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.

As you may have inferred, I am not overly impressed by this show or others like Man vs. Food that marvel at just how gluttonous and boorish the host can be. Perhaps it’s because I frequently over-eat and then avoid looking at myself in the mirror, but in the same way as I don’t favor shows featuring close-ups of young fools guzzling booze, like, say, The Real World, I also don’t enjoy watching some fat guy shoving 4 pounds of pancakes down his pie-hole surrounded by the cheering obese. I find it all, shall we say, sorta gross.

On a more serious note though, if such shows are truly representative of the best road-food in this country, and were I an American truck-driver, I would fear for my health. I know from personal experience that driving isn’t one of the more healthful occupations given the innumerable sedentary hours in the cab, but when the majority of truck-stops offer only greasy fast food, you can be pretty sure that expecting to to enjoy a long and healthy retirement after 40 years in the game may be optimistic.

We mentioned our appreciation for the fare offered at Italian truck-stops a couple of years ago — noting with joy and surprise in equal measure that one can get beer or wine to accompany, amongst other things, fantastically fresh panini — but our recent trip to France has re-opened the debate over which country we’d prefer to be a trucker in.

Known as routiers, French truck-drivers have a reputation for gruffness and industrial action. Rarely a year passes in which they do not blockade the Channel Tunnel or the autoroutes around Paris with blazing oil drums to protest rising fuel prices, increased tolls, or out of sympathy with the similarly militant French farmer. Having driven in France, one sympathizes with their complaints over the miserable state of fuel and tolls, but if there is one facet of Gallic truck-driving life about which they cannot complain, it’s road food.

Perhaps to compensate the routier for his hard life behind the wheel, the weeks away from his family (and it almost always is a him), and the hours of solitude, in true French style, there has grown up a nationwide network of restaurants that principally cater to him: the Relais Routiers. The French trucker network makes sure that wherever he may find himself, from the city to the countryside, from Flanders to Gascony, the hard-working driver can get a three-course meal with wine and a shower without having to resort to such desperate measures as his American (or British) counterpart and settle for fast-food. In fact, a handy pocket-guide is published annually to help them find these often out-of-the-way places.

And therein lies the rub: rather like the average Frenchman who will happily spend an hour of his precious Sunday driving out to a tiny auberge hidden in the hills to support the cooking of a particular chef, the French truck driver will always go out of his way to arrive at a Relais Routiers around noon. And why not? They serve excellent, often regional, food at the correct price that has him returning every time he’s passing by.

But to many throughout the provinces of France, the Relais Routiers are more than just a truck-stop. They are the local restaurant, watering-hole, social club and informal town hall — the locus for ties that bind the community together. And like local businesses everywhere, owners of Relais Routiers know their clientele well enough to understand that their customer’s loyalty to a restaurant is only as strong as its loyalty is to their stomachs and pocket-books. Consequently, they offer reliably good, honest food. Indeed, in these thin times, and with the advent of so many pretentious, expensive eateries causing the collapse of local bistrots across France, some commentators have called Relais Routiers the guardians of the nation’s cuisine. This might be slightly unfair to the Paul Bocuses and Daniel Bouluds of this world, but like a good pub in Britain or quality diner in America, you simply know where you are with a Routiers. You know what to expect and while your expectations might rarely be exceeded, they are always met, and familiarity and comfort are what most people seek most of the time.

Until comparatively recently, the laws governing alcohol consumption and driving in France were less than strict, and it was perfectly normal for a routier to wash his three course meal down with an aperitif, half a bottle of wine and a digestif (all except the digestif being included in the price) before breezily climbing back into the cab of his 10 ton machine and trundling off. These days the carte routiers still includes three (sometimes four!) generous courses, but with the booze sensibly capped at a 1/3 bottle, often served in a small jug that looks touchingly dainty in the nicotine-stained hands of blue-chinned trucker.

When we visited Auberge St. Martin — a Relais Routiers on the RN31 in Pontarcher, Ambleny, between Compiègne and Soissons in the Oise department of France between Christmas and New Years — our delicious three course lunch and half-carafe of house red plus coffee set us back an astonishing 22 euros ($29) for the two of us. The charge of one euro above that levied on many of our fellow diners was due to our inability to flash our routiers membership card.

The Carte Routiers had its customary three options that day, a choice of two starters, two mains and two desserts: a charcuterie plate (containing slices of the local specialty, andouillette, or tripe sausage) or pork rillettes, followed by poulet Basquaise (Basque-style chicken with peppers and onions in a spicy sauce) or biftek (rump steak with french fries), and fromage blanc (a delicious thick natural yogurt) or assiette de fromage (cheese plate) for dessert.

The food was simple and delicious, and the service prompt and informal. The sole problem we encountered was in following directions to the bathroom which appeared to lead to the bar, but in fact directed you outside to a separate door where the shower was located. The most enlightening aspect of the whole experience — quite apart from note penned on the menu listing a shower for 2 euro or 3 euro with a towel — was that this place really did a lot of its business with truck drivers. Outside, packed tightly together on the muddy verges of a country road were 10 or more giant trucks, and glancing around us more than half the diners were sitting quietly by themselves, sleeves rolled up to reveal a bevy of tattoos, breaking their midday bread in companionable silence. We looked at each other and both said, almost simultaneously, “this would never happen in America.” It was a moment of sincere cultural recognition on our behalf, and we raised our glasses to toast these heroes of haulage and their continuing role as custodians of the nation’s table.

When you’re a busy modern executive, web-based home-delivery services like FreshDirect can help you save those precious minutes it takes to race around a supermarket and snatch a few items off the shelves. When you’re into food, web-based home-delivery services like FreshDirect can be like, well…, like the daily temptation faced by a Frenchman living next door to a brothel.

So, everytime a flyer comes through our door informing us that a $50 purchase means an additional $25 worth for free, we are briefly gallant in our efforts to fight the urge, before capitulating and ordering all manner of products on the spur of the moment. Amongst our knee-jerk purchases just prior to Christmas were four quails, six soft-shell crabs, an immodest hunk of jamon serrano, and three large octopii – none of which were called for by our festive menu.

Consequently, because we had exceeded the capacity of our scant storage space, we were obliged to prioritize our consumption of said victuals based on what could fit in the freezer. I know we have your sympathy when I tell you that this forced us, quite literally, to gorge ourselves on quail and jamon one desperate night. The anguish. Happily, octopus not only freezes well, but freezing actually helps to tenderize it, so in to the ice-chest went our three 8-legged friends.

So recently, when the time came, and after having followed our tried and tested octopus boiling method on one of the ‘puses, we found ourselves reminiscing about a wonderful, crisp octopus salad we ate in the famed town of Alba in Italy’s Piemonte region two summers ago. Surprisingly, perhaps, for a restaurant specializing in Albanese specialties (truffles, mushrooms, game, and hearty red wines), but appropriate for the conditions, the salad was similar, if not identical, to the kind of insalati di polipo typically found in Puglia. Perfect as a first-course for lunch on a scorching summer’s day, the crunchy, yet tender, octopus worked beautifully with crunchy and fibrous celery in a lively dressing of lemon juice and an almost unbelievably bright unfiltered olive oil.

Now, here in New York the conditions of late have not exactly mirrored those of July in Alba, but, reasoning that there was no better cure for seasonal affective disorder than a big plate of crunchy, zesty tentacles and the memory of the sun-heated flagstones under our bare feet, we went right ahead and made this magnificent salad all the same. Indeed, because sunshine is so scarce at this time of year, you should treat yourself to some liquid sunshine – the year’s new olive oils are becoming available – and this is a salad that really benefits from the best extra virgin oil you can afford.

Insalata di Polipo alla Pugliese (Puglian-Style Octopus & Celery Salad)

Ingredients

1 octopus (allowed to cool after being boiled and prepared in the traditional way), grilled on a grill, griddle pan, flat top or skillet and chopped into bite-sized chunks

2 large celery stalks, chopped roughly

1 plum tomato, chopped roughly

1/2 red onion, chopped roughly

3 tbsp flat-leaf (Italian) parsley

1 clove garlic, smashed & chopped finely

3 tbsp your best olive oil

juice of 1 lemon

pinch of salt & black pepper (substituting hot red pepper flakes for the black pepper works nicely)

Recipe

Combine all ingredients together in a bowl. Mix well to ensure oil and lemon juice coat all components. Enjoy with thoughts of summer.

File this one under “utter fabrications told to you by older sibling and believed for too long”. I must have been very young when my sister (15 months my senior) informed me that I should be wary of eating my grandmother’s suet dumplings because suet was the gooey material supporting bovine eye-balls. Quite where she got this idea from, I’m not sure, but she seemed to believe it and, as a credulous juvenile, so did I. And so convinced was I, that until some brief research yesterday proved her to have been telling porkies, I had held it up as truth for the intervening 25 years or so. Why I found her a credible source about this I have no idea – she’s been a vegetarian since the age of 12, and an extremely picky eater before that.

Suet is, in fact, raw beef fat that is typically from around the animals’ kidney or loin area, and while that may not be a much less appetizing prospect than eye-socket, it certainly helps explain why it should be used in the preparation of a traditional British dumpling. It’s basically a firm kind of lard that melts perfectly at the relatively low temperatures found on top of a stew, which is where a British dumpling is typically found.

American readers will be forgiven for commonly associating dumplings only with Chinese restaurants, or at the outside, with Russian or Polish cuisine, but in the northern reaches of Britain, suet dumplings are, or, at least, were a frequent sight floating on top of a thick stew during the winter. And indeed, suet dumplings do look and taste a bit like their Chinese counterparts – slightly chewy and definitely filling, except that they’re much less uniform in shape and are not wrapped in pasta, the filling is the dumpling, basically. Suet as an ingredient though, is not confined to the creation of floaters, it’s also used in the recipe for other traditional British favorites as spotted dick, pastry, Christmas pudding and mincemeat, demonstrating remarkable flexibility as a fat and flavoring.

Suet is also commonly used throughout the Caribbean in the preparation of patties, particularly in Jamaica, and I think that this is the reason for it appearing on the shelves of our local supermarket, as not far from us resides a large and vibrant Caribbean community.

We’ll definitely be exploring some patty recipes with suet in the near future (a $2 package goes a long way), but for the time being, please consider searching out some suet and making yourself a good old British dinner this weekend. It’s on oft-repeated maxim among survival experts that icy temperatures can best be braved when you’re core is fired with plenty of firm beef fat. I’m not kidding.

Chicken & Root Vegetable Stew with Herbed Suet Dumplings (serves 4-6)

Ingredients

• 4 bone-in chicken breasts, or (preferably) 6-8 bone-in chicken thighs
• 1 large yellow onion, roughly sliced
• 1 large leek, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 3 large carrots, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 2 parsnips, cut into 1 inch chunks
• 4 medium potatoes, cut into eighths, or 2 inch chunks
• 4 cloves garlic, roughly chopped
• 1 bouquet garni (store bought, or wrap parsley, bay and thyme in the green part of a leek and secure with string)
• pinch of hot pepper flakes
• 2oz (50 grams) dry white wine
• 3 tsp olive oil
• 2-3 pints (1-1. liters) chicken stock (depending on size of pot you’re using)
• 2oz (50 grams) plain flour
• salt and black pepper

For the dumplings:

• 4.5oz (125 grams) plus a bit more, plain flour
• 2oz (50 grams) grated or very finely diced fresh suet
• 2-3oz (50-75 grams) water
• 1/4 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp kosher salt
• 1 tbsp chopped parsley

Recipe

• Heat oil in large heavy casserole or dutch oven to medium.
• Dust chicken pieces with flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper and place in pot. Allow to brown well on all sides – about ten minutes.
• Remove chicken and add onions, carrots, potatoes, parsnips and leeks. Sweat until lightly browned, about 6 minutes.
• Add garlic and hot pepper, and cook for a further 2 minutes, or until garlic softens and perfumes room.
• Deglaze pot with white wine or 2oz of the stock. Make sure all the caramelized chicken juices come up before adding remaining stock (or enough to cover contents) and bouquet garni.
• Cover and allow to simmer for around 40 minutes.
• In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, chopped suet and parsley. Mix well.
• Add half of your water and stir. If dumpling mixture is too dry add more, but you’re looking for a dough that’s nicely sticky and elastic, not too damp.
• Then using two tablespoons, make quennelles with dough and removing the pot lid, gently plop them into simmering stew. Alternatively, flour your hands well and make squash-ball size dumplings and drop them in.
• Then, re-cover stew and allow to simmer for another 10-15 minutes.
• Serve in a bowl and allow to stick to your ribs. Repeat with second helpings.

Even though mulled wine should remind me of being in the church choir as a cherub-faced youngster and singing Christmas carols with frosty breath overlooking a seasonally-decorated nave and a sea of pink-cheeked parishoners, it doesn’t. In spite of this being the way I was introduced to this most famous Yuletide beverage, my abiding memories of it from childhood (before I ever got to drink any, I should mention) are of a warm cinnamon-scented aroma spiked sharply with the acrid tang of disinfectant and the musty odor of old people. And this, perhaps unsurprisingly, had put me off it until comparatively recently.

You see, as part of the church’s annual carol-singing calendar, we choristers had to visit all the hospitals, hospices and senior citizens homes in town, and my sensitive smell-o-memory was scarred for many years by this revolting combination of smells. That was, until I visited a friend in the French city of Lyon around Christmastime a few years back.

As an icy mistral wind blew down the Rhône valley, vin chaud or hot wine was being served out of a deep cauldron to chilled shoppers perusing the seasonal wares of Lyon’s famed Christmas market in Place Carnot. And I found the atmosphere of seasonal bonhomie, red noses, black tobacco, and warm, spicy alcohol irresistible. I’m not sure whether it was the cold, the booze, or the giant cans of duck confit and cassoulet on sale that so moved me, but from that moment on, I have been hooked on mulled wine.

A Brief History of Mulling

In days gone by, wine went bad pretty quickly due to poor bottling techniques, so during the Renaissance period, spices began to be added – as they were to virtually everything else in that time – to both delay spoilage and make spoiled products taste less nasty. And since young wines were commonly bottled during the early fall, mulling (which originally only meant to ruminate or ponder lengthily) was necessary by Yuletide as some were beginning to turn to the dark side, and hence how the consumption of “mulled wine” became a holiday tradition.

The exact combination of spices varies from country to country and person to person, but, on the whole, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and bay are mixed into claret or another Bordeaux to form the basis of flavors. Variations (and there are many) include the addition of mace, juniper, black pepper, dry citrus peel or vanilla, and substitutions include honey or molasses for the sugar, cardamom for the cloves, and brandy, sherry, acquavit, brenivin, fruit wine or vodka for the red wine.

Mulled wine, aka vin chaud, gluhwein, glögg, vin fiert, vin brulé, quentão, is drunk in most European countries in some form or another around Christmas, but it is particularly associated with German and Nordic traditions where so-called “glogg” parties are a holiday season staple. At these shin-digs, the spiced wine is typically drunk with other Yule specialties including gingerbread, blue cheese and, perhaps rather curiously, rice-pudding.

In my house growing up, however, we only ever had mulled wine when we were expecting company because my father, who has something of an intolerant nose for anything strongly perfumed, can’t abide the stuff, and, it being during the early 1980s, it was accompanied by cheese and pineapple cubes on toothpicks, cocktail weenies (chipolatas), factory-made mince pies, and potted shrimp. All of which is perhaps another reason why I didn’t really catch on to the subtle flavors and myriad charms of mulled wine until I’d left home.

But, of course, now that I have, I’m almost obsessed with making it every year, and so impassioned am I about it, that I’ll frequently pour myself a large glass and then go and stand outside in the cold to drink it to try to recreate the Lyonnaise atmosphere of years ago. Of course, it doesn’t work that well, but it beats the shit out of taking my glass and hymn book to a seniors center and evoking older memories…

Happy Boozy Holidays to you all!

Jonny’s Holiday Mulled Wine (serves 6-8)

Ingredients:

• 2 bottles of red wine
• 1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
• 1 teaspoon of cloves
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 star anise
• 4 sticks of cinnamon
• 12 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1/3 cup of orange juice
• peel of 1 orange
• peel of 1 lemon
• 1 orange sliced in 1/4 inch rounds

What to do:

1. Optional: Tie all spices in a piece of cheesecloth using kitchen twine. You can skip this if you’d prefer to laugh at guests with cloves stuck in their teeth.
2. Heat wine in pot gently with spices/sachet and peel until aromas fill the room (at least 15 minutes). Do not boil, only simmer very, very gently.
3. Stir in sugar and orange juice. Taste for sweetness and adjust if necessary.
4. Place orange rounds in mugs and ladle in wine.
5. Stir and serve with a cinnamon stick and enjoy!

Not your average Christmas meal…

We couldn’t let this month go by without doing some sort of “holiday themed” post. We were scratching our head trying to come up with this months “Top 5″ contest thinking of such winners as, “Top 5 Most Friggin’ Annoying Christmas Tunes” and “Top 5 Christmas Sweaters Your Mom Owns” but settled on our original, and simple, idea of asking you to divulge your Top 5 favorite foods and/or drinks that you only really have around the holidays.

The first Christmas Jonny and I spent together was his first Christmas living in America. It was a bittersweet time for him because it was a reminder that he was really, really living in the US and not going home to the UK for awhile. It was also a serious reminder to him that he was stuck spending more time with my family than with his own. Not that there was anything wrong with him thinking this – my family is very loud, very loving and very crazy (in a good way?) and a quiet ‘ole Englishman would sometimes love to press the “mute” button on all of us every once in awhile if he could. That first Christmas, I thought I was pretty clear about our family’s traditions. We “do it up” for Christmas Eve dinner and our Christmas Day is basically spent leisurely opening up gifts and watching 5 reruns of “A Christmas Story” in a row only to be interrupted around 1PM by my mother screaming “brunch is on the table”. Brunch usually consists of some eggs, scrapple, pork roll, bagels and anything else that is found in the fridge. It’s nothing really that special, I guess.

This particular Christmas, I believe we all slept in. If memory serves correct, we all didn’t start opening up gifts till about 1PM and brunch was moved to about 3 or 3.30PM. After brunch we continued our normal Christmas Day which usually also involves a nap. Jonny and I awoke from our nap on the couch to find my sister also asleep and my mom and dad gone. They were invited to the neighbor’s house for dinner as were we. But Jonny was still in his “getting to know everyone” phase and, during this time, he was often treated as a specimen, being poked and prodded as though no one had ever encountered anyone from another country in their life. “So you really are English, Jonny, huh!? That’s soooo cool!”

A Ginger-Bling Would be a Fine, Strong Christmas Drink

Needless to say, Jonny didn’t want to go to the neighbors. He pouted as he looked around wondering what the frig was going on. “It’s Christmas! Where is everybody? When is everyone going to start cooking!?” I sat there unable to really understand why he was so upset, “Well, Jonny, we don’t really cook Christmas Day dinner. We have our big night on Christmas eve. I guess we could just go to the neighbors if you want to eat.” He couldn’t believe it… he began to get very irritated and sad… actually sad! As the night unfolded, we ended having our first disagreement based on our different Christmas traditions. I tried to do the best I could to make him feel better pouring him a huge glass of something strong and telling him we were going to make this work. WE were going to cook our own Christmas Day dinner. In my fantasy we’d start our own tradition. And then we looked in my parents fridge – nothing, not even leftovers from Christmas Eve dinner. We looked in the freezer – holy shit. Nothing but a ball of hamburger meat!!! And then I walked to the pantry with a desperate look on my face and there it was in all it’s glory – a can of Sloppy Joe mix. And that’s what I made my new love who moved across the ocean to be with me – canned slopply joe on toast. Why he’s still here I’ll never know. One thing I can tell you is that sloppy joe’s will NOT be on Jonny’s Top 5 Holiday Food list!

So, without further ado, I have based my Top 5 Favorite Holiday Food/Drink on the traditions I grew up with. You know, those things that only rear their head in December or only on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day.

1. My mom’s kind of gross, but very delicious Crab Dip that is on the app table every Christmas Eve (recipe involves mayo, cream cheese, sherry and lump crab or KRAB if you must).
2. Chestnuts (roasted on an open fire – kidding, we’ve never done that at home)
3. Egg Nog (the processed kind that is local to the Philadelphia region – ie: Wawa brand)
4. This delicious appetizer that our good family friend always bring over that involves a dried apricot topped with nuts and some cream cheese. Not sure what the hell it’s called but it’s DAMN good.
5. Communion. Let’s be honest, the lord’s communion tastes better after 2 cosmo’s, 6 glasses of wine and 2 Sambuca’s before midnight mass.

Hey, Jonny, why don’t you chime in with your Top 5?

1. mulled wine (gluhwein/vin chaud). Nothing says Christmas to me like the taste and smell of the aromatic spices in mulled wine, not to mention that warm alcohol goes straight to your head.
2. brandy or rum butter/hard sauce: I actually hate this stuff with a passion, but again it’s redolent of the Christmases of my youth when my grandma (gawd bless her) would have a tiny piece of Christmas pudding topped with about a pint of hard sauce, and then pass out about half an hour later. Not sure whether it was the booze or the cholesterol.
3. mince pies: another English tradition, but this one I really like. there’s no mince (it’s dried fruit & nuts, sugar and spices) in a sweet pastry sprinkled with sugar. perfect combination is a glass of mulled wine in one hand and a mince pie in the other, possibly mumbling some Christmas carols and trying not to spit raisins and hazelnut bits everywhere.
4. cheddar cheese and pineapple cubes on cocktail sticks: the essential 1980s hors d’oeuvre that always seems to get resurrected at Christmas.
5. Christmas cake: again, I’m not that keen on this traditional cake of dried fruit, nuts, sugar and spice wrapped in marzipan (frangipane) and thick white icing which is left to improve for at least a month before Yule, especially since I have awful memories of taking my sister’s Barbie plate and destroying my mother’s perfectly smooth icing one year and making her cry.

Nominate and Win!
Tell us what your top five Holiday comestibles are and win yourself some hand-made sachets of mulling spices and enjoy the holidays with some spiced-up booze!

And, while you’re at it, good fellow, I’ll have a warm bath with virtually anything you’ve got on the menu: pasta, potatoes, fish, chicken, soup, bread…

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

A man goes to the doctor complaining of neck ache. The doctor gives him some painkillers telling him to take two after a warm bath every evening for a week. When the man returns, the doctor asks him if he’s feeling better. “No,” replies the man, “my neck still hurts and it’s getting worse.” “Really? Did you not take two painkillers after a warm bath every night like I told you to?” asks the doctor. “I tried,” says the patient, “but I couldn’t swallow the pills after drinking the whole bath…”

No, dear readers, (and apologies for the excruciating “joke”), we’re not talking about any old warm bath, and certainly not the kind with bubbles and floating soap-dishes, no we’re talking about bagna caôda, the famed “warm bath” of the Piemonte and Liguria regions of northern Italy, that, as much as you might want to, you don’t actually climb into yourself.

Also spelled bagna càuda, this garlic, anchovy, oil and butter dipping sauce is to these parts of Italy what fondue is to the Swiss, and is typically consumed communally from a large central pot into which sharers dip their bread or raw, boiled or roasted vegetables. Like fondue, bagna caôda is always served hot, as it’s name suggests, and is usually eaten in the autumn and winter as an appetizer, starter or, even, a main course.

Quite apart from being phenomenally good and easy to make, it’s the ultimate combination of land and sea in the world of condiments. Combine anchovies fished off the Ligurian coasts with bright green and fruity Ligurian olive oil, tangy Piemontese garlic and sweet butter from the head of the Po Valley and you’ve got an awesome sauce that might be paired with anything. It’s not traditional – and you should try it the original way first – but we see no reason why bagna caôda couldn’t be made into a delicious pasta sauce with some tonno (Italian oil-cured tuna), spread on a fresh loaf for an amazing garlic bread, over grilled fish or chicken as an enhancing sauce, or mixed with mashed potatoes for a wonderfully flavorful side dish. Just be careful, it really is so damn good, you’ll be putting it your coffee next…

**I’d like to dedicate this post to Dana at Dana Treat for reminding me that a bit of  meat-free posts could be ok sometimes! I, like a carnivorous idiot, commented on her vegetarian blog post about brussel sprouts asking her to “just add pancetta” for a tasty twist (something cheesy like that). I was quickly reminded that that would be a great idea if she wasn’t a veggie. Anyways, although this isn’t purely vegetarian, it sure as hell does not contain meat. Thanks, Dana!**

Bagna Caôda con Verdure Miste Cotte (anchovy, garlic sauce with grilled mixed vegetables)

Ingredients (serves 4-5 as an appetizer)

• 20-40 pieces of your favorite veggies, cut into bite sizes (cauliflower, broccoli, fennel, carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, green beans and asparagus work well)
• 3/4 cup + 2 tsp good olive oil
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed
• 4 1/2 oz anchovy fillets, minced finely
• 2 1/2 oz unsalted butter
• ground black pepper

Recipe

• Over medium-low heat, gently cook garlic, anchovy and 3/4 cup olive oil in a saucepan until garlic softens and anchovy has pretty much dissolved, stirring occasionally. Do not brown garlic at all.
• Season with black pepper to taste.
• Stir in butter and allow to melt. Combine thoroughly and keep warm, do not allow to boil or cook anymore.
• Parboil root (and cauliflower/broccoli/fennel types)vegetables until beginning to soften. Remove to a ice bath and allow to cool thoroughly.
• Toss the cooled + still raw veggies with coarse sea salt, pepper and remaining olive oil , and grill over a hot fire until blistered and crunchy.
• Serve immediately with a warm bowl of bagna caôda and lots of fresh bread to catch the drips. Enjoy!

So maligned are pressure-cookers that it seems almost sacrilegious of a food blog like this, that likes to extol the virtues of fresh ingredients and traditional cooking methods, to even consider adding a recipe that calls for using one. Undaunted, here we are flaunting convention and defying the culinary thought-police once more with a recipe for red wine and herb braised lamb shanks made in our brand spanking new pressure-cooker. Of course, this is but an exaggeration. We’re perfectly happy to try almost any food and any cooking method, and since we’d got given a pressure-cooker for a wedding present, and yesterday was the first autumnal feeling day of the year, we thought, why not give it a try?

Pressure-cookers got their bad name originally for two principal reason. Firstly, they were fundamentally quite dangerous contraptions that were liable to explode and inflict either physical injury by launching scalding lumps of food at those in the kitchen, or enduring damage to your kitchen decor, or both. And secondly, because they tended to stew food, boil out it’s goodness and turn everything to mush. However, advances in design and therefore safety mean that modern pressure-cookers are regaining popularity for their astounding ability to cook dishes that normally take several hours, within forty minutes, while preserving the food’s goodness.

We were first put on to the beauty and convenience of the pressure-cooker by the humble, and vastly underrated, Jacques Pepin. On more than one episode of Fast Food, My Way, Monsieur Pepin gets out his trusty pressure cooker and makes a delicious braised dish (beef, mushrooms and pearl onions, from memory) in about half an hour, while describing how he was inspired by his mother who used to use her pressure cooker on weekday evenings to create a hearty family meal in under an hour. Apparently, Maman Pepin would chop the vegetables and meat while still in her coat, and then slap the lid on the pressure-cooker, while she did various other household chores, and while we used our pressure-cooker for the first time last night (a Sunday) we can definitely see how using it on a weekday meal in the winter would work extremely well.

Here’s the recipe for the dish we made, but there are probably hundreds of different things you could make, all of them inside forty minutes. Next time, we’re going to make lamb rogan josh curry.

Check out some of our other pressure-cooker recipes: Lemongrass Beef Shortribs, Korean Style Pork Ribs and Lebanese Fatteh Blahmeh.

Wine-Braised Lamb Shanks with Rosemary and Thyme in the Pressure-Cooker

1 1/2 – 2lbs lamb shanks (probably 2 shanks)
1 spanish onion, roughly diced
3-6 large garlic cloves, roughly chopped
1 large carrot, roughly diced
1/2 lb mushrooms (whichever kind you like) quartered, halved or whole depending on size
3 sprigs fresh rosemary
7-10 sprigs fresh thyme
1/4 bottle red wine (whatever you like drinking)
1pt chicken or vegetable stock
3 tbsp olive oil
4 tbsp flour
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper

1. add a couple of good pinches of salt and pepper to the flour in a bowl and dredge lamb shanks until lightly coated.
2. add half the oil to pressure cooker at medium-high heat and brown lamb until colored well on all sides. Remove and set aside.
3. reduce heat to medium and add onion, carrot and mushrooms to pot and remaining oil. sautee until onions go opaque and carrots soften a bit and get sugary. add garlic and sautee for three more minutes.
4. add herbs and the lamb shanks back to the pot. turn heat back to high and add wine and about 3/4 of the stock.
5. bring liquid to a boil then place lid on pressure cooker. keep heat turned to high until pressure monitor shows maximum pressure has been reached, then follow manufacturer’s directions for keeping pressure at the right level for the right amount of time. On our model, I turned the heat to medium, and cooked it for 35 minutes.
6. release pressure and stand back until steam clears.
7. season to taste before plating, but be careful! I burned the sh!t out of my mouth tasting the sauce
8. Enjoy.

I served the lamb with a smoked provolone, cream and parsley polenta and wilted broccoli di rape, and it worked very well indeed. It’s worth noting that the whole thing tasted much better the following day, as is often the case with sauces – they improve until finally they go off.

Do any of you have good pressure-cooker recipes? And, if so, are you brave enough to come out and say that you too appreciate the noble pressure-cooker for what it is – a much-maligned invention of genius? Well, come on then, let’s have them!