The Artists' Hearth

First a little background information. The wife and I are big fans of Terry Pratchett’s Disk World series. We were both introduced to this series though the TV miniseries adaptation of The Hogfather. Both of us have since taken up reading his books. I think I have 7 or 8 left in the main series. For Halloween this year we went as characters from The Hogfather, I went as Death and Valah went as Susan, Death’s granddaughter. I documented making the costumes on my project blog here. As I made a Death of Rats for our costume we thought he would make a nice mantel decoration for the holidays (you can have your elf on the shelf, I prefer Death of Rats on the mantel, and I know it does not rhyme).

So, as we have done now a few times, we are also not traveling for the holidays this year. While we love seeing friends and family, traveling all over the West Coast just is not a very relaxing break in between terms, so we decided to just stay home this year. Every year we have stayed home I have done a roast duck. It began as I am not a big turkey fan, and we wanted something small, but fun, for Christmas dinner the first year we stayed here in Idaho. This year, however, we are going to do a goose. We have talked about it before, but cost was a bit of an issue. We are doing pretty well at the moment, so goose it is. Somewhere in the planning of this The Hogfather merged with the goose dinner and I have decided we are doing a traditional British goose dinner for Christmas, or rather, Hogswatch dinner. After several days of research we have settled on a menu of mostly traditional dishes that are even now common in the UK, but not so much here (for some of them). Here is our full menu.

• Potted shrimp
• Roast Goose
• Roasted Potatoes
• Roasted carrots and parsnips
• Sautéed Brussel sprouts and bacon
• Pigs in a blanket (English style)
• Gravy
• Bread Sauce
• Christmas pudding with hard Sauce

As this is a cooking blog, and this kind of meal should be fun to sort out, you can expect installments over the next week as we prep the meal, and probably a nice long post on or the day after the big event on cooking it all.

Now, we do have two big problems with this menu. The first is that we simply cannot get the chipolata sausage needed for proper pigs in a blanket. The second was that for most traditional Christmas pudding recipes we needed to have made the pudding 3 weeks ago. Well, the second issue we were able to resolve quite quickly as I ran across this recipe from Jamie Oliver. It does not require a month long set, nor an 8 hour steam, just 3 hours. Looking at the comments I did discover it matures with a bit of a set, so that was today’s project, making the Christmas pudding so it can have a week under the bed to age, just a little.

Many other Christmas pudding recipes called for the dried fruit to macerate in brandy at least overnight. Looking, again, at the comments I found someone who had done that with no issues on the Oliver recipe. So last night I set raisins, golden raisins, dried cranberries, dried tart cherries, and dried apricots to soak in a regional apple brandy. As we could not find san vito, brandy was out best bet for a substitute. The brandy itself is quite sweet with just a hint of apple. It was nice in a cup of eggnog last night, and I think it will be great in a hot mug of mulled cider.

After breakfast this morning I started the process of making the pud. I assembled all the other ingredients, with a few substitutes. We cannot get caster sugar here, but baker’s sugar is similar in size to caster sugar, and we usually have some as it is the sugar of choice for my shortbread recipe. We also could not find suet, so instead we used lard. The rest of the ingredients simply needed weighed out.

dates pitted and waiting to be chopped

chopped candied ginger

lard

orange zest

The brandy left from macerating the fruit. Figured it would work just as well as fresh out of the bottle, probably better.

Then came the mixing. Traditionally all the people in the house are supposed to stir the mix adding in their wishes for the New Year. So we did that. We did not add in coins or silver trinkets, which is also traditional. Mostly because we were worried that the not so silver coins we have would impart a metallic taste to the pudding.

Valah stirring

Coowee (Valah’s mom) takes her turn

Raven stirs some more

I forgot we had one other little hurdle, we did not have a proper pudding basin, and did not want to wait until mid-week to get one from Amazon. So we found a bowl that we figured would work based on what we had seen online. With that bowl greased the mix went in and then we wrapped it in foil, and tied a string round it. Turns out, looking at things later, we tied the string wrong. I thought it went around horizontally to kind of make a seal. In fact you tie it like a package to have a handle to lift the basin out of the pot. Well we used our big canning kettle as our steaming pot, so no need for a handle. We then steamed it for 3 hours, checking every half an hour to replenish the water. The house was warm and almost humid for that time. We also could not see out of any windows, even the far living room one was fogged over.

Our makeshift pudding mold

pudding in the bowl before steaming

ready to steam

The far living room window all fogged up

After our three hours we pulled the thing out and let it cool. Inside we found, well a Christmas pudding. I recovered it in foil, tied it, the correct way this time, and with a plastic lid over the top it is now sitting in a cool dry place (under our bed) until Hogswatch day when we will steam it, again, for an hour to heat it back up, then light it on fire and eat it with spiked butter.

After steaming 3 hours

Ready for a week under the bed

Just in case you are wondering, we do have a solution to the chipolata sausage issue. That should be arriving Wednesday.

Time for something a little different, a post by Raven. This morning I decided I wanted to make latkes. Now, I have eaten a few potato pancakes in my day, and have made a few using mashed potatoes, but never traditional latkes. I think it was last night that we watched a Food Network show where they were making them, and that was breakfast this morning. Like most of my recipes, I looked up a number of latke recipes until I has a sense of how they work, then I went off book as it were to make mine. I used russet potatoes, onion, flour, an egg, baking powder, salt, pepper and some garlic powder in the batter, well if you can call it a “batter.” I am not sure it qualifies in my book, but I tend to think of a batter as a rather wet thing. As one of the important steps in making latkes is squeezing all the water out of the potatoes and onions it is a dry batter.

I used the grating disk on our food processor for the first time with this. This created nice small pieces of potato, and for most of the onion. I did have some large chunks that I had to fish out after all was said and done. The disk was quick and efficient for this kind of job, so I expect I will use it more in the future.

I know latkes are usually cooked in schmaltz, but, well, we do not have any. I am not even sure I can get it in Pocatello. Instead I used some bacon grease we had left over from something (I let it cool and put it into jam jars and store in the fridge anytime we render fat out of bacon or similar meat we are not going to use right away). I needed a little bit more fat so I added some avocado oil to make up the difference. Then I fried those puppies. They turned out nice and crispy with a clear potato flavor. They needed a little salt, but that was it. We had them plain with scrambled eggs with ham and cheese. All in all it was a good breakfast.

Recipe

Ingredients

• 2 large russet potatoes quartered lenghtwise
• 1 large onion quartered
• 1 large egg beaten
• 1/4 cup flour
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• salt and pepper to taste
• Fat of some kind to fry in. Schmaltz is traditional, but I used bacon grease.

Process

1. Grate potatoes and onion together. You can do this with a box grater, or with a food processor.
2. Place grated potatoes and onion in a tea towel, wrap it up and squeeze the liquid out of the grated veg.
3. Put the now dry grated veg in a bowl and add the rest of the ingredients, save the fat. stir until the flour is incorporated.
4. Heat the oil until a drop of water sizzles.
5. Working in small batches drop about 2 tablespoons of the batter into the oil. Use the spoon to flatten out the latke.
6. Cook until deep brown on the first side, about 3-5 min. Flip and cook on the second side for the same.
7. Pull out the cooked latkes and place on a plate with a paper towel over them. Sprinkle salt on them while they are still warm.
8. Keep in a warming oven as you make the rest.
9. Serve. Though we did ours plane, applesauce or sour cream are common additions.

Thus begins the first post on our new blog! We are Valah and Raven, a married set of English PhD. students (actually, I – Valah – am a ” PhD. student”, my husband Raven is a “PhD. candidate.”). With the new year, we will be beginning a new blogging journey. This blog will mostly be about our culinary adventures, but other creative things we do will also get posted here. We are both creative-types, so we always have something interesting in the works, whether it is in the kitchen or the shop. I knit, he sculpts; I crochet, he builds models; we both draw and write.

I just got a new cookbook, The Silver Spoon from Phaidon Press. It is full of Italian recipes (over 2000 of them according to the sticker on the front of the book!). Raven suggested that since I have been saying I want to cook and bake more often, and since he does most of the cooking already, we should cook together and work our way through my new cookbook (as far as we can given the unavailability of some ingredients here in S.E. Idaho. I’m not sure where we would get eel, for example).

Now, I have worked as a cook at several restaurants, and even a resort, but I will admit that I am not terribly patient with “fiddly” recipes. Raven is the the one who really enjoys fiddly recipes, as long as he has enough time to really focus on the cooking. I like recipes that are sensible and not too complex – things I can cook on a regular basis – rather than things I can only make if I have three days to prepare and nothing else to do all day but be in the kitchen. From what I have seen in my new cookbook, every single recipe fits with what I look for when I’m cooking. No excess frills or fussy techniques, just lots of varieties of good sensible food.

We might use recipes from other cookbooks too (since I may have a slight obsession with cookbooks and baking books), but the same rules apply for us, nothing too fiddly or fussy, just good food made with real, natural ingredients.