By my reckoning, we’ve only one more weekend’s worth of Christmas recipes to get through. Stay strong.
The Times and The Sunday Times
The Sunday Times went large on sweet things.
Jamie Oliver’s Banoffee Alaska might be a crowd pleaser over the festive period. There was an iced amalfi cake too (I prefer a drizzle), brownies (sour cherries and macadamia nuts), and billionaire’s shortbread, which looked just like millionaire’s (but who’d get out of bed for a mere seven figures these days?).
Also, more cake recipes from Bake Off’s Candice — a ginger and treacle cake, and a winter berry Victoria sponge. ‘Winter berries’ being 300g of mixed berries and some mulled berry jam. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
A day earlier, Nadiya Hussain’s white chocolate and strawberry palmiers recipe was necessarily sugary too. Inexplicably the finished pastry was shown interspersed with fallen leaves. Is there a hidden message or instruction here? Has Red Squirrel moved the nut store?
Once again, ‘fast’ things from Donna Hay. Tasty looking stuff, actually. Like duck with polenta and a quince and juniper sauce; and chilli, honey and sesame beef skewers.
There were loads of Christmas ‘tips’ in Saturday’s Weekend. Including Marcus Wareing making things easy, Mary Berry not stressing out, and a woman in a party frock holding a turkey. More helpful, but also on the sweet theme, were a few ideas on the old ‘alternative to Christmas pudding’ theme. I like the look of Nigella’s vanilla bundt and el Gordo’s Christmas bombe.
Away from cooking, do read AA Gill’s final column, on cancer and the NHS.
The FT Weekend
A couple of fussy recipes from French chef Anne-Sophie Pic. Butternut veloute with coffee cream might be interesting.
The Guardian and Observer
Loved Thomasina’s ideas for cooking with parsnips: gratinated with an apple allioli and made into a cake with brown butter icing.
For Ottolenghi fans, it was a tandoori paste that could then be used on chicken, prawns and, my favourite, roast cauliflower wedges.
And Cook readers were treated to another set of Thai recipes by Kiln’s Ben Chapman. Chiang Mai-style beef laap. Yes please.
Brits find pizza bianca a pretty divisive topic, I think. Rachel Roddy did her best to persuade naysayers.
Sunday was an OFM day. Lots of taste tests and round-ups, but also a set of new-to-me-and-perhaps-to-you-too Anglo-Italian Christmas recipes by Joseph Trivelli of the River Cafe. Slow roast duck stuffed with salami and fennel tops, sprouts under oil, pear, persimmon and ricotta crostata, and a coffee and grappa sorbet.
Also, Nigel Slater’s Christmas sides this year include roast sprouts with honey on parsnip mash, a whole Cumberland sausage with pancetta and dates, and lovely turkey mince, fennel seed and lardo stuffing (meatballs) in a cranberry and orange sauce.
Nigel’s recipes in the magazine were written with non-meat eaters’s Christmas meals in mind — parsnip, seed, herb and apple loaf, served with a mushroom and stout gravy.
The Telegraph
Diana Henry provided a few suggestions for the meals leading up to Christmas, with a good looking Guinness soda bread to go with smoked trout and a beetroot remoulade, pork belly and a spiced apple jelly, and roast squash with a walnut and herb relish. Oh, and slow gin and champagne jellies, and a mighty Bramley apple, marmalade and whisky trifle.
I liked Rose Prince’s hangover plans: rare steak with cucumber, lime, soy and honey; spaghetti with anchovies; vegetable curry.
But if I could eat anything from the weekend’s pages right now, it would be Stephen Harris’ whole roast salmon served with Jansson’s temptation (cured sprats, not anchovies with the spuds and onion).
On the Internet
Intriguing beef broth granita and icy buckwheat noodles over on Munchies (bit of an effort). These collard greens look good too.
And an interesting extract from an American book called My Two Souths over on Lucky Peach. The author Asha Gomez hails from Kerala but lives in Atlanta Georgia. The result: Kerala fried chicken and Low Country rice waffles with spicy syrup. And more likely for home cooks, mint masala chicken roasted over fennel and spuds.
#Supplemental cooking
Nothing from the papers. The photo above is of baklava in Tel Aviv’s Carmel market.
Weekend Menu, 10 and 11 December 2016
Glass of aquavit
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Whole roast salmon with Jansson’s temptation
Stephen Harris, The Telegraph
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Pear, persimmon and ricotta crostata
Joseph Trivelli, The Observer Food Monthly
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Double espresso and a grappa
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I love this newsletter but increasingly I cannot access the links as newspapers increasingly charge for articles online. I cannot access the times or ft and now the telegraph requires payment for some articles. Is there any way round this?
Hi Jackie – you’re right, the paywalls are getting taller. There are a few hacks (google an FT article rather than go direct, for example, and you’ll sometimes sneak through). But the loss of the Independent and its free content last year is a telling sign. We’ve got to pay for content, otherwise none of quality will be created. I sort of hope there’ll be ‘passports’ across various sites, or v manageable pay per view ways to look at sites (effectively buying credit), rather than simply subscribing for all. But perhaps that’s wishful thinking.