Food & Drink

A florist’s tip: affordable ways to dress your Christmas table

by Susanne Kennedy

This Christmas, more than ever, it is important to bring joy and happiness to your loved ones.

The dinner table is where the family gathers and where memories are made. A lovingly decorated table is where the festive spirit comes to life.

Here are some tips to make your seasonal tablescape special, yet sustainable and, very importantly, affordable:

Go back to basics – have a look around the garden and pick what’s pretty. Twigs, seed pods, evergreen ivy berry, teasels and laurel, whatever catches your eye can be used to decorate your table.

Appeal to all senses – bring the outside in with gatherings from your garden, forest or hedgerow. Use candles to bring warmth to your room, mixed in with the scent and texture of your foliage. Rosemary, sage, leyland cypress or eucalyptus will bring a lovely fragrance to any space.

Add fruits and nuts – dot around oranges (decorated with cloves for a Christmassy aroma), tangerines, figs and nuts to bring some colour to your table.

They look great among the green and they can be eaten with the cheese course. At Milston Flower Barn we believe that less is often more. A festive table does not have to cost the world, in fact, it can be totally free to create a magical table with treasures foraged on your doorstep. info@milstonflowerbarn.co.uk / www.milstonflowerbarn.co.uk

Mushroom Wellington is your vegetarian centrepiece

If you are looking for a vegetarian centrepiece for your dinner table this festive season it can be easy to think of nut roast (and why not, I am a fan, hot or cold) or something shop bought.

While I always whip out my trusty nut roast recipe for Christmas dinner – yes, all the meat eaters who look pitifully at me beforehand always finish it off – I was called upon one year to find an alternative and found this excellent and fairly simple recipe on a website called Delicious Everyday (see website below).

Whereas beef wellingtons are notoriously difficult to get right, its vegetarian sibling not only looks brilliant, it tastes sensational as well. And you can tinker and tailor with the basic recipe as much as you want, adding, subtracting ingredients at will. If you can find dairyfree puff pastry you can also serve it to vegan family members and friends.

It really does look stunning, either served sliced or put on the table as a centrepiece.

Ingredients (to serve 4)

4 large portobello mushrooms, stalks trimmed (try to use mushrooms of the same size) 3 large onions peeled and chopped 3 tbs olive oil 300g baby spinach (or more if you prefer) 4 sprigs of thyme leaves, picked 1 shop bought puff pastry (vegan if you choose) 1 tbs Dijon mustard Salt and pepper to season For the wash, you can either use milk, an egg wash or a vegan alternative

Things to note

You can make your own puff pastry, if you wish. But life is too short, so pop to the chiller cabinet of your local store and buy the ready-rolled variety.

You can avoid a soggy bottom (and you do want to avoid such a thing at this time of year) by patting everything dry and allowing each ingredient to go cold before you wrap the filling in the pastry.

Preparation time should be in the region of 10-15 minutes before a total cooking time of 50 minutes.

How to cook

Place a large frying pan over a low to medium-low heat. Add the 1/2 tbs of olive oil followed by the chopped onion and reduce heat to low.

Season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, for 15 to 20 minutes, until the onions are golden brown. Keep an eye on them because you don’t want crispy onions.

Remove the onions from the pan, set aside to cool and return the pan to the heat.

Add the baby spinach and cook until wilted before removing from the pan. Set aside and leave to cool.

Increase the heat to medium/high and return the pan to the heat.

Add the remaining olive oil and place the mushrooms, top side down. Cook until lightly golden (about five minutes) before turning over and cooking for a further five minutes or until golden.

Remove from the heat and drain on a paper towel top side up – they release liquid as they cool.

Transfer the onions, spinach and mushrooms to the refrigerator so that they can cool completely.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (390 Fahrenheit).

Place a sheet of baking paper on the baking tray and place the puff pastry sheet on top. Spread half the cooled caramelised onions over the middle third of the pastry, making sure to leave an extra 2cm (¾ inch) border at the edge of the pastry.

Top with half of the baby spinach.

Spread the Dijon mustard over the mushrooms and season well with salt and pepper. Place the mushrooms on top of the spinach. Top the mushrooms with thyme and then the remaining baby spinach and onions.

Carefully roll the pastry over the top of the mushroom mixture until you have formed a log. Press down to seal the edges. Roll the log over so that the seam is now facing downwards.

Brush the top of the pastry with your chosen wash. You can add pastry designs if you wish.

Place the pastry back on the baking sheet and tray and place in the oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until golden and flaky.

It will look and smell amazing. Enjoy with roast potatoes and vegetables.

Food & Drink

How many top chefs does it take to make the perfect roast potatoes?

ASK anyone and they will tell you the best way to cook the perfect roast potatoes. Some will have watched and learnt as their parents and grandparents made memorymaking and mouth watering roasties, others will swear by the time they followed the latest hot chefs twist on this all-time classic.

Traditionally, of course, roast potatoes are enjoyed with a Sunday roast, providing a unique texture and flavour point on an often brimming plate.

One of the best ways to enjoy a roastie, in my opinion, is just before closing time, after a few drinks, on a winter’s evening.

At least, I still have the memories of the pub in Bournemouth during my university days that would bring round dishes of hot, crispy and salty roasties that provided a surprisingly welcome and filling snack after an evening’s fun. You’ll need to trust me.

For what seems like a simple dish, there are many little tweaks and variations for you to try until you find the method that is just right for you.

I have my own method, honed through trial and error over many years and I swear that they are the best you’ll try. And you will, no doubt disagree.

Ingredients

I use maris piper potatoes, but King Edwards work well. Vegetable, sunflower, rapeseed oil Butter

Method

If the oven is not already on, turn it on now.

The first trick is to peel your potatoes by slicing the skin off with a sharp knife (though I do also like leaving some skin on). You are looking for sharp edges – smoothness will not do.

Cut them into half, depending on the size of the originals. You don’t want them too small or too big.

Wash the peeled potatoes, place in unsalted water that just covers them and heat until boiling.

Leave them to boil or simmer vigorously for 5-10 minutes (if they start to break away at the edges remove from heat) and then drain using a colander.

The potatoes can be left in the colander to steam and cool. Keep the pan handy.

Meanwhile, place the tray you will use to roast the potatoes in the oven for a few minutes to warm up, then pour in either vegetable or rapeseed oil. Leave the oil to heat for a few minutes. You want the oil and the oven really hot.

Tip the potatoes back into the pan, then take the tray out of the oven and carefully pour the hot oil over the potatoes trying to cover as many of them as possible, though there is no need to worry too much.

Now pour the potatoes and any residual oil back into the oven tray and add a very generous knob of butter. If you can, this is the time to try and get every potato surface covered with a little oil.

Then put them into the oven for 40-45 minutes, turning occasionally. They should be crispy on the outside, golden brown, fluffy on the inside and they will definitely smell wonderful.

What about the top chefs?

Now, you’ve probably read that and screamed, why, what, where, and more. This is my way and there are so many variations. Top chefs have their own trusted methods.

Heston Blumenthal rinses his potatoes for 5 minutes before parboiling. He adds rosemary, thyme and garlic to the roasting tray and uses beef dripping, cooking them for almost 90 minutes.

Gordon Ramsay suggests shaking up the edges of the potatoes, coating them in semolina and using goose or duck fat for extra crispiness.

Nigella prefers her roast potatoes to be small, suggesting this measure helps to maximise the crispy coating to fluffy filling ratio. She is another semolina convert, suggesting it is better to use than flour, though I hadn’t heard anyone suggest flour, until I saw the recipe on the Good Food Guide website.

She also likes to give them a shake in the colander to scruff them up a bit.

Waitrose suggests scraping the parboiled potatoes with a fork to help rough them up. It is the rough surface that the oil crisps.

Jamie Oliver likes to go full on rogue when it comes to his roasties. He parboils for 7 minutes, crushes the potatoes slightly with a masher and adds a number of flavour combinations – rosemary and garlic, clementine and sage or thyme and bay. And seasons ahead of the roast.

Tom Kerridge is perhaps closest to my recipe though he salts his water and poaches them for 10 to 15 minutes before roasting.

So there you go. The simplest of dishes with such a wide variety of methods to try.

How do you cook yours?

Food & Drink

Make a pickle in double quick time

By Rebecca Vincent

It’s only in recent years that I’ve come round to the idea of vinegar and anything that even remotely resembles a pickle.

But I like the idea of quick pickles because they don’t require much effort and the house doesn’t end up smelling of vinegar for ages after.

This recipe works with a myriad of different vegetables, herbs and spices, but this time I’ve chosen carrots and onions.

Carrots have been one of my favourite vegetables since I was a kid. They contain high levels of beta-carotene which we can convert into vitamin A, along with vitamins C, B6, K, biotin, thiamine and potassium.

Onions are a member of the allium family, along with garlic and leek, and they are a great source of vitamins C, B6, B1, K, biotin and chromium. They are also considered a prebiotic which means the dietary fibres they contain feed the beneficial bacteria within our gut.

Carrot and onion quick pickle

(Fills a 1 pint/16oz mason jar) ½ medium red onion 2 medium carrots 1 tsp sea salt 1 tsp sugar 1 garlic clove 1 cup of water ½ cup of apple cider vinegar Few sprigs of coriander Flavour options: ginger, turmeric, dill, chives, lemon zest

How to make

Finely slice the red onion. Slice the carrots in half lengthways then finely slice on the diagonal.

Finely slice the garlic clove, then cut each slice into matchsticks and roughly chop the coriander.

Layer the vegetables, garlic and coriander in the jar.

Bring the water to the boil in a small pan, then add the salt and sugar, stirring until dissolved. Pour the water mix and vinegar over the vegetables.

When cool enough to handle put the lid on the jar and pop in the fridge for one hour. Then simply enjoy!

Rebecca Vincent BSc (Hons); BANT registered nutritionist; phone: 07515 019430

You can find out more at: www.rebeccavincentnutrition. co.uk

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