Salaric Cooking

Christmas day we packed the pie and christmas cake up and headed for Essex.

For the meal itself I had made six glittery napkin rings – one for each of us – Jeans was the christmas tree, Davids the bualbal, mums the bell, mine the star, Alarics the holly and dads the santa hat (well he is the Hat Man after all!). Mum had made some snowmen christmas napkins for said rings to go onto.

You can see how I made these on my craft blog, the origonal has come from my personal blog.

The pie was baked and did Alaric proud – it contians fennel, quill pasta, spinache, pin nuts, red pepper, feta cheese, cream and marmite.

Christmas Eve was spent making mulled wine both alcoholic and non-alcoholic even though it did mean sending someone to the shops on an emergancy tour! I also decorated the christmas cake I’d got dad to bake the actual cake in the house we were staying in back in Gloucestershire as we were spending Christmas in London. It was a rich fruit cake – we soaked the fruit in brandy 🙂

I went for christmas trees on the snowy tundra (it would have been spikey but this was my first time using the instant royal icing mix rather than making it up myself). Becuase I am me and was thus unprepared I ended up having to improvise an icing bag out of greese proof paper and everything.

You may have noticed from the picture that I have some little creatures that should not be there – my little family of marzipan hedghogs – these are special hedghogs who have awoken for the Snow Ball and it has nother NOTHING to do with the fact my brother loves marzipan and hedghogs – I didnt then refused to let anyone else have a hedghog honest!

Cooking wise we also roped in friends who’d come for mulled wine – namely Clair into helping us prepare the leopard pie which is Alarics traditional veggi christmas dinner as we where going to be spending christmas day at my perants we where preparing the pie to take with us and cook once there. I have only one thing to say at this juncture – ‘Mmmmm Pie!’

If I ever track down the photos of cake baking and decorating I will do a post on how I made it!

*1 bottle of red wine *1/2 a carton of orange juice *1 cup of brandy (we’ve been using french brandy) *1 cinnamon stick *1 mug of demara sugar (any sugar will do its just this gives it an extra taste that we like) *1 teaspoon of cloves *1 mixed spices in a muslin bag or a mulled wine sachet from the super markets *1 Apple *1 orange

Basically put everything into a large suacepan and gently heat, the fruit should be cut into slices and float on the top. You probably want to add the sugar and stir it in before you add the fruit. Top up with water.

*filo pastry sheets *mince meat – if cooking for veggis check its not made with suet! *milk, water, egg or chosen – glaze/binding agent *icing sugar

Cut the sheets into squares – they normally come in rectangles you can pretty much just cut in half – do all the sheets together as they are prone to falling apart. Lay a few squares of pastry so that they are making a star shape Spoon a desert spoon full of mince meat into the centre Brush water/milk around the mince meat in a largish circle on the pastry. Gather the pastry into a bundle being careful not to rip it You may have to put some binder between each layer Do not use less than 3 layers or the pacels rupture in the oven. Put them on a baking tray and bake for about 8 mins in a pre heated oven at 180 degrees C When they come out you can place them on a plate and dust with icing sugar and serve.

Alternatively if serving cold at some later date you may mix up some icing sugar with water and drzzel the icing over the parcels.

For that special Christmas meal we like to make a horse raddish dip which goes very well with roasted vegatables.

We make our own yogurt too so I make up a batch of Greek style yogurt and we put about a mug full into a bowl. We then simply spoon in three or four teaspoons of horseradish into it and mix.

This is definatly an add to taste type of dip! Also value horseradish suace turns out to be so weak we had to put the entire jar in and it still wasn’t the nice tangy suace we were aiming for.