightly, either using the palm of your hand or the base of a glass. You should end up with little discs, around 3cm wide and 0.5-1cm high.
Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the biscuits are just starting to darken at the edges.
Allow to cool slightly for about 2 minutes, then toss the biscuits in the icing sugar and leave to cool fully on a wire rack.
If you fancy dipping the biscuits in chocolate, then chop the chocolate finely and either melt in the microwave (zapping it until barely melted) or in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of hot (not simmering) water. Once melted, dip roughly one half of each biscuit in the chocolate and leave to set on a wire tray.
When cool, dust with some more icing sugar and enjoy with your Christmas tea or coffee.

The Variations:

Replace the orange zest with some espresso powder and/or replace the almonds + amaretto with hazelnuts + frangelico

The Results:

Makes around 30 to 35 biscuits, though I eat around ~~3, no, 5, no~~ 10 at a time, so you’ll probably want to double the recipe.

By the by, for those of you who were wondering, the winner of the box of tayto was Orla Doyle. Congratulations Orla and enjoy the crisp sandwiches!

Spud Sunday: The Art Of The Roastie

Daily Spud — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 23:35:05 +0000

An apology is in order.

I have been guilty of taking the roastie for granted. A potato classic, known to feature regularly on my plate but yet scarcely mentioned on The Daily Spud… Oh for shame.

Nothing else for it but to make amends with a little Christmas roastie special, for it is fair to say that Christmas dinner in Ireland could not legally be defined as Christmas dinner without a great big pile of roast potatoes. So, with the assistance of the experts that reside on my kitchen bookshelf, may I present herewith my 12 step roastie program.

Toasty roasties

(1) Type of spud: Perhaps I should start by stating the obvious, which is to say that some types of spud are predisposed to roastie greatness and some, well, just aren’t. What you want are those floury types – records, kerr’s pinks, golden wonder – roosters work too – and in the US, russets or yukon golds. Keep new potatoes or waxy varieties for steaming, salad or gratins, that’s what they’re good at.

(2) Priming your spuds: While it is generally advised not to store potatoes in the fridge (because, at low temperatures, the potato starch will start converting to sugars), Shirley Corriher notes in Cookwise that, if you keep spuds in the fridge for a day or two before they meet a hot oven, those newly converted sugars will promote future roastie browning.

(3) Roastie size: Let’s face it, when it comes to roasties, it’s the crispy bits we’re after, so you’ll want to keep the size of each roasted piece fairly small, giving a higher crust to spud ratio (I like Nigel Slater’s description in Tender of roastie size as about 2 bites worth). If your spuds are large to begin with and must be chopped, then all the better – you will end up with more edges, and crispy edges are a good thing.

(4) Preparing in advance, do’s and dont’s: If possible, don’t peel your spuds until just before you need to roast them and, once you’ve peeled them and cut them down to size, do rinse them well to wash off any surface starch. If you need to prepare your spuds in advance, don’t leave the peeled potatoes soaking in water, because your roasties will end up soggy. Darina Allen, in Forgotten Skills of Cooking, suggests that, if you do need to prepare your potatoes in advance, that you toss the prepared spuds in your fat of choice, cover and refrigerate.

(5) To precook or not to precook, that is the question: Ultimately, it is a matter of personal preference as to whether you partially cook your potatoes before roasting or not. Most often, I roast from raw because of the extreme lack of effort involved and also because the potatoes tend to absorb less fat that way. However, roasties that have been partially cooked have more flavour and crunch potential: flavour, because cooking in well salted water will help to get some flavour into the interior of the spud and crunch, because the outside of the potato has more cracks and fissures in which to trap fat and become crunchable. Once the potatoes have been precooked enough to soften their outer layers, it’s easy to roughen up the surface and hence promote crunch potential.

(6) Make use of those potato peels: I love Heston Blumenthal’s approach in In Search of Perfection: Reinventing Kitchen Classics, where he places the potato peelings (which have relatively more flavour) in muslin and adds them to the water used to precook the spuds. It makes for roasties that actually taste of potato.

(7) Type of fat: Duck fat and goose fat are much favoured, as are beef drippings, though you can, of course, use olive oil – all different flavours, all tasty. And whether you’re roasting raw or parboiled potatoes, make sure that the potatoes are as dry as possible before they hit the oil or fat in the roasting tin, otherwise those crunchy bits might just end up sticking.

(8) Other flavourings: The possibilities are endless. Mix herbs or spices with the fat used to coat the spuds or toss the spuds with some seasoned flour. I like Delia Smith’s suggestion in How to Cook, Book 1 of adding some saffron threads to the olive oil, adding both flavour and colour.

(9) The heat: Hot oven please, and it’s a good idea to preheat the roasting tin and oil or fat as well as the oven itself.

(10) While cooking: There’s no need to turn the the spuds much while they’re cooking, just once or twice will do it.

(11) Don’t keep ‘em waiting: Roasties do lose crispness fairly quickly, so try not to wait too long before you tuck in. If you do need to keep them warm for a while, Nigel Slater suggests that it’s best to keep them uncovered in a cooling oven.

(12) Leftovers: Er, what leftovers? Darina Allen does remind us that, in the unlikely event of there being leftover roasties, that they can always form the basis of a roastie salad: chop into small chunks, toss in some vinaigrette and away you go. They may no longer be crisp, but they will still taste good.

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Polenta Roasties

I was discussing the topic for today’s installment of Spud Sunday over the phone with MGH when her sister chimed in with one word – polenta. In the past, I have used polenta as a crunchy coating for veggie sausages and roast parsnips, so why not roasties indeed. Thanks for the suggestion, Naomi, as you can see, I ran with it.

You’ll need:

900g potatoes, preferably a floury variety
4 tblsp olive oil
4 tblsp cornmeal / polenta
0.5 tsp finely chopped rosemary needles
salt and freshly ground black pepper

You’ll also need:

A sturdy roasting tin (mine is about 24cm x 30cm) and a small piece of muslin (enough to hold the potato peelings) and string.

The Steps:

If you are super organised and feel inclined to try it, put can your potatoes, unpeeled, in the fridge for a day or two before roasting. It will cause some of the starch to turn to sugars and encourage browning.
When ready to roast, preheat your oven to 200C. Add the oil to your roasting tin and place in the oven to preheat also.
Peel your potatoes, keep the skins and wrap them in a piece of muslin and tie together in a little bundle with some string.
Cut the potatoes into roughly even-sized chunks (for large potatoes, quarter them, for smaller potatoes, halve them unless very small) and rinse the potatoes under running water for a minute or two to wash off surface starch.
Bring about 1.5l of water to the boil in a saucepan, add about 2 tsp salt, the potatoes and the wrapped-up potato skins. Allow the water to come back to the boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer gently for 5-6 minutes.
Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine the polenta, rosemary, about 0.25 tsp salt and a couple of twists of freshly ground black pepper.
When the potatoes have finished simmering, remove from the heat, drain very well and discard the potato skins.
Return the potatoes to the pot, cover, place over a very low heat and, holding with both hands and using a tea-towel to protect yourself from any steam, shake the pot back and forth for up to a minute or so, so that the potatoes both dry out and the edges are roughened up. Remove from the heat.
Remove the roasting tin from the oven and spoon the heated oil over the potatoes, tossing to mix, then roll each potato in the polenta to coat and place on the roasting tin.
Cook for 45 minutes to an hour or until nicely crisp, then eat.

The Variations:

For plain roasties, just leave out the coating of polenta, or keep the polenta and add to it by sprinkling some grated parmesan over the roasties about 5 minutes before the end of cooking time.

The Results:

Roasties for around 4 people

Frosty The Freezer

Daily Spud — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:25:54 +0000

It was a simple choice: eat my words or eat the contents of my freezer.

What happened, you see, was that Love Food magazine, published with yesterday’s Irish Independent, had included a little piece from me on tips for Christmas (ah, yes, fame at last! – even if it did miss out on my current top tip, which is to head over here for a shot at a free box of Tayto crisps).

Exciting indeed to see my words in actual newsprint but, having urged everyone in the country to fill their freezers with mince pies and the like, I had a weeny problem on that front myself. My freezer bore one of those looks that said “defrost me now, or else…”.

I had been ~~trying~~ vaguely attempting to clear the freezer for months now. No sooner had one lot of frozen comestibles been used up, than another magically appeared to take its place. At times it felt like hell might freeze over before the plug got pulled on my own frozen-over fridge.

However, knowing that the deed had to be done before I loaded up with Christmas fare, I bit the bullet and, for about a week, dined on whatever the freezer had to offer. This pea and mint soup, brought to you by a bag of frozen peas, some frozen chickpea stock and frozen ginger, was definitely one of the better things to result.

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Please Defrost Me Pea and Mint Soup

You should remind me to make this again, sometime when it doesn’t also involve defrosting the freezer.

It is, of course, a variant of a classic soup – why even Mrs Beeton includes a pea and mint soup in her Book of Household Management, dating back to 1861. For stock, I actually used water saved from cooking chickpeas (I often reserve and freeze liquid in which I’ve boiled veg or beans as the basis for future soups and gravies).

You’ll need:

oil for frying
1 small red onion, about 100g, finely chopped
1 celery stick, about 50g, finely sliced
1 large clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tsp grated fresh (or frozen) ginger
1 small-ish potato, about 150g, cut into roughly 1cm cubes
about 600ml water or light veg stock (I used water saved from cooking chickpeas)
350g frozen peas (or fresh peas, shelled)
1 tsp salt or to taste (less if stock is well salted)
4 tblsp loosely packed chopped mint

You’ll also need:

A blender or food processor for blending the soup – an immersion blender, if you have one, is the handiest.

The Steps:

Place a large, heavy saucepan over a medium heat. When hot, add a couple of tblsp of oil to coat the bottom of the saucepan. Add the onion and celery. Stir and fry for about 5 to 7 minutes or until the onion has softened.
Add the garlic and ginger. Stir and fry for about another minute.
Add the potatoes. Stir to combine and add the stock or water.
Bring to a boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the potatoes are soft.
Add the peas and bring back to a boil. Simmer until the peas are cooked through. This may only take a couple of minutes (I found that by the time the frozen peas had come back to the boil, they only needed about 2 minutes more). Add salt to taste.
Add the mint, stir through. Remove from the heat and puree using a blender. Reheat gently if needed.
Serve with a blob of yoghurt or sour cream and garnish with more mint if you like.

The Variations:

You could raise the heat level of the soup by adding more ginger and/or some fresh green chili.

The Results:

Soup for 3-4

Spud Sunday: Love At First Giveaway

Daily Spud — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 19:34:29 +0000

Remember Mr. Tayto, he of the crispy cheese & onion empire? Well, let’s just say that he’s been getting quite chatty of late.

One week, he’s letting me know about his twitter page and his schedule for book signings, the next, he’s offering to send me copies of his autobiography.

Personally, I think he fancies me.

Mr. Tayto and La Spud - a match made in potato heaven?

Not that I would ever dream of taking advantage of a situation like that, but I did politely enquire of ~~Mr. Tayto~~ my new beau whether he would consider spreading his cheese & onion love by providing some of those iconic Tayto crisps for readers of the Spud.

I am naturally delighted to report that he said yes (I really am quite irresistible, after all). As a result, one lucky Spud reader will soon be receiving a box of Tayto Cheese & Onion (or Salt & Vinegar if you prefer), along with a copy of Mr. Tayto’s autobiography, The Man Inside The Jacket. So that’s 60 packets of Tayto and just in time for Christmas too, with any luck.

So the deal is, for those of you with an address in Ireland, leave me a comment if you want in (I tried to convince Mr. Tayto to extend the offer worldwide, but apparently he doesn’t love me that much).

Plus, if you are (or become) a fan of the Daily Spud on Facebook, that’ll be good for a second entry in the draw – just let me know in the comments, so that I can be sure to include you on the double. I’ll leave this open for a week, until midnight (GMT) next Sunday the 13th, and notify the winner on Monday the 14th, which will hopefully leave enough time to get your crisps delivered for Christmas.

As for me, I can’t help wondering what it is that I’ll be getting from Mr. Tayto for Christmas. More than a few packets of crisps I hope!

Update 16/12/09: …and the winner of Mr. Tayto’s crisps and book is Orla Doyle – congrats Orla! As for the winner of his affections, well now, that remains to be seen…

I Can Has Thanksgiving?

Daily Spud — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 20:19:31 +0000

I wonder who exactly it is that I need to apply to if I want to borrow a national holiday?

Thanksgiving, I mean. It’s an event that generally passes us by on this side of the Atlantic but, having enjoyed several Thanksgiving dinners in the company of American friends and family, I’ve become quite partial to the event.

Finding no guidance on the matter of who to ask, I thought it best to go straight to the top.

Dear Mr. President,

I would like to borrow, if I may, your Thanksgiving holiday. Given that it has its roots in celebrating harvest bounty and involves eating lots of nice food, it seems like rather a good one to me.

May I remind you that you seem to have Paddy’s Day out on permanent loan, it seems only fair to claw one back.

Yours,
D.S.

P.S. Hope you like the cranberry sauce

Giving thanks with cranberries

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Cranberry Sauce

In anticipation of a positive response from the powers-that-be, I made some of this sauce, adapted slightly from a recipe by Rachel Demuth, which I first came across when I attended a course at her lovely cookery school in Bath. This always gets a whirl at Christmas along with this cheese and nut loaf and is, of course, perfect for Thanksgiving too.

You’ll need:

350g cranberries, fresh or frozen
6 cardamom pods
3 cloves
3 whole star anise
1 cinnamon stick, around 7-8cm long
1 large lemon
150g caster sugar

The Steps:

Cut the peel of your lemon away in thin strips.
Place the cranberries in a saucepan over a medium heat and pour in around 250ml water – the level of the water should be below the tops of the berries. They’ll release a lot of juice when they’re cooked, especially if they’ve been frozen.
Add the cardamom, cloves, star anise, cinnamon and lemon peel.
Bring the cranberries to a boil, then simmer slowly until around half of the berries have burst, maybe 10-15 minutes.
Juice half of your lemon and add the juice and the sugar to the cranberries. Simmer on a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Taste and add more lemon juice if you like.
Allow to cool – the sauce will thicken a bit as it does so – and then refrigerate until needed. It should keep for at least a week in the fridge, only assuming that you haven’t found some meats or cheeses to enjoy it with.

The Variations:

I generally make this version but it occurs to me that if I substituted orange peel & juice for the lemon and just added cinnamon and cloves, that would make it rather Christmassy indeed.

The Results:

Makes around 500ml or a little more than that.

Spud Sunday: The Year Of The Spud

Daily Spud — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:06:36 +0000

Well, who woulda thunk it? On a Sunday in October, just about a year ago, The Daily Spud started a conversation with the world.

Happy first birthday to me!

Truth be told, the world didn’t say much back at first, but, happily, that changed over time and the Spud has had a fabulous year. There was, of course, all that awardy stuff, which bowled me over, but I also never imagined that I would get to know so many entertaining, knowledgeable and downright clever people, and even meet some of them in person, through the good offices of this blog.

As for the subject of potatoes, I don’t know about you, but I have certainly discovered that there’s a whole lot more to the humble spud than even I had imagined and, trust me, I’m only getting started. My status on twitter the other day kind of sums it up:

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Chocolate Potato Buns

This momentous occasion naturally required that I should make some little cakey somethings. With potato, of course.

It’s not as strange as it sounds. As with bread, using a little bit of cooked potato will add moistness. In fact, the “Colour Book Of Baking” that I was given for my 12th birthday, and which I have still, had a recipe for a chocolate potato cake. I tinkered a bit with that recipe and made these simple cocoa buns (that would be Irish for cupcakes, in case anybody was wondering).

Now, I’m not often given to icing my baked goods, but, in this case, I even went as far as to try out a recipe I had found for a buttercream icing with mashed potato. Let’s just say that I made it and I abandoned it, figuring that there are some places that a potato does not need to go. For everything else, there’s The Daily Spud.

You’ll need:

125g butter, softened
175g caster sugar
75g potato, cooked, mashed and sieved
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
175g plain flour
1.5 tsp baking powder
2 tblsp cocoa powder
0.5 tsp salt
4 tblsp milk

You’ll also need:

12 piece muffin tin or you could use individual paper bun cases.

The Steps:

If you don’t have any leftover potatoes on hand, you will need to boil or steam some for this recipe. You only need a small amount, but you may as well steam or boil more potatoes than you need for these and put the remainder to some other use. When you have cooked and drained the potatoes, allow them to sit, covered with a tea towel, until cool enough to handle. Then push some of the cooked potato through a sieve, until you have the weight of potato needed. Set aside.
Preheat your oven to 200C.
Sieve the flour, baking powder, cocoa powder and salt together into a large mixing bowl, then whisk them together to make sure that they are well incorporated.
In a separate bowl, or in a stand mixer if you have one, beat the butter well, until pale and fluffy, then add the sugar and continue beating until very light.
Add the mashed potato and beat well to mix.
Add the eggs one at a time, stirring just to combine, then stir in the vanilla.
Now add all of the flour mixture and stir gently, just to combine.
Finally, stir in the milk. The mixture should now have a soft dropping consistency.
Distribute the mixture among the muffin tins (or paper cases if you prefer). This mixture gave enough to about half-fill each individual tin.
Bake for about 15 minutes or until well-risen and a toothpick inserted into the centre of a bun comes out clean.
Ice them if you like or just eat them as they are.

The Variations:

These are really as infinitely variable as your basic madeira mixture, so you can switch the vanilla and cocoa for whatever other flavourings you like.

The Results:

Makes around 12 birthday buns

So That Was Christmas

Daily Spud — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 02:00:19 +0000

So Christmas dinner is over for another year, except for small matter of digestion, which, after so much food, feels like it’s still ongoing! The recipe went something like this:

Take 23 people (13 adults, marinated in red wine for a couple of hours, plus 10 kids, well sugared up).
Add some drama (remembering everything else, but forgetting to bring that specially prepared nut loaf).
Present the non nut-loafers with regulation turkey-and-ham-and-stuffing (and throw in some roast beef to boot).
Surround liberally with vegetables including (but not limited to) sprouts (the veg people love to hate), potatoes in roast and mashed form, carrots boiled alone and mashed-with-parsnip, turnip (mashed), broccoli (not mashed) and peas just being peas.
Adorn with gravy and any or all of the following:
- Ma’s must-have bread sauce.
- Pam’s mustard sauce a la Trudy.
- Berna’s cranberry sauce with her “soupçon of cointreau”.
- Spud’s own redcurrant jelly and rhubarb chutney.
Plug any gaps on the plates with yorkshire puddings.
Eat, drink and be merry.
When you have dispensed with that little lot, and any second helpings that may be required for that special feeling of Christmas fullness, allow to digest for the duration of another glass of wine or two and some Tommy Cooper jokes.
Proceed directly to the Ma’s legendary Christmas pudding and brandy butter (the various sisters-in-law all want the recipe, so that one makes the post, below). You might even have a little bit of room for the fresh fruit and cream before you start on the mince pies a la Delia Smith, though nobody will have room for the Irish whiskey Christmas cake for days yet.
Continue to drink, be merry, sing ’til the wee small hours and count the days ’til we do it all over again!

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Ma’s Christmas Pud a la Georgina Campbell

Oh, there’s a bit of time and effort involved here but, hey, it’s only once a year… Plus these puddings can be made weeks or even months in advance if you like, covered and stored in a cool dark place and then reheated on the day.

The Fruit And Nuts:

350g raisins
225g currants
225g sultanas
100g glace cherries, halved
100g candied peel, finely chopped
75g blanched slivered almonds
1 good sized carrot (about 185g), scraped and coarsely grated
1 large Bramley apple (175-225g), peeled and finely chopped or coarsely grated
Finely grated zest of 1 orange and 1 lemon

The Dry Ingredients:

400g fresh white breadcrumbs
225g demerara sugar
0.5 tsp salt
1 tsp ground mixed spice
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp finely grated nutmeg
0.5 tsp ground ginger
0.25 tsp ground cloves

The Liquids:

225g shredded suet or margarine, melted and cooled a little
Juice of 1 orange and 1 lemon
2 tblsps black treacle
100ml whiskey or rum or brandy
4 eggs, lightly whisked

You’ll also need:

2 x 1 litre pudding basins

Day 1:

In a large bowl, mix all of the prepared fruit and nuts with the dry ingredients and the grated lemon and orange zest.
Warm the treacle slightly in the microwave or small pan to make it runny and add the orange and lemon juice, whiskey/rum/brandy, melted suet/margarine and lightly beaten eggs.
Mix the liquids well, add to the fruit mixture and stir to mix thoroughly.
Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave in a cool place overnight – the mixture will thicken.

Day 2:

Butter the 2 pudding basins and put a disc of buttered greaseproof paper or baking parchment in the base of each. Also prepare buttered double greaseproof circles about 10cm bigger than the top of the bowls (enough to catch and hold under the rim of the bowl with string).
Give the pudding mixture a good stir, spoon into the prepared bowls, tap sharply on the worktop to eliminate air pockets and smooth down the top of the mixture. Lay over the larger greaseproof circles and tie down firmly with good string. Allow enough string for a handle, if possible, as this will make it easier and safer to handle while hot later on. Top off the pudding bowls with a piece of foil big enough to tuck under the rim and cook by one of the following methods:
To Boil: Stand puddings on trivets in deep saucepans; pour in enough boiling water to come 2/3 of the way up the sides; cover tightly and boil for 5-6 hours making sure that the water never goes off the boil and topping up regularly with boiling water to keep up a level at least half way up the bowl.
To Oven Steam: Preheat an oven to 150C and stand the puddings in a deep roasting tin; ¾ fill with boiling water; then cover completely with foil to prevent steam escaping. Cook for about 6 hours or overnight, reducing the temperature to 140C if it will be left unattended for more than 6 hours.
To Pressure Cook: Stand each pudding on a trivet in a pressure cooker and fill about 1 litre of boiling water. Cook on high heat without pressure for 30 minutes, then bring up to pressure and cook for 2 hours.

Day of Eating:

Reheat the puddings when required by steaming/boiling for a further 2-3 hours or in a pressure cooker, for 20 minutes without pressure and then 45 minutes under pressure.
Just before serving, douse with some whiskey or brandy, set alight and allow to burn briefly.
Quench the alcohol-induced flames, slice and serve with brandy butter, cream or both (it’s Christmas, after all!)

Saucy Bread

Daily Spud — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 01:37:32 +0000

It was an odd combination.

I found myself eating a piece of thick white bread, toasted, spread with pesto and a few slices of tomato and then topped with bread sauce. It was one of those quick-fix-what-do-I-have-in-my-fridge kind of things. Don’t get me wrong, it was tasty, just unusual. You could almost class it as a sandwich of sorts, given that it did essentially involve two slices of bread on either side of the pesto-tomato filling, it’s just that one of the bread halves was appearing in sauce form and bringing with it that creamy, oniony Christmas dinner taste.

For those of you not familiar with bread sauce, let me tell you that Christmas dinner (to me at least) is not Christmas dinner without it. Traditional bread sauce – milk-based, thickened with breadcrumbs and usually flavoured with onion and cloves – is actually a centuries-old British creation. It’s a classic accompaniment to festive roast poultry on this side of the Atlantic, but clearly I’d try it with just about anything (witness above).

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Bread Sauce

This particular version comes from a leaflet on Christmas cooking by Paula Daly, stashed at the back of one of Ma’s cookery books. I also experimented with a gluten-free version for she-who-is-still-avoiding-gluten.

You’ll need:

1 fairly large onion
8-10 cloves
1 bayleaf
6 peppercorns
575ml milk
125g soft white breadcrumbs (or up to 200g gluten-free breadcrumbs)
50g unsalted butter or margarine
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
2-3 tblsps cream

The Steps:

Peel the onion and cut in half. Stud each half with the cloves.
Place the onion, bayleaf, peppercorns and milk in a saucepan. Bring slowly to simmering point and then turn off the heat.
Cover and infuse for an hour.
Strain the infused milk and add the breadcrumbs. Leave for about 15 minutes in a warm place. The breadcrumbs will plump up as they absorb the liquid.
With the gluten-free version, I found that the gluten-free breadcrumbs did not plump up as much as the regular kind, so I added more in order to get a nice thick consistency. You may want to experiment with amounts here, depending on the kind of gluten-free breadcrumbs you have.
Add the butter or margarine. Mix to combine, then season with salt and pepper.
Stir in the cream just before serving.