Holiday eating

I'm a bit behind, I think. All over food blogsville the talk is of new year's resolutions and of healthy soups with which to face post-festive heavy tummy syndrome. But I still want to talk about holiday food! (Though if you are after a good simple soup, you could a lot worse than this Spiced lentil soup I wrote about in October.) So, by way of a cheerio to Christmas and New Year, I thought I'd do a quick whizz through some culinary events of the last month of so.

In December, my great aunt sent me a cookie cutter out of the blue, presumably with a view to being on the receiving end of some cookies! I thought it was a reindeer, but a little light Googling later, I now know it's an elk. Which is great, because I can make the cookies all year round! The recipe for pepparkakor (Swedish ginger biscuits) that came with the cookie cutter was fantastic (though it made industrial quantities of cookie dough). I'll have to make some January elks and blog the recipe.

Mmmm, sloe gin!

For Christmas Eve I made a chocolate log, or bûche de noël. I used Delia's chocolate cake recipe, filled it with whipped cream and then made a chocolate ganache icing. Speaking of which, chocolate ganache icing is totally mental - all the recipes involve adding chocolate to hot cream. Which makes the chocolate split. I managed it the second time by melting the chocolate first and whisking it all up together immediately. But any more chocolate ganache icing tips would be gratefully received!

And the most important thing is that the ganache icing turned out really well. In fact, I was really pleased with my chocolate log - definitely one to add to the holiday repertoire.

This triumphant Christmas Day dessert wasn't strictly speaking one of my creations. Little sis and her fella made the Mont Blanc layer cake from a recipe by Dan Lepard. Layers of meringue, cream, chestnut purée and chocolate - amazing! And every dessert looks better with sparklers.

In the inbetweeny period between Christmas and New Year, little sis came visiting and we undertook a new cookery challenge - pork pibil. It's a slow cooked pork dish from Mexico. And it is, without doubt, the first recipe I've ever cooked from a YouTube video of a film director cooking it:

 

It took some speciality shopping, but I managed to find achiote (annatto seeds) and banana leaves in our local Chinese shop, of all places. 

We marinated our meat overnight for extra achioteness.

 

and served it with rice, guac and pink pickled onions from Mexican Food Made Simple

However, this was one of those recipes where you think "hmm, that's quite nice, but I could make it a lot better. I want to make it again right now, and make it better". It wasn't as tender as we had hoped and it was rather watery - I really must stop buying meat from supermarkets! So I hope to be back with this one too. And if anyone has any great recipes for pork pibil, please do let me know.

For New Year's Eve, Mr 'Splorer and I produced a slightly last minute pomegranate themed dinner for a couple of friends. As so often happens, the best bits of the meal were right at the beginning and right at the end. 

The tequila sunrises (using the tequila purchased for the pork pibil) were surprisingly fruity and delicious. I can only put it down to my home-made grenadine. I found the recipe here, but basically what you do is reduce pomegranate juice by half and then add equal amounts of sugar (so I started with 4 cups, reduced it to 2 and then added 2 cups of sugar). Mr 'Splorer and I have been living on orange juice and grenadine, which surely must be called a sunrise, ever since. 

Mr 'Splorer made this amazing Pomegranate Jewel Cake from Nigella's Feast. It's one of those no flour, all eggs and ground almonds and lemons numbers, with a nutty, moist texture, and got polished off in record time! And it looks great - perfect for a celebratory occasion. Becky of Girl Interrupted Eating has posted the recipe already (with an orange zesty cream - yum!) here. Although we discovered that it goes surprisingly well with Ben and Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream.

And last, but not least, is the reprise of the Mincemeat Crumble Tart from love and a licked spoon. This is definitely going to become a seasonal favourite. This year I made extra mincemeat in preparation. Pastry, apples, mincemeat, crumble - heaven on a plate! Mr 'Splorer just had three portions. Oh, and it goes wonderfully with Greek yoghurt.

So, I hope you had a sparkling Christmas and New Year, and that the dreaded return to work tomorrow morning doesn't make you feel too fizzled.