Mulled wine and Spiced apple warmer!

I cannot lay claim to inventing the mulled wine recipe.  This one is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe and is made by infusing a syrup with the spices first before mixing with the red wine.  This means that you aren't boiling all the alcohol out of the wine before serving it.  So....

Ingredients:  200g sugar, 2 oranges, ( plus the juice of one of the oranges), 1 lemon, 6 whole cloves, 2 cinnamon sticks, a good grating of nutmeg, 2 bay leaves, 2 star anise, 1 vanilla pod split lengthways (use only half keeping the other half for the spiced apple warmer).  2 bottles cheap red wine (Jamie calls for Italian wine of course but I live in Spain so a box of Mercadona's cheapest was the order of the day!)

Method:  Put the sugar and spices (except for the star anise) in a pan.  Cut one orange and the lemon in half and put into the pan.  Juice the other orange and add the juice to the pan.  Add just enough red wine to cover the sugar and pop the pan on the heat.  Warm until the sugar melts into the wine and then whack the heat up and boil the mixture until it reduces by about half and becomes syrupy.

Add the rest of the wine to the syrup mixture as well as the star anise and then warm it through on a very low heat.  Try not to boil it again or you will burn off the alcohol but if you do, don't worry, it still tastes very good.

Spiced Apple Warmer - This is perfect for the non drinkers, for children or the designated driver.
Ingredients: A box of apple juice and exactly the same ingredients as for the mulled wine above (except for the sugar, you don't need the sugar).

Method:  Place all the ingredients in a pan and heat to boiling.  Turn off the heat and leave it to steep overnight or for at least a couple of hours.  Serve warm.

Duck and Cabbage

Well that doesn't sound very exciting does it?  Actually it was delicious and different so I thought I would share.

Now I am not a fancy chef, I just enjoy cooking and I love food.  So.... who says the duck has to be red raw in the middle?  I suppose it might have tasted better if I had taken it off the heat a tad sooner but I am not a fan of underdone meat so my duck was perhaps a little overcooked for a real chef's taste but you can cook it for as long as you want.

For the duck breast.
Ingredients:  A large duck breast (this will serve two people in my house), a huge knob of butter.  How much is a knob?  Seriously guys... !  A little salt and pepper.

How To
Melt the butter and when it has stopped foaming pop in the duck breast skin side down.  Cook it quite fiercely on each side to start with and then turn down the heat and cook for about 8 - 10 mins (this should give you the classic red in the middle duck breast)  After cooking rest the breast under a little tin foil for about five minutes before slicing.  Nothing could be easier... oh yes... season with salt and pepper before pan frying.



Oh And I forgot!!!  Green pepper Sauce:
Ingredients:  1/4 pint red wine (I suspect you could do this with white wine, or even cider might be nice), splash of brandy, splash of port, two tablespoons of pickled green peppercorns, 1/2 pint cream, five tablespoons chicken stock (or water), teaspoonful of sugar.  Salt and Pepper.

How To:  Boil the red wine and brandy for five minutes - make sure it doesn't reduce away to nothing but it should shrink down by about a third.  Add the stock or water and boil again for five more minutes.  Add the peppercorns and the cream and once again boil for five minutes... it should reduce down by about half now.  Add the sugar and the port and stir until the sugar dissolves, taste and then season to suit.  Put in a jug and serve warm with the duck.

Cabbage - this is a spiced cabbage braised with apple and onion and needs to be prepared some hours before.
Ingredients:  Red cabbage (I used only half), Onion, one or two cloves of garlic depending upon size, two eating apples (the tarter the better), a couple spoonfuls of demerara sugar, a sprinkling of ground cinnamon, ground cloves, ground nutmeg.  Three tablespoons wine or cider vinegar.  A couple of knobs of butter.

How To
Shred the cabbage and the onion and then peel and grate the apple.  Layer these three in a casserole dish sprinkling the garlic, sugar and spices between the layers.  Drizzle on the vinegar.  Top with the knobs of butter.

Cover the casserole and pop into a slow oven (130C max) and cook for 2 - 3 hours or even longer if the oven is really slow.  I used the wood fire oven and the temperature gauge no longer seems to work but it still turned out.  Give it a stir every half hour or so to mix up the flavours.  This will keep warm and reheat without spoiling and goes really well with the pan fried duck.  Enjoy!

 And no, we didn't have potatoes or anything else with this... it just seemed to be enough on its own... mashed spuds would probably be nice to soak up the sauce... or you could just do what we did... slice of bread to mop the plate mmmm yum.

Middle Eastern Salad

I was given a a very small pomegranate by a friend but it was so small I wondered what on earth I would do with it.

When I opened it up I was amazed at how many seeds were actually in it.

So obviously size isn't an indication at all.  I'm fairly new to pomegranates and I don't think I have ever actually eaten a whole one - they never strike me as a fruit you would just eat... but I could be wrong.  At any rate I plan a pomegranate tree very soon so I thought I would make a start.

Pomegranates feature large in Middle Eastern cookery so I decided on a salad with the ingredients I had lurking in the fridge.  Namely...

Three rather past their best carrots, grated.

The last of the home made yoghurt.

A clove of garlic and a small handful of mint from the garden (being careful to only take the leaves that haven't been eaten by whatever bug has eaten most of both the mint and the sage!).

First I mixed the crushed garlic with the yoghurt (that's a classic Middle Eastern flavour to start off with).

Then I grated the carrots and shredded the mint... added the jewel like pomegranate seeds and then mixed the whole lot together.  It certainly is a colourful dish.


Voila one salad.  Verdict:  could have been more minty (but I knew this)... it disappeared at lunch without any complaints... accompanied by some wholemeal bread and left over Calzone pizza.