Ho Ho Ho

OMG, wine exam at 08h00 and it was so cold that holding my pen, poised above the paper ready to mark x’s in multiple guess was a challenge! Surprisingly not as bad as I thought it would be, YAY, you could almost hear the sighs of relief around the room - not exactly plain sailing, I was mumbling all my little anagrams under my breath to remember where Pouilly Fumé came from compared to Pouilly Fusé but certainly less terrifying than I imagined. All done in 40 minutes and then I raced home for the world’s largest cup of seriously hot tea to defrost before heading back at 09h30 for Christmas Demo.

The demo kitchen looked ‘grand’ as they’d say here, we’d left the evening before with it looking it’s normal old self and obviously the Christmas fairies passed through sometime before we returned the next morning because it was all dolled up and looking gorgeous – Pam and Flori were sporting Christmas head gear and even Darina had on a pair of snowman earrings. For the cherry on the cake (or the angel on the tree if you want to be seasonal), Pam’s apron featured Rudolph and every time she bumped his nose during the morning, on the corner of the oven or something, Rudolph would sing his song about having a red nose and all, it was certainly festive!

We launched into a whole lot of mincemeat recipes to start with, beginning with homemade mincemeat which I’m afraid to tell you is traditionally made with beef suet – your man won’t be pleased to hear that I don’t think, his daily quota of mince pies come the silly season is impressive but I doubt he knows about the secret ingredient.

The mince pies were utterly sublime though, best pastry I’ve tasted since starting the course, they didn’t just melt in your mouth, they gave your taste buds a full on day at the spa, incredible! We also learnt to make mincemeat shortbread, divine and a mincemeat crumble tart, doubly divine – can’t wait to make all these when I get home.

The Christmas pudding, or Plum Pudding as it’s known here (although there wasn’t a plum in sight) was brilliant too, I’m not a huge fan of Christmas pud to be honest, I normally have a small helping to justify the brandy butter because dishing that up on it’s own is just a step too far in terms of disgustingness, anyway this was different and really good, and even better I learnt a new sauce to go with all these things that might just have to take up residence next to the brandy butter at this year’s family Christmas – it’s known here as Mrs. Hanrahan’s sauce and basically it’s made of butter, cream, sugar and hurricane-style lashings of sherry and port, tells you enough really doesn’t it.

Early on in the morning the turkey (a super size me version of note) and a goose had made a brief appearance before being swiftly whipped into the oven to make sure they were ready for lunch. Darina did the most brilliant thing with the turkey that (I can confirm after my double helping at lunch) worked the bomb - soaked a piece of muslin cloth in melted butter (and I mean soak, if you’re going to do it, do it properly – no sprinkling allowed) and wrapped it all around the turkey, tucked him in for a good kip in the oven and the end result was that he emerged goden brown, crispy and juicy and you know that’s always the down side for me with turkey, that it's about as moist as a mouthful of cotton wool, not so with this little trick, YAY.

All the traditional good side dishes stopped by for the show – roast potatoes (done in duck fat, I’ve no words), glazed carrots, buttered brussel sprouts, very herby stuffing (more butter than bread crumbs I fear), cranberry sauce, bread sauce, apple sauce and litres of gravy. The goose was filled with potato stuffing which was equally yum, new for me but so worth making again.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a few more of those family favourites – trifle swimming in sherry, a Yule log (basically chocolate roulade filled with rum flavoured cream), Christmas pudding ice cream and ice cream with butterscotch sauce and last but not least, and maybe not appropriate for a 30 degree Seth Efrican Christmas but perfect for the return of the ice age which we’ve got here at the moment, mulled red wine which we had with lunch – staying awake for afternoon demo just got a bit harder!

Lunch was beyond good, so good that I lost the button off my jeans and had to scramble around on the floor subversively looking for it before everyone noticed and had a proper laugh.............so that’s my second Christmas lunch of the year and it’s only December 1^st, things are looking good, my Bellymaloe is certainly looking forward to the rest of the silly season, merry merry Christmas!!

Returned to my seat ( which alarmingly didn’t seem wide enough after lunch) for afternoon demo and the Student Wish List (things that we’d not yet done but which people wanted to see) which was an absolute mish mash of goodies – those wicked little chocolate puds that are molten chocolate in the middle, a French/Spanish country vegetable stew called Gabure Catalana, gnocchi with sage butter, paella with chicken, chorizo, mussels and prawns, good old Scotch eggs which they cooked just spot on, you know where the yolk is still a little bit soft, yum. All sorts of bread and butter puddings, traditional rice pudding which just isn’t a South African thing but one that I’m so taking home, utterly delish, brownies, brown bread ice cream, caramel truffles, banoffi pie, beef Wellington, kedgeree made with salmon and cream (to die for), walnut bread, eggs Benedict, venison stew with chestnuts and made with deer (someone asked which deer Bambi was which made me a bit sad, poor Bambi ending up in the pot), and hot chocolate soufflé. Someone had asked for guidance on how to skin, gut and joint a rabbit and then turn it into stew but thankfully there’d been a “rabbit sourcing problem” and there wasn’t one available for demo, fine by me, I wasn’t so sure about having to cut up Flopsy, Mopsy or Cottontail.....................

I’d put down proper red wine sauce, crème brûleé, tart tatin and the birthday cake that was served at Rory’s party a few weeks ago (which turned out to be hazelnut praline cake made with proper French butter cream) but it turns out that they’re all on the list, some we did yesterday and the praline cake is featuring on Friday apparently and red wine sauce next Tuesday so I’ll be sorted after that, all my wish list numbers ticked off and ready to be recreated at home – after I’ve bought some super glue to restore the button on my jeans or maybe just gone “bigger size” shopping instead, I know, I know, never a good move, I'll do my best to refrain but honestly, losing buttons and virtually cutting yourself in half when you sit down ain't good, there has to be a line somewhere.........