Most Brits associate mincemeat with Christmas – its intoxicating mix of fruit, spices, booze, nuts and mixed peel provide Pavlovian stimuli, stirring memories of cherubic choirs a-caroling, roasted poultry, and the Queen’s speech – whereas I associate it with Easter, because it was always around then that we finally ran out of mince pies. I use the term “ran out” quite deliberately, as mince pies were the kind of thing that, growing up, were considered within the realm of “supplies”, so numerous were they. Every year in early December, my industrious mother would make at least six, but often as many as ten, dozen individual mince pies, fashioned lovingly from homemade mincemeat she had prepared several months in advance.

These seasonal confections then proceeded to appear on the table each and every mealtime, during tea breaks, whenever we had company over and any other time people were sat sitting and might be persuaded to have a smackerel of something, until everyone was thoroughly sick of the sight of them. Towards the end of March, the sight of the poor, battered-looking stragglers, that had been taken in and out their box so many times that their pastry shells were all dented and crumbly, was particularly sad.

The derivation of the word mincemeat, which today contains no minced meat, is Medieval, from a time shortly after Marco Polo had returned from the East, and every cook worth his salt was finding new ways to disguise and preserve rotten provisions with the spices he popularized. Adding cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves to ground meat, dried fruits, candied peel and chopped nuts before soaking the whole lot in high octane liquor must have been a hit at the time, which probably speaks more to the concurrent lack of fresh meat than to whether this was, in fact, a delicious preparation. Either way, it caught the imagination of a nation, and though the ground meat has largely been dropped, the tradition of using these spices to perfume pie filling continues strongly.

Another reason mincemeat was such a hit way back when is because once made, it can be expected to keep, unrefrigerated for as long as 2 years – something my mother bore in mind, as she often made hers over the first weekend of the New Year giving it ample time to “improve” over the next 12 months. Throughout the year, she would occasionally rouse it from its slumbers, turning it over and adding a touch more brown sugar or booze as she deemed necessary. Suffice it to say that by the time Easter came around, and the last mince pies were served, their mincemeat contents was nearing its second birthday, and was so highly perfumed that to inhale deeply close to a warmed mincer was to risk singed nose hairs.

Following my mother’s established tradition, I was well prepared, having put together my mincemeat last January, and fed it occasionally throughout 2011, so that it was rich and boozy by the time the Holidays arrived. Unfortunately, the energetic screams of our firstborn put paid to any intentions I may have had of making batches of personal mince pies before Christmas, so I had plenty of mincemeat leftover to ring in the New Year with. Inspired by a desire to produce something that people would actually eat before the next Christian festival hove into view, I quickly prepared this mincemeat stuffed quince. You could quite equally pair it with a vanilla custard/creme anglaise or, as I prefer, a whisky-laced whipped cream, but I lost my dander somewhere along the way and just shook some powdered sugar over it to evoke the wintry season instead.

I could have used apples in this recipe, but opted for quince largely because it’s one of those fruits that was, coincidentally, first popularized in the UK during Elizabethan times and has, rather sadly, since fallen out of favor. Brought originally from Asia and sometimes known by the moniker “love apple”, quince isn’t dissimilar in taste and texture to the apple — to which it is botanically related and which would make a fine substitute here — but when you’ve got the strains of “Good King Wencelas” with its frosty and feudal lyrics echoing in your mind, quince just feels right. [For more on quince, check out our friend Rachel Eats.]

Oven-baked quince are really, really good: rich, almost custardy in flavor and not overly sweet. A perfect dessert for the Holiday period, providing enough time is taken between courses. It’s probably not worth making a batch of mincemeat just for this purpose, but they are they dead easy and quick to pull together, and will be eaten in no time, allowing you and your family to leave Yuletide flavors safely behind you before the end of January.

I often think that living in a small scruffy New York City apartment is akin to a pioneer life in a log cabin somewhere remote. Sure, the commute is easier, but the myriad quotidien affronts and man traps of a city existence certainly resemble the perils of life on the range.

This is never more true than in winter when leaving your apartment on an icy weekend is about as enticing as wading through thigh-deep snow while being pursued by a pack of ravening wolves. On the those days, when opening your front door results in a nasty swirl of city trash blowing across your threshold, there is nothing better to do than hole up and compensate for your super’s inattention to heating your building to legally established levels by braising something porky for however many hours it takes to chase the chill back, at least as far the verminious bathroom and its dripping condensation.

In this case, it was some seriously chunky pork neck bones – whose original owner must have been a champion of his breed – braised in a rosemary-scented Guinness broth. Typical of parts of the English Midlands where malty, hoppy ales abound and rare breed pigs grow fat on acorns, apples and whey, this is an ancient recipe and in it lie the origins of the famous baked bean dish that, when transposed to the rather more Puritanical colonies, banished the beer in favor of the sweetness of readily-available sugar coming up from the Caribbean, so becoming Boston baked beans. For those pioneers, the presence of such a stew on the table during a long Massachusetts winter must have been even more important than for us hard-pressed city dwellers today.

It is also very similar to a stew my Great Auntie Annie used to make when a crowd of family descended on her Solihull semi-detached so that the grandkids could spend the day riding around the garden on her husband’s 1/16th scale-model railway. It’s not clear to me how often Great Uncle Roger used his train when there were no young guests in the house, but I rather enjoy the idea that if you peeked through the box hedges of a quiet Birmingham suburb on any given weekday morning you might find a highly eccentric retiree rushing around his back yard on a toy train.

For we grandkids, all the excited shreaking and ducking under low hanging bushes as the train chugged around at a decent clip always left us red-faced and famished. My Great Aunt, the youngest of nine kids, knew instinctively how to cater for large groups of young ‘uns, stretching a cheaper cut of meat with white beans, potatoes, and iron-rich ale.

The quality of the final product relies greatly on the quality of the beer used in the braise. Lager is of no use here and light beer (if it is ever worth drinking) should be completely avoided. A fine malty and/or hoppy English-style brew that will give strength, depth and some sweetness to the stew is what you’re seeking. Auntie Annie used to use Flowers’ Original, a floral English ale (then) made in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon. Similarly, pork necks with plenty of connective tissue and marrow are ideal because the former breaks down to thicken the sauce and latter makes a simple and rustic dish somehow luxurious.

Of course, unlike life in the country where heating is controlled by the number of logs on the fire, your apartment heating is bound to come on, clanking and groaning itself into overdrive, just as you plate this dish, forcing you to sweat through it, and all night long in your bed, in spite of the open window. The following morning, perhaps only to escape the dry, oppressive internal conditions, the grey, freezing city will magically appear more inviting and your struggle on the subway marginally less onerous.

I’m not very old, but for much of my youth in the north west of England, it was almost impossible to find fresh foods that weren’t local. Today such a statement seems like an echo of Victorian times, but, literally, that’s how it was until a supermarket was built behind the Knutsford courthouse in the late 80s.

I often tell my wife about the cheese stall at the weekly market only kept five kinds of cheese – Cheshire, Cheddar, Lancashire, and sage Derby were ever present, with perhaps a Wenslydale reasonably common too. If anything as unusual as a Stilton, from distant Nottinghamshire, appeared, it would generate as much commotion among the town’s housewives, who elbowed their way to the front of the queue to catch a glimpse of this highly perfumed foreigner, as if Julio Iglesias showed up sporting his tennis shorts. My wife usually responds that I should count myself lucky because when she was young there were only four kinds of cheese at her local supermarket: white American, yellow American, cheddar and Swiss and had anything else been available it would have been looked upon with extreme suspicion. Touché.

Making our weekly Tuesday rounds of the covered (indoor) market (the outdoor market sold mostly fruit and veg, bric a brac, and live pets, believe it or not) with my mother, on the cheese man’s left was the egg man, or “mister Chookie” as I knew him, on account of his perennial sales pitch “come tek a look at these lover-lee chookie eggs I’ve got for yuh!”. Unlike his fellow stall-holders, whose wares fell within a particular genre, the egg man also sold milk, orange juice and yogurt due to him being one of the younger siblings of the Sheldon family that owned the local dairy, and who, excepting market days, delivered these provisions to the doorsteps of the town’s residents.

Beyond Mr. Chookie was the fish man, Mr. Scales, as my mother used to call him, although at the time her pun was lost on me. Above his stall ran the legend “fresh daily from Fleetwood, Lancs”, referring to the port just north of blackpool where much of Britain’s catch was landed. That his stall was only open Tuesdays and Thursdays didn’t seem to matter. Whether it was due to her upbringing in blackpool where there is – rightfully – a great deal of local snobbery about the quality of the fish that goes into their fish n’chips, or whether because of an innate suspicion of fishmongers, my mother always eyed mr scales’s wares closely, casting a wary eye over his glossy fish, as if trying to discern if there was anything untoward hiding among the cockle-shells. Because we rarely had fish except on Fridays when we weren’t allowed anything else – even in our lunchboxes at school we had to mark the end of the week with evil-smelling “salmon paste” sandwiches – and because mum worked a full day on Thursdays, whatever we bought on Tuesdays had to last on ice in the bottom of the fridge until then (freezing fish made it taste all woolly, she always said), so freshness was absolutely crucial otherwise it/we wouldn’t survive.

Typically, the fish was cod, but often halibut or hake did service in the flaky white fish department. This was usually broiled and served with oven-baked chips, since as a nurse my mother couldn’t countenance deep-frying at home lest it give the townies the impression she was a hypocrite in her dietary exhortations, and homemade mushy peas, flecked with mint and tangy with a splash of malt vinegar. Apart from a distinctly non-traditional and rather dodgy-looking “curry” she made every so often, friday night fish suppers were my dad’s favorite – he still demands it to this day and he is about as agnostic an Anglican as you’ll find.

Instead of waiting for Friday, and going against my mum’s rubric of no-frying, but keeping with the buying of white fish on a Tuesday, we made a version of the Provencal classic, aioli garni, with a pan seared halibut fillet, steamed fennel and butter beans. Rather like much of the cooking I experienced growing up, it doesn’t look like much on the plate – the pale colors and the two sauces lapping against one another may seem bland – but the sharp tang of the garlicky aiolli with the surprising hot peppery-bite of the brown sauce against the muted flavors of the white fish and butter beans makes for an unusually rewarding dish. I am convinced that my mum would’ve enjoyed this dish a great deal, even though she would have asked why we didn’t save it for Friday night. As for my dad, well, sadly, he wouldn’t touch it on account of it humming with garlic. Too bad for him.

Since parenthood came into my life, so has weight gain. It hasn’t been all that bad but I think I weigh a bit more now than I did in the days after I pushed that child out. Why? Because the gym is now a long-distant memory. Since we clearly like to eat, the gym was once my very good friend four or five times a week pre-child. Now, I’m lucky to even get a long walk to the park. If I still have energy after a day of chasing after a 1 year old, I’ll may pop in a yoga DVD, but I now realize that “5 Minute ABS” only works when you are doing more than just “5 Minute Abs”. I refuse to stop eating or drinking wine but I miss those carefree days of hitting the gym whenever I wanted to sweat off my stress and weekend steak and potatoes.

So how does Mariah Carey fit into this post? Well, recently, Mariah debuted her “post baby body” – a phrase I’m kinda getting sick of seeing on magazine covers. Yeah, yeah, she did it through diet and exercise and did gain like a million pounds while on bedrest with her twins but she has a FLAT STOMACH AGAIN! How about this chick - she did a Vickis Secret bra and panties modeling shoot a few weeks after giving birth. I was still wearing my “belly band” at that point.

But, it’s never too late to try and lose a bit of that baby weight, huh? This ceviche is the perfect way to attempt to do so without getting depressed that all you are eating is salad and brown rice. This ceviche is a bit different than the ones you may have had in the past. Normally, ceviche’s fish/shellfish is “cooked” by lime or lemon juice acid that it marinates in. This particular ceviche requires one to actually cook the seafood first. It is inspired by street food we had in Brooklyn several years ago. We have remembered it all this time – it was the type of NYC street food that is very hard to find these days (one that is probably illegal and delicious). With street food becoming a weird trendy thing, possibly because of the invention of the Vendy Awards and the infiltration of slick food trucks, it is sometimes hard to find street food that isn’t overdone or trying too hard. This particular hot summer day, we discovered a woman on her stoop with a little table containing a large, plastic vat, a tupperware filled with avocados and two bottles of hot sauce. For $2.50 we received half a perfectly ripe avocado filled with shrimp ceviche in a spicy tomato sauce. It was served on a white napkin with a plastic fork. The avocado skin served as it bowl. We happily sat on the neighbors stoop inhaling this amazing snack.

Five years later, we finally got around to trying our hand at the ceviche. After a bit of research, we discovered that this ceviche is closer to an Ecuadorian ceviche which is different from the Peruvian type most are accustomed to. The main difference between the two is 1) a tomato-based marinade with a “soup like” consistency 2) most often made using shrimp that is cooked/boiled first and 3) served with popcorn and fried plantains. We played around a bit with our recipe, adding some things that are probably not traditional. For instance, the tomato base of the Ecuadorian ceviche “sauce” is often made with ketchup and doesn’t have olives. We used some Goya tomato sauce and added olives for briny-ness. We also had some baby octopus that needed eating up, so we threw that in there too.

A few weeks of this as a weeknight meal and I may not have a stomach like Mariah or legs like that Victoria’s Secret model but who cares. It’s the trying that counts, right?

Classic French cooking doesn’t get much more classic than chicken in tarragon cream sauce. This bistro menu stalwart has all the unctious elements you instinctively associate with Gallic gastronomy: butter, cream, wine and mild herbs. Likely originating in that blessed triangle just north of Lyon where the famous blue-footed chickens of Bresse neighbor the Cotes de Beaune wine region and abut the renowned mustard-producing region of Dijon, this dish can also be given a Norman twist simply by substituting the white wine for a dry cider.

Loosely based on a recipe I read here, but one that I’ve made countless times, we enjoyed this one with our friends Matt and Joanna this past weekend. There’s something about French classics that almost guarantees happiness among your dinner party guests. It’s as if the way we live today and nervousness about cream and butter rules out eating this kind of food in the home, but that when they do appear together some kind of Pavlovian, slightly hysterical, response is provoked that results in over-indulgence and an ability to somehow accommodate a four-course meal, including cheese, multiple bottles of wine, and after dinner drinks.

Happily, this dish is so easy to prepare and faultlessly scalable to the number you’re catering for that it’s as perfect for a dinner party as it is for a casual weeknight meal when you’re feeling in need of a little self-soothing. You can make it ahead and warm it for service or make it while your guests swarm around you in the kitchen soaking up the hum of the garlic. Serve with roasted, mashed or boiled potatoes, or just with a crusty baguette to wipe your plates of all the creamy, buttery goodness.

It’s one of the ironies of being a new parent that even though we are spending more time than at any other point in our adult lives at home, we are finding it virtually impossible to do any cooking. Even when we do steal a few moments of quiet to get behind the burners, by the time the food is done, so is the nap our baby was taking. Of course, eating your dinner cold is nothing new to a food blogger – teasing the plating and getting just the right lighting usually takes a while – but at least we used to be able to eat our tepid meat and congealed sauce without the throaty vocal stylings of a five-week-old as an accompaniment.

Another delightful aspect of being a home-bound parent is that, when leaving the house involves assembling ten things, a stroller and an acquiescent child, one is motivated to make use of what is close at hand. In a moment of hunger-inspired desperation this past weekend, we took that maxim to its logical conclusion.

Literally lying beside our front door was a pair of pumpkins we had originally intended to carve for Halloween had our sculptural ambitions not been thwarted by the arrival of said infant. Still edible, they were quickly hacked, seeded and roasted in a hot oven with salt and pepper while the baby slumbered peacefully in his swing. In a “waste not, want not” moment, also into the oven went the pumpkin seeds seasoned with chipotle powder and brown sugar, emerging a scant twenty minutes later, crispy and snack-tastic. The baby, now stirring, its nostrils a-quiver.

From all of this, plus the contents of a still well-stocked spice rack and half a Mexican chorizo I rescued from a sad end in the depths of our refrigerator, came a pimentón-scented pumpkin velouté topped with sweet chipotle pepitas, crumbled chorizo and a sprinkle of black Hawaiian sea salt that I forgot we’d bought, somewhat curiously, in a supermarket in France last Christmas.

Even the abundant use of the stick blender failed to completely rouse our newborn, though, in his now-customary fashion, by the time we were seated at the table, spoons-at-the-ready, our charming little nipper was once again in full voice, sharing his anguish at his meager milk-based diet. Happily, this soup is just as good, if not better, when reheated the next day. A quality we might not have fully appreciated before now.

We’re certainly not the first bloggers to find ourselves stretched thin between the demands of our regular working lives and the rather strange, post-modern existence we eke out on the interwebs, and, as happens to us every now and then, we’re kind of in the middle of one of those periods right now. Combine that with the fact that it’s been crazy hot here lately — making the prospect of getting creative in the kitchen of our sweat-lodge-like four-story walk-up apartment distinctly unattractive — and our resulting culinary output has been truly meager.

On the few occasions we have been behind the burners, it’s only been for short periods, and, in this case, just long enough to cook marinaded baby octopus a la plancha in a cast-iron skillet. This is the result. It was delicious, and, yes, our apartment was a few hundred degrees for the rest of the evening. Seeking to avoid these sauna conditions, we have recently resorted to the dangerously illegal practice of grilling things over a tiny fold-up barbecue on the roof of our apartment building. With a bit of luck, the steamy conditions will break before repeated exposure to grilling temperatures melts a sink-hole into the ceiling above us.

One finds mulligatawny soup on an Indian restaurant menu the same way one always finds buffalo wings or nachos on a bar menu. It just has to be there – if it wasn’t on the menu you just know there’s something wrong with the place. But how many of you have ever ordered it over the papadums or samosas to start your meal?  Like many dishes ordered at your local Indian, it can feel like a bit heavy.   This is a good thing if you make this your lunch or your dinner, which is why I absolutely love making batches of this incredibly hearty and extremely inexpensive soup that lasts for many meals.

The funny thing is, mulligatawny soup has a kind of shady past.  After doing research, I realized that there is no cut and dry history of the soup.  There are so many variations of mulligatawny, it almost makes sense that it was difficult to pin down its origins. One thing we do know, it’s not strictly an Indian dish.  It’s actually based on an Indian dish that was changed into soup to satiate (and placate) the fussy British soldiers during the British Raj (the period between 1858 and 1947 when Britain ruled parts of South Asia/India).

Mulligatawny means “pepper water” and is believed to be loosely based on a stew the Brits loved that their Tamil servants would often serve.  They “demanded” a soup course which, before this time in history, had never been a part of Indian food culture.  The result was a thinned out version of the stew base that they liked so much.  According to research, the British eventually brought the invented soup dish back home where it became a well-loved classic there, but because of its many, many variations, it is hard to know what the original recipe contained.

Some mulligatawny soups contain rice or noodles, some are made vegetarian, but traditionally it should have a meat base (like chicken or mutton).  Some contain cream, others coconut milk or yogurt.  Some add apples for a sour/sweet flavor, others add tomato while some people just dump in some chutney.  Your head could spin with all the recipes out there!

So how did we come up with our recipe?  Well, we went to our main source – our local Indian.  We absolutely adore their mulligatawny soup and wanted to eat a version as close to theirs as possible. This homemade recipe is relatively close to one we found in a Madhur Jaffrey book, but with a bit of help from our local Indian restaurant.  It can most definitely be made vegetarian or even vegan (!) and the lentils provide a great heartiness. Pair with some naan (store-bought for us) and you’ve got an amazing lunch or dinner.  Regardless of it’s history, mulligatawny soup is going to remain a staple in my household.  It’s too easy to make and too delicious.

A quick, sweet post to kick-start your weekend about a ridiculously simple, ridiculously delicious Argentinian dessert – Chocotorta. This very popular dulce de leche-spiked, layered dessert reminds me a bit of tiramisu with an Argentine twist. What could be more Argentinian than dulce de leche? When Joan of Foodalogue revisited her Culinary Tour food event (which I love, by the way) to represent South America, I looked at the list and saw Argentina and thought about all the Argentinian specialities we still wanted to make for the blog. We had done so many Argentine posts before (including locro, milanesas, choripan and the ubiquitous parilla delicacies), but never anything sweet. With the deadline looming, I quickly did what I could to recreate the fabulous, famous Chocotorta. It’s not perfect, but it sure was delicious.

Just like any famous American desserts, the Chocotorta can be made in a variety of ways.  It seems as though different families make it different ways.  Two things that are constant in every family’s recipe are chocolate wafer cookies or biscuits and dulce de leche.  Some soak their cookies/biscuits in coffee before they begin to layer, others soak it in milk, cafe con leche or even sweet wine. Many use a mixture of only cream cheese and dulce de leche for the filling while others use whipped cream or a mixture of whipped and cream cheese. Some top their chocotorta with icing, chocolate or dulce de leche and others just top it with a final layer of cookies/biscuit.  I take all these variations as a “freedom of choice” – be creative and make your chocotorta the way you want to!

Unfortunately, I had to “wing it” on the chocolate biscuit front because there were only a limited type at my grocery store. Traditionally, the Argentines use the rectangular Chocolinas to do their layering. I used the circular Nabisco Famous Chocolate Wafer Cookies (which, after some research are sometimes difficult to find in stores…strange) and even had to throw in a layer of Goya Maria Cookies because I was desperate and ran out of the others (don’t kill me over lack of authenticity, please!). The final result ended up pretty because of the circular cookies and, because I let the flavors meld together for a day, it held together very well and tasted fabulous.

This is most definitely a dessert anyone can make, even someone like me who CAN NOT BAKE. If you can dip, stir and layer, you’re good to go. This recipe probably makes more filling than you need. Do what I did and store it in the freezer for a day when you either want to make another one or (like me) feel like grabbing a spoon and having filling for dessert.

As with a few other fellow bloggers, we were lucky to receive one of my favorite “blog freebies” to try recently – truffle products by La Boutique de la Truffe.  Cha-ching!  As some know, for most of us, blogging will barely help us buy a cup of coffee at a year’s end – that is if you have an ad up.  When we get offered to test out powdered sauces (gag) we usually pass, but when truffles were offered I jumped up and down like a little schoolgirl.  I know truffles seem to be that annoying foodie buzz word that gets all us food-lovers screaming like Beatles fans in the 60′s, but I still say they are worth the hype.  It is obvious we like them – a lot.  You’ll find truffle recipes all over We Are Never Full: like here and here and here. And if you indulge and buy something from La Boutique, it is an investment and one that will pay off in big flavor that really can not be duplicated any other way.

La Boutique de Truffe started in 2003 by a French immigrant, Cèline Labaune, who had a “passion for truffles” (straight from the media kit).  Why am I telling you this? Because if I am going to spend $35 for a 3-ounce pot of truffles, it helps to buy them from 1) someone who is passionate about them and 2) someone who is French and knows her stuff.  It used to be very difficult to get good quality truffle products here in the US and I can say, without hesitation, that the truffle products we received from La Boutique were very good.  Yes, it is still expensive but a little does go a long way.

For this quick dish (bite me Rachel Ray – this is a real 30 minute meal), we paired the nice truffles with an easy cream sauce with walnuts and bought fresh ravioli from our local Italian shop. If you don’t have a local Italian shop, it’s ok, you can use your favorite store-bought variety or even make your own. To top the ravioli, we only used a small amount of the Truffle Carpaccio we were lucky to try out.  While we were in Italy a while ago, we purchased a few white and black truffle products at an amazing store (where we dropped quite a few euro at, but it was worth it) -  Tartufi Morra in Alba.  For much more than La Boutique charges, we purchased an excellent tube of white truffle paste which lasted us more than a year – and which we sadly finished up with this dish.  I recommend buying this one from the La Boutique website – it is super strong and really, really lasts.

You could wow a few guests with this super simple dish – they’ll feel special because they’ll think you spent a lot of money on them but, in reality, per person it’s not a real bank-breaker.  But they don’t have to know… right?