Christmas Austerity Cannon

A Christmas austerity cannon is made with the tube from a used cracker, and propellant made from three of the unused strips that go bang from same, loaded with plastic hair-slides, miniature packs of cards, and nail-clippers that break within a day. Alternatively it is a spelling error. Mea culpa, I blame it on Michael Gove because he has a face like a constipated frog.

Top leftover tip and compliments of the season to you: made some stuffing to go with chicken yesterday that used up several odds and sods. Three slices of bread past the first flush, four tiny sausages that should have been breakfast two days earlier, some walnuts (who ever finishes one of those string bags that are a legal requirement of the British Christmas?), a handful of dried-ish prunes and the one ingredient not on the to-do list, a big juicy onion. All zapped then moistened with oil and cooked in a dish alongside the bird, firstly covered with foil to keep it soft, then without to brown the top.

The oil I used was walnut, which doesn't sound like it is part of the austerity thing, but is relatively cheap and for me fits as it is one of the best bang-for-you-buck flavourings you can find. A few drops in dressings or as a flavour enhancer in cooked dishes is all that's needed.

Re-Train Your Gravy

Too convoluted a title?

A simple idea for using up surplus gravy - so about 12 million households currently then - beyond the traditional moistening of turkey sarnies.

On the 20th we committed a major sin against the austerity cannon by buying in Chinese - I can blame my visiting father whose idea it was. The next day, though we had imbibed very modestly, both my wife and I felt headachey, maybe the MSG at fault. So we prefer homemade, and a soup should always be part of any Chinese banquet (when you attend posh ones you get several), thus on the 27th I made the following as part of a full Chinese meal.

I had half a gravy-boat of beefy goodness from Christmas Day (as we had a small piece of sirloin to go with the turkey crown). A chopped onion and finely diced carrot were fried until the onion was taking on a hint of colour, then a huge clove of garlic in the thinnest slices was added along with a de-seeded chili, and the gravy poured over the lot. Topped up with water and spiced with plenty of star anise and 5-spice the soup was simmered for 20 minutes, then a handful of sirloin in cubes and the same amount of sweetcorn kernels dropped in, and finally some pre-soaked noodles.

It's a recipe with endless variations possible, but the core of the thing is the affinity of beef and star anise.

Secret Service Santa Stuff VIII

Yet another letter thanking Santa, written by a celebrity chef rendered anonymous. And I am willing to bet that it has the best pun on the words of a 15th century French poet that you have read all day. The worst too.

Dear Santa,

At this time of year with the last sad leaf clutching the rimed twigs I love to remember Christmases past as I look upon my little garden that produces miraculous quantities of different vegetables. Our quick lunch was Caramac, my favourite comfort food at this time of year, and those oh so 1970s tinned peas I still secretly adore. They are my favourite comfort food, the label promising the scents of summers long gone. We finished with some cheese from a shop that at this time of year only sells to you if you provide references. Cheese at this time of year is my favourite comfort food, especially on mashed potatoes. Mash is my favourite. Comfort food. Thanks for the hair-trimmers, their steely blades catching the glint of the sun. Low. In the sky. At this time of year I really needed them. I peeked coyly through my fringe and the frost bedecked window when you visited, but your reindeer no longer make a sound as they did in my childhood. Où sont les neighs d’antan? Reindeer are my favourite comfort food. At this time of year.

Yours ever,

Secret Service Santa Stuff VII

Strangely this letter to Santa Claus from a celeb chef (found on the train in a mislaid MI5 file) is written on a £20 note, the person involved must be minted. 

Wotcha San’a Mate,

Love me noo scoo’a, pukkah ain’t in it. Give me an idea for anuva noo book, ker-ching. Anyway, bang up job chap, hope Ruuds enjoyed the fried carrot wiv ’and-torn basil, and you got a kick outta your fried sherry. 

Cheerso cockie,

Top bloke chef

Secret Servile Santa Stuff VI

Celebrity chef letters to Santa. Check out the earlier ones for a more cogent explanation. 

Dear Santa Claus,

When I was a gel Christmas celebrations were so much better. We had servants and were really rather well orf as I may have mentioned previously, but so was everybody who mattered then. I spent this Christmas (as you know of course) with some friends in their house completely lined with oak, inside and out-. They are very well orf, but we had to drink port that was younger than me, things are slipping. My thanks then for the table reinforcer and the massive arse pants. 

Secret Service Santa Stuff V

Check out the intro on the others. It's nearly Christmas. Celebrity chef, thank you letters, inept security operative, you knows the drill.

Dear Santa,

Thanks for the Christmas challenge – accepted. Two whole roast reindeer (in habanero pepper dry rub with garlic then dipped in hot-enough-to-defrost-Mrs-Santa-chilli-sauce) in one hour in the best pig-out joint in Lapland. Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Oh! wow! They are delicious. I want to marry you and have your elf babies. I hope that the new stomach lining I asked for will arrive next year, the old one is all but chillied-thru.

Yours,

A damn fine fella

Secret Service Santa Stuff IV

Another in this blog's devastating revelations about the minds and activities of the celebrity chef. The world quakes. Again the signature on this thank you letter to Santa was illegible, but there are hints in the text that it could be someone I actually admire enormously. We may never know.

Dear Santa,

Here at Rubber Cabbage the Yuletide feasting was as ever perfect, thanks in no small measure to you. How you got past the ham from my own pig smoking in the chimney is beyond me. We love that pig so much that we had its leg amputated under anasthetic and sent it hopping happily back to the wilds of my estate. Delicious.

I can’t thank you enough for my Nobel Prize for vegetables - common people on building sites and so on really should know about them.  

Throughout Christmas the log fire crackled in the background wherever we were, even the bathroom. Hundreds of friends dropped by for spontaneous private celebrations with special home-brewed drinks prepared by some of my serfs, hastily foraged truffles and so on, though they thought what I did was best. Happily by complete chance a camera crew was present to record it all.

Thanks again old chap,

Secret Service Santa Stuff III

Another from the discarded secret service file of thank you letters to Santa from celebrity chefs. The world needs to know. Again there is no clue about the sender.

Dear Santa,

I really hope you enjoyed the sherry frozen with liquid nitrogen and covered in its Lapsang Souchong foam. If you did it is now available in my very favourite supermarket. Rudolph’s carrot, beef marrow and guava sorbet with 99 per cent cocoa and mahogany-bark infused biscuit was a little rushed, but I think he will have enjoyed it. It's the simple things at this time of year isn't it? Thanks so much for my new laser (my old one was wrecked with over-use). How can any kitchen function without such basic tools?

Yours, 

The Monetary Value of Time

That title one for the accountants and MBAs out there - a sort of pun on the time value of money - my how they didn't laugh. Net present value and all that. Never mind.

This post comes out of last night's meal, something very simple but I am sure hugely improved by the time factor involved. It was spaghetti with meat ragu, or as we called it in the 1970s spag bol. Too often it is something done rapidly, a standby that can with practice be on the table in edible form in 20 minutes. But the rapid version doesn't have the smoothness or the depth of something simmered for an hour or more, and food should be more than just edible.

Time is the magical factor in transforming mince (admittedly here Aberdeen Angus mince from the most excellent Henry Rowntree) from something a bit grainy into a tender and toothsome pleasure. Likewise in taking tinned tomatoes and rounding off their tartness, combining with the sweetness of the chopped onions to make a mellow vegetable (yes the tom is a fruit, don't care) base that can be called a sauce.

I cooked the ragu for about 90 minutes, on very low heat, and it was so much better for the extra time. Even before that simmer time played its part - the meat allowed to brown properly, caramelize in places, instead of being merely turned in a hot pan then moved hastily on.

Secret Service Santa II

The second missive found in the top-secret file of celebrity-chef thank-you letters to Santa carelessly left on the train. Again it is impossible to say who wrote this, though I have a feeling I really should know. It does sound as though this celebrity chef is not very concerned with austerity.

Darling Santa,

I adored the gorgeous gifts you brought me, and having them enrobed in thick, unctuous double cream folding into melted chocolate with extra dark chocolate squares was a marvellous touch. My husband loved his gifts too, especially that clever ‘Prams I Was Sick in’ installation. Arriving downstairs in my red silk décolleté nightwear to find such super things rather excited me, as you and a lot of other older men may imagine. Come again soon, 

Mmmmm, 

Yours,

[signature illegible]

Secret Service Santa Stuff

On the train the other day I pushed past the piles of laptops and disks left by government ministers and secret service operatives, then noticed an envelope marked 'Celebrity Chef thank you letters to Santa'. Apparently the government thinks it is necessary to monitor such communications for reasons of national security. Following the pattern set by The Daily Telegraph with MPs' expenses I am thus going to release the most informative of them in dribs and drabs over the Christmas period (not the supermarket period obviously or this would have begun in October). First off is a pithy little missive, redacted (when did we start using that word instead of censored?) because of the strong language in it. I have no idea who this could have been from, as the signature was blurred and scratched angrily into the paper.

Dear Santa,

When will you learn? The presents you delivered were useless, you are useless, now f--- off and get me what I asked for in the first place you total t---.

Yours,

[unknown]

I was a Norfolk Dumpling

I may have been born in Lancashire, and returned here in my twenties to work, but brought up in Norfolk I still feel that is my spiritual home. Thus the national dish of the Norfolker (say that in a hurry and cause consternation) is one to which I return as regularly as mutinous family and culinary pride will allow. That dish is of course the Norfolk Dumpling.

Dumplings of all sorts are definitely austerity fare: filling, cheap, and essentially satisfying. They are rarely subtle, though if you give them a French or Russian name they can seem a bit more exotic. Few words can be as demotic as dumpling, although if you think of the word as the gerund of the verb to dumple, which it isn't, some interest could be engendered.

The Norfolk Dumpling (which merits capitals) is very simply made if you have a bread-maker, which I do, as it is just bread dough allowed to rise then dropped into salted boiling water to bobble about and cook for 15 to 20 minutes. They are rarely light, for which read never, the surface takes on the appearance of wallpaper paste, and even if you include a flavouring like yesterday's dried sage they still taste predominantly of being full. But as that is their point, job done.

In my hometown, the seaside resort of Great Yarmouth, clever and careful guest house landladies would serve them at least three times in a week's stay, anything more frequent risking violence. A few pence worth of flour, a bit of fat, some yeast, salt and sugar, and plenty of elbow grease was/is what they cost.

Yet they enhance a stew wonderfully, once broken into soaking up the gravy like a sponge. Or like the bread they are. And the secret to them is not to cut the things, which crushes them and creates a lump of goo, but to pull them apart with two forks. Simple, as is the dumpling.