I started sneezing sometime before Christmas pudding, and I woke up on Boxing Day with a full on cold, feeling miserable and self-pitying. It still lingers when I write this five days later.
I decided several days ago what I would cook for the main meal on Boxing Day. However, I had failed to notice the bit in the recipe that said 'roast the onions for 8 hours at Gas Mark 1/4, and leave to drain over a sieve for 4 hours'. Who on earth does that on Christmas Day? So, the slow roasted onions were out.
The next part was salt-baked carrots. On reflection, these would have been better done with full proper carrots not Chantenay. Our consultant chef, a certain Mr Kerridge, suggested deep frying onion rings. Oh, but deep frying is such a hassle. I discovered that shallow fried onion rings don't work.
This leaves me with Poached plaice in a red wine sauce, which I can assure you is proper lush. Part of the trick, of course, is to reduce the sauce sufficiently. Got that right. Didn't really get the photo right. But that recipe will be attempted again, with a proper amount of attention to detail.
We followed up with cheese and biscuits. Definitely one of the highlights of Christmas. I know you're supposed to tastefully arrange chunks of various cheese onto the board, with a small selection of crackers, and some grapes, but, right, whatever.
Cheese and biscuits.
Still plenty left, of course.
I was always brought up to have cheese and biscuits after pudding - something about the cheese neutralising the effects of sugar in the mouth and the digestive system. But Jimmy says it's cheese and biscuits, and then pudding. I imagine people have divorced over less.
On the Friday we had fish pie. This has developed out of the Marcus Wareing 'ultimate' recipe and is now a standard in Gert Cottage.
The bottle of wine was finished, and I heard the port calling to me.
And the chocolates
This represents half of a communication breakdown. Jimmy bought these but didn't tell me before I went into Hotel Chocolat. I didn't mention to him that I was going there.
I also spotted this odd little Ginger fella in the fridge
