1. The simplest: mincemeat palmiers

Buy a block of ready-made puff pastry and roll it out thinly into an oblong. Spread thinly all over with mincemeat, then starting from a short side, roll up the pastry like a Swiss roll. Cut into slices about 2 cm thick, and lay them on a non-stick baking tray (or a tray lined with silicone/baking parchment). Put in the fridge for half an hour or so.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Put the tray in and cook for about 10 minutes, till the pastry is golden. Remove and cool to lukewarm before sprinkling with icing sugar and serving. This is a great and easy alternative to conventional mince pies.

2. Classic and luxurious: almond paste mince pies

I used this recipe; I don’t know why it’s called “almond paste” because there are no almonds in it, only almond essence. I was very pleased with these; the pastry was crisp and golden, and the “almond” paste makes for a lighter topping than pastry. Delicious. I didn’t have a piping bag so I just rolled the paste into small balls, flattened them and placed them on top of the mincemeat. So they looked a lot less elegant, but still tasted good. If, or rather when, I make these again, I’ll substitute ground almonds for some of the flour in the paste though!

3. Comfort food: Eliza Acton’s mincemeat pudding

I loved this; it was my favourite of the three, although it’s a pudding rather than a teatime treat. I’d happily eat it instead of Christmas pudding. It’s basically bread and butter pudding with mincemeat in it. I found the recipe in Elizabeth David’s Christmas; the original is from Eliza Acton‘s Modern Cookery, and is labelled “Author’s Receipt”.

Eliza Acton’s mincemeat pudding
About 4-5 slices of brioche, milk loaf or, at a pinch, white bread
mincemeat
3 eggs
300 ml milk
150 ml single cream
60 g sugar
salt

Spread the slices of brioche thinly with mincemeat. Layer them in a deep, round baking dish (I used a souffle dish about 15 cm in diameter).

Whisk together the eggs, milk, cream, sugar, and a pinch of salt. Pour carefully over the brioche and leave to stand for an hour. Then preheat the oven to 150C and bake for 45 minutes, until it is just set. Serve at once (although I will happily eat the leftovers cold).

The result of googling to find a way of using up the rather flat Guinness left over from making the Christmas pudding. Yes, I could have drunk it, but that wouldn’t have been enterprising enough. Anyway, my search threw up at least a dozen variations of this ginger cake, all based on an original from the Gramercy Tavern, whatever that is. Since I like ginger cake and I had all of the ingredients except molasses, the decision was made.

But first, the usual trip to Diana’s Desserts to convert all those dratted American cup measurements. I started out with the version of the recipe at Smitten Kitchen, then reeled in horror when I found that my conversions resulted in 220 g of flour and 650 g of sugar. Beurkh, as we say in France. “No wonder Americans are so fat,” I ungraciously muttered. I bet Deb isn’t fat at all. Although I have tangled with an over-sweet cake recipe from Smitten Kitchen before.

Anyway, one of the comments on the Smitten Kitchen post led me to Epicurious where there was a version of the recipe posted by its originator, Claudia Fleming. For the same amount of flour and eggs, half as much sugar. Phew.

Taking due note of the many comments about spending half an hour scraping caramelised batter off the oven floor, I was slightly nervous as I poured the alarmingly liquid batter into the tin. It was more like pancake batter than cake mixture. Even though the batter was well below the top of the tin, I took the precaution of putting it on a baking tray to ease cleanup. But in fact it was fine and cooked in the time advertised. The cake turns out very moist with a rather coarse crumb, and — dare I say it — it could have been a little bit sweeter. Don’t stint on the spices, it needs them. I also have a sneaking feeling that some sliced pears arranged in the bottom of the tin to make an upside-down cake could be rather good, in which case you could skip the icing. Or you could serve it with vanilla or cinnamon ice cream.

220 ml Guinness or other stout
220 ml black treacle or dark molasses (not blackstrap), or 150 g dark soft brown sugar and 50 ml water
1/2 tablespoon bicarbonate of soda
3 large eggs
100 g granulated sugar
120 g dark soft brown sugar
150 ml vegetable oil
220 g plain flour
2 tablespoons ground ginger
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground allspice
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cardamom
1 tablespoon grated root ginger

Icing:
icing sugar
lemon juice

In a large saucepan over high heat, combine the stout and molasses (or brown sugar and water if you don’t have any molasses) and bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and add the bicarbonate of soda. Allow to sit until the foam dissipates. Note, you do need a LARGE pan. I may not have needed to clean the oven but I did have to swiftly wipe up sticky, foaming beer from the hob. Mind you, I’m not quite sure what the point of this procedure is, other than some kind of magic. Won’t the bicarb be totally inactive by the time you put it in the oven?

Anyway, preheat the oven to 170 C. Butter a 22 x 15 cm tin, line the bottom and sides with baking parchment, and grease the parchment. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs and all the sugar. Whisk in the oil. In a second bowl, whisk together the flour, ground ginger, baking powder, cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, cardamom, and fresh ginger. Combine the cooled stout mixture with the egg mixture, then whisk this liquid into the flour mixture, half at a time.

Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 1 hour, or until the top springs back when gently pressed. Don’t open the oven until the cake is almost done, or the centre may sink. Cool in the tin for at least half an hour, then finish cooling on a wire rack. When cold, store in a tin. Ideally keep for at least 24 hours before eating; the flavour definitely improves with keeping.

I made a simple icing by whisking together icing sugar and a little lemon juice to make a glaze. But you could make some cream cheese frosting instead. Or just eat it plain!

I’m making this a second entry for Jacqueline’s bookmarked recipes challenge.

Margaret Costa’s Four Seasons Cookery Book has always lived in the reserve collection. I honestly don’t know why. Nigel Slater himself says: ‘If I had to choose only one book to cook from for the rest of my life it would be this one.’ Picking it up and starting to read, I instantly saw that she and I were of the same mind. The preface begins:

Professional chefs are notoriously bad at giving recipes for domestic kitchens. They are unable to think in small quantities for a start, they are maddeningly vague about times and temperatures, they use words which create total, unreasoning panic in the mind of the ordinary cook: déglacer, dégorger, tomber, revenir, beurre manié — no wonder we lose our heads.

Even the words we think we recognise — blend, beat, sieve — all mean something different to them because they use different equipment. And then they are used to having things to hand. “Garnish with truffles,” they cry, “cook in clarified butter, stuff with a duxelles, finish with a spoonful of hollandaise.” “The sauce? Oh, just a simple jus lié with the addition of a little demi-glace.”

She sums up everything I don’t like about 99% of cookbooks by professional chefs (the Roux brothers are a very honourable exception). And she was married to a chef! I like her introduction to the canapé section too:

Just listen to the next big party you go to: a party where there are enough nice little things to eat has a warm, contented sound, a sort of purr, quite different from the harsh, strident noise where there’s nothing but alcohol and cigarette smoke.

I’d love to go to a party catered by her; her “nice little things to eat” are all mouth-watering, and most are easy to do.

It’s a wide-ranging book, organised roughly by season (some dishes can be cooked all the year round though) — and within each season by theme. So Winter for example includes chapters like Christmas Classics, Party Pieces, Comforting Breakfasts, Winter Soups, Cooking with Wine (a sign of the 1970s that you had to have a special chapter for this!), Proper Puddings, Marmalade … Costa is from the same school as Jane Grigson: erudition worn lightly, with unpretentious yet elegant and classic dishes covering the whole range from dinner parties through everyday meals to preserves and bread baking. Perhaps part of the reason I don’t use this book more is precisely because Jane Grigson is my first port of call when I’m looking for this type of book.

Again like those traditional writers (Grigson, Elizabeth David, Patience Grey) this is a book you can read for sheer pleasure, even if you don’t cook a thing from it. The party pieces, the “proper puddings”, and the preserving chapters are the highlight of the book for me. So this post isn’t exactly a vintage feast, just a sampling of a couple of items from the book (which now sprouts a forest of bookdarts heralding future cooking sessions).

I have never cooked chutney in my life, apart from a brief and fairly successful flirtation with mango chutney. This is possibly due to traumatic memories of a house reeking of vinegar from top to bottom when my mother was engaged in her annual days-long chutney-making session, during which the rest of the family would move out to the garden for the duration. So it’s perhaps surprising that the first recipe I chose from here was the tomato and red pepper chutney, from the very comprehensive preserving chapter. Partly because I bought a big bag of peppers from the market for 3 euros, partly inspired by the chutney-making fervour displayed at the Cottage Smallholder forum.

Costa doesn’t weigh you down with instructions — she just tells you to mince or chop everything up, put it in a pan with the vinegar, sugar, and spices, and “simmer till thick”. The suggested 2 hours’ simmering stretched to 5 hours; I think my simmer must have been too low. But it did eventually acquire a jammy consistency, and I decided this was good enough. Into the jars it went, looking very convincingly like chutney. Verdict in a month or so, when it’s matured! Meanwhile, all the windows are open to eliminate the vinegar smell.

While that was bubbling away, I made some Belgian bun cake, because I’d made some lemon curd a couple of days ago. This is basically a rich brioche dough, spread with lemon curd and sprinkled with candied peel and currants, rolled up and baked. It turns out like a lemony panettone, best eaten while still slightly warm and fragrant from the oven. Delicious, and I already have plans for a very luxurious bread and butter pudding with part of it.

I won’t give the recipe for the chutney here, because I’m waiting to see how it turns out. But here’s my version of the Belgian brioche.

Dough:
350-400 g plain flour (not bread flour)
150 ml milk
50 g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
85 g butter
1 sachet instant yeast (or 15 g fresh yeast)
2 eggs
finely grated zest of 1 untreated lemon
Filling:
3-4 tbs lemon curd
150 g currants, sultanas, or other dried fruit
100 g candied peel
Glaze:
1 tbs milk
1 tbs caster sugar

I made the dough on the dough setting of my bread machine, first warming the milk, sugar, salt and butter in a jug in the microwave, just enough to melt the butter. The dough ended up a bit sloppy and sticky, so if you’re going to do this I suggest checking up on it after 5-10 minutes and adding more flour if you think it looks too wet — it should still be a very soft dough though, not like bread dough. I just floured it liberally when I took it out of the machine.

To make the dough by hand, warm the milk, sugar, salt and butter as above, letting it cool to lukewarm before adding to the dough. If you’re using fresh yeast, start it off in a couple of tablespoons of warm water with an extra teaspoon of sugar. Otherwise, just put the milk mixture in a bowl with the well-beaten eggs and add about half the flour and the yeast. Beat together well, add the grated lemon rind, and then work in enough of the rest of the flour to make a soft but not sticky dough. Turn onto a floured board, knead till smooth and springy, then turn into an oiled bowl, cover, and leave to double in bulk (about an hour, depending on how warm your kitchen is).

Whichever way you made the dough, spread a large piece of parchment paper on your work surface and sprinkle with flour. Turn the dough onto it and pat it out into a rectangle about 35 x 20 cm. Spread generously with lemon curd and then sprinkle liberally with candied peel and dried fruit (I used currants, but I think chopped dried apricots or dried cranberries would be lovely). Starting from a long side, roll it up — this is where the paper comes in handy, because if the dough is sticky, you can use the edge of the paper to lift up the edge, unsticking it from the paper with a table knife as you go.

Now cut the roll into slices about 2.5 cm thick. Butter a roasting tin about 20×30 cm, and pack the slices into it in rows. Cover with a cloth and leave to double in size again.

Preheat the oven to 220C. Bake for about 20 minutes, till golden brown on top. Meanwhile, warm the milk and sugar for the glaze enough to dissolve the sugar. As soon as you take the brioche out of the oven, brush the top with the glaze to make it nice and shiny. Leave to cool and eat just warm.

I never cease to be inspired by apricots, one of my favourite fruits for cooking with. This tart has many of the same ingredients as apricot frangipane tart, but with quite different results — and it’s much quicker to make. It’s based on the very English Bakewell tart, but the usual raspberry or strawberry jam is replaced with an apricot compote flavoured with vanilla and rosemary. I venture to suggest that the result is better than the original; apricot and almond are a classic pairing, and the sharp, intense flavour of the apricot layer contrasts well with the light, spongy topping. You can serve this lukewarm as a pudding, with a dollop of crème fraîche, a pool of custard, or simply some pouring cream. Or when cold, serve as a cake with tea.

The recipe makes much more compote than you need, but this is no hardship; store it in the fridge and serve folded through Greek yoghurt, with ice cream and crisp almond biscuits, as a layer in an apricot trifle, or as a cheesecake topping.

Apricot compote:
1 kg ripe apricots
1 vanilla pod
2 sprigs rosemary
1 tbsp olive oil
30 g butter
150 g sugar
1 small glass muscat or other sweet wine

I recommend tying the rosemary up in muslin if you don’t want to spend ages picking spiky leaves out of the finished compote with tweezers. No need to ask how I know this.

Wash the apricots, halve them, and remove the stones. Put the oil and butter in a heavy saute pan. Slit the vanilla pod lengthways, and scrape the seeds into the pan with the tip of a knife. Heat the oil and butter, then cook the apricots over a high heat for a couple of minutes, turning them to start the juices running. Add the vanilla pod, rosemary, muscat, and sugar. Continue to cook on a low heat, stirring occasionally to stop them sticking. The apricots will cook to a mush, and the juice should reduce and thicken; this will take about 20 minutes. Taste to see if you like the result; if you have a sweeter tooth than I do, you might want to add more sugar.

Remove the vanilla and rosemary and leave to cool.

Pastry: make some plain shortcrust with 120 g of flour and 60 g of butter, and use it to line a 20-cm tart tin.

Topping
50 g butter at room temperature
50 g sugar
1 egg
25 g flour
50 g ground almonds
1/2 tsp baking powder
about 1 tbsp milk
almond or vanilla essence
flaked almonds (optional)

Cream the butter and sugar until smooth and light. Beat the egg with the almond or vanilla essence, then beat into the butter mixture a little at a time. In a separate bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients (except for the flaked almonds) and add to the egg mixture in two batches, beating thoroughly to incorporate. If the mixture seems stiff, add a little milk.

Preheat the oven to 180C. Spread the pastry in the tin generously with the cooled compote. Then carefully drop dollops of the topping on top, using a wet knife to spread it to cover the entire surface. It will look meagre, but it puffs up as it cooks. If there’s any pastry left over, you can cut out leaves or other shapes to decorate the top. Or sprinkle with a few flaked almonds.

Bake the tart for about 30 minutes, until the top is brown and springy. Leave to cool to lukewarm before serving.

More googling, and I hit upon Vegan Yum-Yum’s version. Aha, no eggs! I tried it and was really pleased with the result (and so were the choir members who got to taste it).

It was a bit soggy, and I messed up the frosting by cooking it too long, but candying the clementines gave it a really marmaladey flavour which I liked a lot. You can serve it for tea or as a dessert — skip the frosting and add a dollop of Greek yoghurt or crème fraîche. I’ve made it twice since then; it freezes well too. You do have to plan in advance to cook the clementines, but they’ll keep in the fridge for up to a week, or you can freeze them. Use the remaining syrup to make champagne cocktails (or just top up with sparkling water).

Here’s my metric version. When blitzing the clementines, try to drain them well so that you don’t include too much syrup, otherwise the cake will be even soggier. We don’t have bundt pans here, so I just made it in a loaf tin.

Candied clementines
12-15 clementines, well washed
900 g Sugar
700 ml water

Note: despite the name these aren’t candied in the sense of being sticky and chewy; they’re really just poached.

Pierce the clementines 8-10 times with a toothpick. Put them in a large pan with the sugar and water. Bring to a simmer and cook for 1-2 hours — don’t let them boil. Leave to cool in the syrup. Store in the fridge when cold.

Clementine cake
About 300 ml pureed candied clementines (about 6-8 clementines)
110 ml vegetable oil
220 ml low-fat milk (non-dairy if you are vegan of course; I’m sure almond milk would be good)
55 g sugar
220 g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Grease a loaf tin and line with baking parchment. Use a food processor to blitz the well-drained clementines; don’t make a complete puree, there should be detectable bits of peel. Measure the quantity you need after blitzing. Whisk the oil, milk, and sugar into the puree. Combine the remaining dry ingredients and then fold them into the clementine mixture.

Pour the mixture into the tin (mine was quite sloppy). Bake for 45 minutes to an hour, using a skewer or toothpick to check it’s cooked. Cool slightly in the tin, then turn out onto a wire rack. I prefer it without icing.

I can still remember the first piece of French pâtisserie I ate, aged 18, on a hot summer day in Brittany. We came out of the bakery with our paper-wrapped slices and sat on a wall in the sunshine to eat them: my very first taste of tarte aux pommes. The pastry was flaky and buttery, the creamy layer of crème pâtissière melted into the thinly sliced apples, slightly burnt at the edges and brushed with shiny apricot glaze that stuck to our fingers. It was unlike anything I’d ever tasted, and I knew I wanted to stay in France forever, so I could eat like this every day.

I don’t think I’ve ever found quite that tart in a pâtisserie since; most of them lack the custard layer and just have plain sliced apples, or a layer of tart apple purée. Delicious all the same, but when I encountered Jane Grigson’s apple tarts from Evreux in Good Things in about 1980, I gave a cry of recognition and set about perfecting them. It took a while, but eventually, after several tweaks to the recipe, my own creations were as wonderful as I remembered that first slice being.

And then I stopped making them, turning to slutty Tarte Tatin as my go-to apple tart recipe. Whatever anyone says about the complexity of Tarte Tatin, it is frankly a doddle to make. All you need for complete success is to burn the apples, butter, and sugar, and how difficult is that? The worst of cooks can do it. It’s always baffled me that people try to make it look so complicated.

This tart is a lot more fiddly and time-consuming, but if you didn’t like spending time in the kitchen, you wouldn’t be here, would you? In any case, you can make the pastry and crème pâtissière in advance and put them in the fridge till needed. Blind-bake the pastry and assemble the tart just before the meal, put it in the oven, and serve it either freshly baked, or lukewarm.

I think this looks loveliest if you bake small individual tarts, but you can make a single large one instead, using an 18-20 cm loose-based tin.

Pastry
Either use your own favourite sweet shortcrust, or the recipe below. This will make more than you need for a single 18-cm tart; use the rest for something else, or freeze it.

225 g plain flour
125 g butter
2 tbs icing sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp cold water

Rub the butter into the flour. Stir in the icing sugar, then lightly beat the egg with a little cold water and stir in. Bring the pastry together in a ball, wrap in a plastic bag, and put in the fridge for an hour. Remove about half an hour before you want to use it.

Crème pâtissière
This is an all-purpose recipe that can be used for all sorts of other tarts and desserts too; for example a simple fresh fruit tart. It’s less nerve-racking than making ordinary custard, because the flour means that it won’t curdle even if it boils.

25 g flour
1 egg
2 egg yolks
50 g sugar
vanilla essence
250 ml milk
a knob of butter

Warm the milk in a saucepan until it is just at boiling point. Meanwhile beat together all the other ingredients except the butter. Pour on the hot milk, whisking all the time, then pour into the saucepan and return to a low heat, whisking all the time until the sauce is very thick. It’s perfectly OK for it to boil, but don’t use a high heat or it may stick and burn. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring all the time, until it doesn’t taste floury any more. Pour into a bowl and dot with bits of butter, then place clingfilm over the surface to stop a skin forming. Leave to cool.

Apples
Jane Grigson made hers with Golden Delicious; that was one of the first things I changed. You need firm, tart eating apples; Granny Smith or Cox’s are good. For the glaze, you can use apple or quince jelly if you have any, in which case add a little glug of Calvados. If you use apricot jam, sieve it after heating.

About 5 tart eating apples
3 tbs apple or quince jelly, or apricot jam
1 tbs Calvados (optional)
1 tbs water

Preheat the oven to 180C. Roll out the pastry, line the tin or tins, and blind-bake for 10 minutes. Remove paper and bake for another 5 minutes, until the pastry is very lightly coloured. Meanwhile, peel, quarter, and core the apples, then slice lengthways into thin, even slices. Sprinkle with lemon juice if necessary to stop them browning.

Increase heat to 200C. Spread an even layer of cold crème pâtissière in the pastry case. Then arrange the apple slices in concentric circles like the petals of a flower, starting from the outside and overlapping the edge of the pastry slightly. Make a rose shape in the middle. Heat the jam or jelly in a small pan with a little water until it is runny, then use a brush or spoon to spread it carefully over the apples. Put the tart in the oven and bake for about 30 minutes, glazing it with any remaining jelly about halfway through. The apples should be starting to burn at the edges. Remove from the oven and serve proudly. Do not bother with cream – it doesn’t need it!

This makes about 16 small scones. They are ideal for buffets or picnics, or just afternoon tea curled up in front of the fire on a cold day. Scones have to be eaten the day they are made, or frozen and reheated (these ones freeze really well).

220 g flour
100 g cold butter
90-100 ml single cream or full-fat milk
2 eggs
1 tbs baking powder
pinch cayenne
pinch nutmeg
pinch salt
80 g gruyère or similar cheese, cut into small dice
4 spring onions or 2 shallots, finely chopped
50 g bacon, diced
1 egg for egg wash

Preheat the oven to 200C and butter a baking sheet.Fry the bacon until it is crisp and has rendered most of the fat. Put the diced onion and cheese in a small bowl and toss with about a teaspoon of the flour. Add the bacon once it’s cooled a bit and toss again.

Meanwhile mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in the butter till the mixture is crumbly, then add the cheese mixture and the egg beaten with most of the milk or cream. Bring together quickly into a rough dough with a wooden spoon. It should be soft and malleable, but not too sticky. Adjust with more milk or a little more flour if necessary.

Pat the dough out with your hands on a floured surface, handling it as little as possible, to about 2 cm thick. Use a small cutter to cut circles and place them on the prepared baking sheet (or you can pat out the whole piece of dough on the sheet and score it into squares or triangles ). Pull together leftover dough, pat out again, and cut out scones from the rest. Brush with egg wash and bake for about 10-15 minutes, till golden on top. Cool on a wire rack.

This is that old French favourite, yoghurt cake. Good for cooking with children or Americans because no scales are required — you just use the yoghurt pot to measure your ingredients. Of course yoghurt pots may vary slightly in size, but then so do eggs, and anyway it’s all about ratios. For this cake it’s not critical. I found the mixture a bit sloppy, so I added a couple of extra tablespoons of flour. You might need to cook it for more or less time too, depending on how wet your mixture is.

You can bake the apricots into it — or if, as I did, you happen to have a whole trayful of baked apricots in the fridge, add them before pouring the honey over. Or use any other fruit you fancy. Cherry compote for example.

50 g roughly chopped nuts (pistachios, hazelnuts, almonds, pine nuts …)
1 pot plain yoghurt
2 pots caster sugar
2 pots plain flour
1 pot ground almonds
3 eggs
2 tsp baking powder
1 pot melted butter
5 apricots
4 tbs runny honey

Preheat the oven to 180C. Butter an 18-cm round cake tin (I used a springform). Put the yoghurt in the mixing bowl, then rinse and dry the pot and use it to measure the remaining ingredients. Add the sugar and eggs to the yoghurt and whisk thoroughly till slightly frothy. Then whisk in the flour, almonds, and baking powder, followed by the melted butter. If baking the apricots, halve and stone them and arrange them in the bottom of the tin with the chopped nuts before pouring the mixture over. Bake for 40-45 minutes, until the top is springy and a skewer poked into the cake comes out clean.

If you baked it with the apricots on the bottom, let it cool for a few minutes, then turn out onto a plate apricot-side up and pour the honey over while it is still warm. Otherwise you can arrange your baked apricots and chopped nuts on top and again drizzle with honey while warm. Allow to cool completely and serve in thin slices — with cream if you are feeling naughty.

This is March’s entry in my Cookbook Challenge, but I got a bit behind, because I had so much else to do. The book lay on the coffee table for weeks with a scribbled list of recipes next to it. I’ve had this book so long and used it so much that the copy I have is almost pristine; the first one completely disintegrated and had to be replaced.

First published in 1974 and endlessly reprinted since, it’s a true classic; unlike Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson wears her scholarship lightly and is a comfortable companion in the kitchen, rather than a somewhat alarming and superior presence. Nevertheless, there is a lot of historical information here along with authentic regional recipes from the Middle Ages onwards. It is a reminder of the regional traditions Britain seems to have lost; many recipes here are truly rooted in a place and its local ingredients, and Jane Grigson makes you want to cook them.

So, I love this book (along with Good Things and Grigson’s Fruit and Vegetable books it’s one of my all-time favourite cookbooks). There are already a few Jane Grigson recipes in my blog, including my best-ever pudding, Springfield Pear Cake, and the famous Chinese Yorkshire pudding featured in English Food — a must-try if your Yorkshires always flop.

I’d planned to do something I hadn’t done before, but time was pressing so I ended up plumping for one of my oldest favourites for the main course: pulled and devilled chicken. This is simplicity itself to make, and, says Jane, “there is no better way of using up the Christmas turkey with the glory it deserves.” You can use any poultry though, including pheasant, chicken, or guineafowl. You basically separate the leg and breast meat, tearing it into rough quills. The leg meats is spread with devil sauce, left to marinate, then grilled, while the breast is heated through in a thin, creamy sauce flavoured with lemon. The two are served together, with crispy toast. Don’t do vegetables with it, just serve a salad afterwards.

For the starter, I decided to make individual leek tarts, because I had some puff pastry that needed using up. “I’ve lost my Michelin star!” I wailed as I struggled to prise them out of the tart tins. They looked a bit of a mess on the plate, but they did taste good. I think if I made them again, I wouldn’t use a top crust, and I’d add more cheese (which was supposed to be Wensleydale or Lancashire, but hey, this is rural France — I had to use Gruyère).

For pudding, I’d have liked to make the gorgeous syllabub-topped trifle, but it’s just impossible to make syllabub with French UHT cream, as I have discovered to my cost. This book also has the original sticky toffee pudding, credited to Francis Coulson at Sharrow Bay. Then there’s the famous Sussex Pond pudding, heart-attack-on-a-plate stuff. In the end, I made Stuffed Monkey, which isn’t really a pudding, but I liked the name. It’s a very sugary, buttery pastry filled with chopped candied peel and ground almonds stirred into melted butter. As I slid it into the oven I realised the filling was supposed to have an egg yolk in it too. Oops. No wonder it wasn’t very spreadable. Still, the recipe worked despite this, a crisp browned crust surrounding a crumbly filling. It’s very rich even without the egg, so you only need small pieces served with coffee; the peel and almonds give it a Christmassy flavour. Although actually it’s a Jewish recipe, credited to Florence Greenberg.

Stuffed Monkey

Pastry:
175 g plain flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
125 g butter
125 g soft brown sugar
1 egg, separated
Filling:
50 g butter, melted
60 g chopped candied peel (or dried fruit)
30 g sugar
60 g ground almonds
1 egg yolk

Preheat the oven to 190C. For the pastry, rub together the butter and flour. Stir in the sugar and then the lightly beaten egg yolk. Bring the mixture together with your hands as best you can. “Roll it out and cut two rounds to fit into an 8″ sandwich tin” instructs Jane. It was nearly impossible to roll out, so I pressed half of it into the bottom of a loose-based flan tin, using wet hands. For the filling, just mix the melted butter with the rest of the ingredients (preferably including the egg yolk!) and spread over the base. Use your hands, a rolling pin, or anything else you can think of to pat out the rest of the pastry; if it falls apart, just put the bits on top of the filling and press them together to make a lid. Brush the top with egg white.

Put in the oven for 30 minutes; cool in the tin. Using a loose-based tin did mean it was very easy to get it out of the tin. Cut into small slices and serve with tea or coffee (though I fancy a glass of Muscat or ginger wine wouldn’t go amiss either). It is said to keep well.

Put bananas, eggs, and sugar in a bowl and whizz till soft and frothy, with plenty of air in mix. Next sift in remaining dry ingredients and whisk lightly.

Pour the mixture into a tin; I used a small roasting tin, but you could use a loaf tin. You can arrange some whole nuts on top to look attractive.

Bake for 1 hour at 170C (fan oven) or gas 4 (you can cover with foil if top is going too brown halfway through; I didn’t need to do this). Cool on a wire rack. Serve in slices; it can be spread with butter if wanted.

This will apparently keep 1 week in a tin (mine didn’t last that long!),or longer in the fridge. I cut it in half and froze one half; apparently it freezes beautifully.