Christmas!

Apologies for having had such a quiet week or two, blog-wise. As frequently seems to happen at this year, I am a bit low on batteries, and I'm not feeling brilliantly creative. All should be well again in the New Year - I'm off to Morocco tomorrow for the festive season, to enjoy some lovely recharging sunshine, snail soup and shish kebabs. And a lot of things cooked in pointy earthenware pots.

In the meantime, you're probably after some Christmas recipes. Fortunately, we have plenty of those around here. Here's the main event - a turkey recipe which is, uncharacteristically for turkey, so good you'll be tempted to cook it when it's not even Christmas. It's brined overnight, leaving it juicy and succulent (the juices will spurt when you prick the thigh to check for doneness), the flesh infused with aromatics from its night-long submersion. If there are too few of you to justify a turkey, try a roast duck with prunes and pancetta, which is just about as Christmasy as it gets with its port and cherry gravy. And here's a really fine ham for Christmas Eve.

You'll want some trimmings. Chipolatas wrapped in pancetta and stuffing balls always go down well, alongside some cranberry sauce and bread sauce. Try a maple-mustard glaze on your vegetables, or cook the cabbage/chestnuts side dish that's mentioned in the duck recipe above. And nobody can say no to a crunchy spiced parsnip.

You've probably bought your Christmas pudding, and you already know how to make mince pies. If you want something to drink alongside them, try some hot buttered rum (but beware - you'll inevitably drink too much, because it's hopelessly good). This is an especially good drink for those with cold fingers and toes. Mulled wine is another fantastic loosener-upper, and you'll find present-opening is even more fun with a glass by your side and a little plate of cherry and almond cookies.

Merry Christmas!

Hot buttered rum batter

For years, I thought I didn't like hot buttered rum very much. An oily smear of butter floating on a thin pool of rum-flavoured hot water - nobody's idea of fun. And then last winter, I saw someone in a restaurant at Lake Tahoe (Ciera at the Montbleu hotel - pricey but pleasant) drinking a creamy, hot, cinnamon-smelling glass of something wonderful. I asked the waiter what it was - hot buttered rum. I ordered a glass: rich and buttery, spicy, full of heat and kick from the rum, and silky smooth. How did they get it to emulsify in the glass like that? The waiter said he wasn't allowed to give me a recipe, but did say that the chef made it with a sort of batter he prepared using butter and ice cream, and kept it in the freezer. It's the ice cream which makes the mixture, butter and all, emulsify so pleasingly and creamily in the glass (or mug, if you're at home); and a tub you've made for yourself will keep for months in the freezer, so it's an excellent thing to have on hand for surprise guests. As far as Christmas/winter drinks go, this one's approximately 100% bad for you (do not do what I did last night and have four of them in a row if you don't want to feel a bit unwell), which unfortunately means it's also about 100% delicious.

I made up a few different sets of batter from recipes I found on the Internet. None of them really hit the spot; in common with a lot of American recipes, I found most of them very, very sweet and a bit bland, relying on the vanilla ice cream for much of their flavour. The recipe below is my take on things, rather less sugary than most of the US recipes. I've also used maple syrup along with soft brown sugar for its flavour; and I've spiced quite aggressively, especially when it comes to the nutmeg, which has a wonderful affinity with rum. Allspice, like the rum, is Jamaican in origin, and works incredibly well here. And don't save this mixture just for dolloping in your hot rum and water: as I write this, I'm drinking a lump of the stuff dissolved in a strong mug of coffee, and it's heavenly.

Things like this make winter a bit less grim.

To make just over a litre of batter to keep in the freezer, you'll need:

500ml vanilla ice cream
500g salted butter, softened
200g soft brown sugar
200ml maple syrup
1½ tablespoons allspice
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 whole nutmeg, grated

Let the ice cream sit at room temperature until it's the texture of whipped cream. (You can also make this once the ice cream is completely melted, but I prefer the lighter texture you can achieve using a half-melted tub.) In a large bowl, use an electric whisk to cream together the butter, brown sugar and maple syrup until you have a thick, fluffy mixture. Dump the spices on top with the ice cream and continue to whisk for about five minutes, until the batter is smooth and light. Transfer to containers for freezing.

When you come to make up your drink, just put a dollop of the mixture at the bottom of a mug or glass (I like about three heaped teaspoons in a small mug - your mileage may vary) and add a measure of rum with a small pinch of salt. The salt won't make the drink salty, but it will act to lift the buttery flavour. Pour over water straight from the kettle to fill the mug, stir until the batter is dissolved, sit down in front of the fire and get drinking.

Roast duck with prune and pancetta stuffing

If you ever find yourself doing a Christmas dinner for just two people, you'll find you could do a lot worse than to roast a duck. It must be the weather and the dark evenings, but I've got a lot of time for some of the more Christmas-tending ingredients at the moment, which is how I came to stuff this bird with prunes, pancetta and allspice, alongside some Savoy cabbage lightly sautéed in bacon fat with chestnuts fried to a crisp on the outside (very easy - use vacuum sealed chestnuts or roast your own, fry them in bacon fat until gold and starting to crisp on the outside, then throw in the cabbage, stirring for a few minutes until it's all wilted and coated with fat), a great mound of mashed potatoes spiked with nutmeg, and a cherry and port gravy. Apologies for the picture quality. I'd been at the port.

If you are feasting, one medium-sized duck split between two people makes a spectacular and plump-making meal. The bird might look big when you buy it, but it'll lose a lot of mass when you roast it and its layers of fat render off. A duck's breasts are also much less muscular than a chicken's, so there will be less meat than you might expect - but you will end up with a nice big jar of duck fat that you can put in the fridge when you've finished, so it's not all bad.

I've stuffed the bird's cavity with a sweet and spicy breadcrumb mixture. It looks a bit dry when you pack it into the duck, but the bird will baste the stuffing with fat and juices as it roasts, and you'll find you have a savoury and tender stuffing at the end of the cooking time. We ate the lot in one go. This is a special meal for a special occasion - but I found that it's also perfect for an ordinary winter's Wednesday night when you're feeling all loved-up.

To serve two, you'll need:

Duck and stuffing
1 medium duck with giblets
100g soft white breadcrumbs
10 soft prunes
10 spring onions
150g pancetta cubes
1½ teaspoons ground allspice
A generous amount of salt

Gravy
Duck giblets
500ml water or good chicken stock
200ml port
200ml cherry juice
1 tablespoon plain flour
1 tablespoon soft butter
A grating of nutmeg
Salt

Preheat the oven to 220°C. Remove the giblets from the inside of the duck along with any poultry fat in the cavity - you can just pull the fat away from the body using your fingers. Use it to make gratons for a cook's treat if you fancy.

Saute the pancetta cubes (use lardons of bacon if you can't find any pancetta) in a dry pan until they have given up their fat and are turning crispy. In a mixing bowl, stir the cooked pancetta, with any fat, into the dry breadcrumbs, and add the raw spring onions, chopped small, with the prunes, quartered, and the allspice. You won't need any salt; there is plenty in the pancetta.

Stuff the mixture into the cavity of the duck, packing it in firmly, and seal the open end. Some sew their ducks up; I like to use a few toothpicks to keep the cavity closed, which is quicker and less messy.

Prick the duck's skin all over with a fork, rub the whole bird with about a tablespoon of salt and put on a rack in a roasting tin. (The rack is there to stop the duck from sitting and cooking in its own fat. If your rack is a very shallow one, be prepared to drain the fat from the bird a couple of times as it cooks.) Put in the hot oven, turning the temperature down to 180°C after 20 minutes. Continue to roast for an additional 35 minutes per kilo (15 minutes per pound). Rest for 15 minutes in a warm place, uncovered, before carving.

While the duck roasts, prepare the gravy. Begin by making a giblet stock (I used a home-made chicken stock as the base for the giblet stock, which might be overkill, but it did taste fantastic) by simmering the giblets very gently in 500ml water or good chicken stock for 1 hour in an open, medium-sized saucepan, skimming off any scum that rises to the top. Strain the resulting stock - it should have reduced by about a quarter.

Add the cherry juice and port to the saucepan, and bring the heat up a bit - it should be chuckling rather than giggling. Reduce the mixture in the pan by about half. When the duck comes out of the oven to rest, mix the flour and butter together until you have a smooth paste, and whisk it into the gravy in the pan over a medium flame. Keep whisking until the gravy becomes thicker and glossy. Grate over some nutmeg and taste for salt and pepper.

The duck will have a crisp skin and a light, savoury spiced stuffing. Slosh the gravy all over your plate and get tucked in.

Cherry vodka

A quick and dirty one today - I'm in Cardiff to celebrate my sister-in-law's PhD graduation. I am now officially the only Upton of my generation who can't put the word 'Dr' in front of her name. Rats. (And congratulations, Stevie! I envy you the Tudor bonnet you get to wear for the ceremony like you wouldn't believe.)

Cherries come into season just in time for you to lock them up in a cupboard with sugar and vodka until Christmas. Brandy is a traditional medium for fruit infusions; if you prefer to use that, the method will be the same. The five months between now and then will be just long enough for the liqueur to age into something nicely rounded and rich - an ideal tipple for Santa to enjoy with his mince pie. As always with fruity infusions, the making of this stuff is as easy as anything. You'll need:

500g cherries
1 litre vodka
5 heaped tablespoons granulated sugar
1 teaspoon almond extract

Halve the cherries, keeping the stones embedded in the fruit for their almondy fragrance (I should pre-empt the inevitable "but you will die of cyanide poisoning!" comment - you won't), and put them in a large Kilner jar or another large, airtight vessel. Pour over the sugar and almond extract, and top the lot off with the vodka. Seal, and forget about the jar for half a year or so, straining into bottles when the liqueur is ready. Note that the colour will leech out of the cherries, leaving them greyish and unappetising-looking in December; some like them with ice cream, but I prefer to just consign them to the bin and busy myself with the interesting part of this recipe (the vodka).

You can use dessert cherries (which is what I've used here), or sour bird cherries. I have a tree full of bird cherries in the garden, but they all grow so high I can't actually reach any - plus, the birds seem to get a kick out of them, so I leave them where they are. If you're using a sour cherry, double the amount of sugar in the recipe.

Christmas stuffing and chipolatas

I mentioned the other day that you're best off not stuffing the cavity of a turkey or, for that matter, a chicken - it increases the cooking time to an unacceptable length, and quite honestly, stuffing is just nicer prepared outside the bird, where it has a chance to go crispy on the outside. The trimmings are one of the most important parts of a Christmas dinner, but they can be a bit of a faff to prepare, so I like to assemble and cook mine on Christmas Eve, and heat them up at the last minute on Christmas Day - you really can't tell that the stuffing and chipolatas have been reheated, and they're absolutely delicious.

Buy the very best chipolatas you can find. I was in Yorkshire for Christmas, and went to Booths, which is a simply fantastic supermarket. Quality and choice here is better than at any of the supermarkets we have here in Cambridgeshire (even Waitrose); I ended up with a pack of chipolatas flavoured with chestnut purée which were as good as any butcher's sausage. Unfortunately, Booths only operates in Lancashire, Cheshire, Cumbria and Yorkshire, so the rest of us are stuck with having to make a trip to the butcher's for the chipolatas and for the sausage meat which goes in the stuffing, which should be of the best quality you can find.

For Christmas trimmings (or trimmings for any poultry or game you happen to be roasting for a non-Christmas occasion) you'll need:

Stuffing
85g Paxo sage and onion stuffing mix (I know, I know - bear with me here)
250g good-quality sausage meat
1 Braeburn apple
2 banana shallots
1 pack vacuum-sealed chestnuts
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh sage
75g butter
Boiling water
Salt and pepper

Chipolatas
16 chipolata sausages
16 strips pancetta

Paxo stuffing mix? Well, despite the memories you may have of childhood Paxo made up by your grandmother to the packet instructions (dusty, squashy and very little fun), it works really, really well when you combine it with sausage meat. The recipe for Paxo is more than a hundred years old; it was invented by a Manchester butcher in 1901. I'm using it here because the wheat and barley rusk that forms the crumbs contains a bit of raising agent, which will make the texture of your stuffing very light, with a crisp outside - and the dried sage and onion are actually really good against a porky background.

Put the stuffing mix in a large mixing bowl with the butter, and pour over boiling water, according to the packet instructions. Stir well and cover with a teatowel while you chop the apple, shallots and chestnuts into small, even dice, and chop the sage finely. When you're done, the stuffing mix should be cool enough to handle. Use your fingers to mix the sausage meat very thoroughly with the stuffing mix, then add the chopped apple, shallots and chestnuts and sage with a little salt and some pepper, and mix with your hands until everything is evenly distributed. Form into spheres about the size of a ping-pong ball and lay on well-greased baking trays. (The stuffing balls will almost certainly stick a bit, but you can prise them off relatively easily with a stiff spatula.)

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Wrap each sausage in a strip of pancetta. You don't need to secure these with a toothpick (as well as saving you time, this also avoids any Christmas day toothpick-embedded-in-palate accidents). Arrange the sausages on another well greased tray.

Bake the sausages and stuffing balls for between 35 and 45 minutes (the cooking time will depend on the characteristics of the sausages and sausage meat you have chosen). The stuffing balls should be browning and crisp on the outside, and the pancetta crisp and golden. Remove from the trays when cooled, and move the stuffing balls and wrapped sausages to oven-proof bowls. When you come to serve them, just reheat at 180°C (350°F) for 12 minutes.

Cranberry sauce and bread sauce

These two sauces, one American and one thoroughly, thoroughly English, are an essential part of my Christmas dinner - it's just not Christmas without them. Cranberries are incredibly tart when raw, and I consider them pretty inedible (despite the Finnish habit of eating them raw, with shaved ice and caramel). This recipe is very easy, and it transforms them; cooked until they pop with sugar and a lovely lemony liqueur, a lot of the bitterness vanishes. The sauce is the perfect accompaniment to your turkey or goose on Christmas day, or to some Christmas Eve ham.

If your only experience of bread sauce so far is the stuff you reconstitute from a packet, you are likely to have read the title of this post, pulled a face and sworn never to make it yourself. You'll be missing a treat - made properly, it's a creamy, fragrant cloud that you'll find yourself slathering all over a good roast dinner, potatoes and all. The trick is in infusing the milk with aromatics like bay, shallots and plenty of cloves for a good long time, so that the sauce is rich with flavour. (A bad bread sauce is a bland nightmare.) I make this year-round, and it's great with any roast poultry or game birds. It's also extremely good cold as part of a Boxing Day leftovers sandwich.

The cranberry sauce can be made well in advance, and keeps for weeks, covered, in the fridge. All the preparation for the bread sauce (setting the milk to infuse, making the breadcrumbs) can be done the night before you eat, which means that you won't be in such a rush to pull the different elements of your meal together on Christmas Day.

To make the cranberry sauce you'll need:

350g raw cranberries
200g sugar (granulated or caster)
30ml Limoncello liqueur
zest of 1 lemon
60ml water

This is hopelessly easy. Just stick all the ingredients in a small saucepan, bring to a brisk simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes, until all the cranberries have popped. You'll be able to hear the individual berries pop as they heat up, which is somehow rather pleasing. The cranberries are full of pectin, so the sauce will solidify as it cools. Keep it in the fridge until you need it, and stir through briskly before serving so it doesn't look like a chunk of jelly.

To make the bread sauce, you'll need:

1l full-fat milk
200g fresh breadcrumbs (just put 200g of crustless white bread in the food processor and whizz)
3 bay leaves
1 sprig thyme
2 shallots
20 cloves
10 black peppercorns
100g salted butter
100ml double cream
1 teaspoon salt

Cut the shallots in halves and press the cloves into them. Put them in a large saucepan with the milk, bay leaves, thyme, peppercorns and salt. Warm the milk to the barest simmer - the milk should be shuddering rather than bubbling. Remove from the heat, cover the pan and leave it in a warm place overnight. (I put mine on top of the boiler.)

About an hour before you plan to eat, sieve the solid ingredients out of the milk and return the liquid to the pan. Bring to a gentle simmer and stir in the breadcrumbs and cream. Remove from the heat again and lay a piece of cling film right on top of the sauce (this stops it forming a skin). The breadcrumbs will swell with the milk, stiffening the sauce. When you are ready to serve the bread sauce, bring it up to a simmer again and stir in the butter. Taste for seasoning, adding more salt if you think it needs it.

Roast turkey

Only twelve months early for your Christmas turkey, and eleven months early for your Thanksgiving turkey, here's a roasting technique that will make even the most fibrous, leaden bird a moist, crisp-skinned joy. (Not that this one started out either fibrous or leaden - Dr W's parents bought it from Lishman's in Ilkley, which is one of those butchers that has almost as many awards as they do pork chops on display - and with good reason. This was a beautiful turkey.)

Turkey is a troublesome meat. It seems that whoever designed the bird constructed it to be difficult and dry - the fibres in the meat are very long and can tend towards stringy; and any bird this large (ours was 14 pounds, which is heavier than both of my cats put together) is at risk of drying out while you try to make sure it's cooked through. There are, however, some features of the turkey which make it really worth cooking at least once a year, not least its fantastically delicious skin, which, if cooked like this, will turn mahogany-brown, caramelised and crisp. I caught several members of the family peeling skin off the carcass and eating it standing up in the kitchen, which is always a good sign. The bird's liver is also excellent. It's rich and creamy, and is really worth saving to enrich your gravy with (of which more later).

So what's the trick to achieving a moist flesh and crisp skin? It's as easy as anything - remember that post from 2008 about my experiments with brining? I scaled things up from the jointed chickens I'd been working with earlier, and brined the whole turkey in a savoury, Christmas-y, spicy mixture for two nights. You'll need a big vessel to do this in. I bought a cheap dustbin from the hardware store, and thought I was being original and clever until Dr W's Dad, whose own father was a butcher, said that bins were the brining vessels of choice when he was a boy in his Dad's shop, helping to brine huge cows' tongues. There's nothing new under the sun. The really good news about the brining is that it makes the flesh so moist you won't have to turn the turkey onto its breast partway through cooking. (Anybody who has ever tried to turn a searingly hot turkey partway through cooking will be punching the air with joy on reading this.)

Put your turkey in the brine two nights before you plan to cook it. This amount of brine should be sufficient to cover turkeys up to 20+lb - and if you're cooking a turkey bigger than that, I have news for you. That's not a turkey. It's a pterodactyl. Ours was 14lb, and was submerged nicely. To make the brine, you'll need:

9 litres cold water
325g salt
300g sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon, 1 lime and 1 orange
4 tablespoons cider vinegar
8 tablespoons maple syrup
8 tablespoons honey
1 large onion, grated
1 large knob ginger, grated
6 cloves garlic, squashed
1 handful each oregano, parsley, tarragon, chives, ripped and squashed with your hands
10 peppercorns, crushed
2 teaspoons fennel seeds, ground in mortar and pestle
1 large tin pineapple in juice, crushed with masher

For the inside of the bird, the glaze and the giblet stock you'll need:

1 large onion
1 lime
1 tangerine
1 lemon
200g salted butter plus a tablespoon for frying the liver
4 tablespoons maple syrup
giblets from the turkey
1 shallot
1 carrot
1 bay leaf
1 tablespoon flour
1 glass red wine
salt and pepper

Combine all the brine ingredients in your carefully cleaned bin, and stir with a wooden spoon until all the salt and sugar have dissolved. The pineapple is important. It has an enzymatic action on the protein of the turkey, making the flesh softer and more moist - it also tastes fantastic. Lower the turkey in carefully (don't drop it in - it'll splash and you may tear the skin) and leave the bin, covered with a sheet of cling film and its lid, in a cold place until the morning you want to cook it. Outside the back door should be fine in cold December, unless you live in an area with foxes, in which case the coldest part of the garage is probably preferable.

Turkey, brined or otherwise, is at its best when cooked quickly. Don't stuff the bird (not even the neck) - this will just make the cooking time unacceptably long. I'll be providing a recipe for stuffing cooked separately later this week.

Remove the turkey from the brine two hours before you intend to cook it to allow it to come to room temperature. Push a quartered large onion, a halved lime, a halved tangerine and a halved lemon into the bird's cavity. Preheat the oven to 220°C (430°F) when you are ready to start cooking, and make a stock by simmering all the giblets except the liver (which you should save in a bowl until you make the gravy) in a litre of water in a covered pan with some salt, a halved shallot, a peeled carrot and a bay leaf while you cook the turkey. Melt together 200g of salted butter and 4 tablespoons of maple syrup, and use the mixture to baste the turkey before it goes into the oven. Cook at this high temperature for 30 minutes. The turkey should already be turning golden brown. Baste again, cover with tin foil, and lower the temperature to 180°C (350°C), basting every twenty minutes or so with the butter and maple syrup mixture. For the last 15 minutes of cooking, remove the foil and baste again.

Cooking times for different weights of turkey are as follows:

• 5lb - 1½ hours
• 8lb - 1¾ hours
• 10lb - 2 hours
• 12lb - 2½ hours
• 15lb - 2¾ hours
• 17lb - 3 hours
• 20lb - 3½ hours
• 25lb - 4½ hours

Poke with a skewer behind the thigh joint to make sure the bird is done (if it is, the juices will run clear - nay, spurt, if you've brined it - they should not be pinkish), and rest the finished bird for 20 minutes before serving. This will give you time to make the gravy. Sauté the liver in a tablespoon of soft butter until it is just cooked, and use the back of a spoon to push it through a sieve into a bowl. Skim all but a few tablespoons of fat from the pan juices from the turkey and discard, and with the roasting pan on a low heat on the hob, whisk the flour into the remaining fat and the meat juices. When the flour is blended with the fat, tip in the wine and whisk as it bubbles up. Add a couple of ladles of the giblet stock until the gravy is the texture you want, then whisk in the sieved liver. Add any more juices which have come from the resting turkey, and season to taste.

Over this week, I'll be posting all the trimmings you need to go with your Christmas dinner - bread and cranberry sauces, stuffing balls, chipolatas in pancetta, some really fantastic roast potatoes and (cough) sprouts. I realise it's early in the year, but these are all fantastic with roasts year-round, they're fresh in my mind, and you have a bookmark button if you want to save all this to read for Christmas 2009.

Maple-mustard glazed vegetables

British readers will notice that the baby vegetables they are able to buy at the moment are, for babies, somewhat husky. This is because EU legislation, which was only repealed last week and which will remain in force until July 2009, sets strict rules for the dimensions of vegetables - carrots may not be sold, even as baby carrots, if they weigh under 8g.

Legislation on the weight, symmetry, roundness, straightness, evenness and colour of vegetables in the EU has, in my experience, been roundly ignored by market sellers in France, Italy and Spain, while it's prosecuted with zeal by UK council officials. (Meanwhile, amazingly, it was the French, Italians and Spanish who were in particular opposition to any change in legislation - I am at a total loss to understand how it comes to be the rigid old British and the Germans who are calling the situation as it is untenable.) It's good to know that these protectionist rules, which used to result in the waste of around 20% of all farm produce, are being dumped as a result of the EU-wide rise in food costs, and I look forward to the appearance of spurred and bendy cucumbers in my local supermarket. Meanwhile, I wish they'd extend the repeal of these rules to all vegetables - even once next year's changes come into force, it will still be illegal to sell imperfect apples and pears (note that a lot of old English varieties are rusty and spotty, and as such impossible to sell legally) unless you slap a label on them saying “product intended for processing”. Citrus fruit, kiwi fruit, lettuces, peaches and nectarines, pears, strawberries, sweet peppers, table grapes and tomatoes will also remain covered by the old legislation. I long for a funny-shaped tomato, or one of those lovely ripply peppers. The law in this area is a mess, protecting the interests of farmers while raising prices, putting financial pressure on householders and excluding us from choice and flavour. Sometimes I feel my best option might be to turn the back garden into an allotment.

Anyway. I seem to have gone off on a tangent. These glazed carrots and radishes are delicious, extremely easy to make, and not as bad for you as you might imagine. They're a regular fixture on our table at Christmas, but they're fantastic at any time of year. I have faked true baby Chantenay carrots here with the judicious trimming of pubescent-but-legal, 8-gram Chantenays. Until next year, you'll have to do the same. Or emigrate.To serve two, you'll need:

12 baby carrots
12 radishes
2 tablespoons maple syrup
1 heaped tablespoon grainy Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon salt
50g butter
50ml water

Top and tail the radishes. Top and tail the carrots and trim them to be a similar size to the radishes. Melt the butter with the water, maple syrup, salt and mustard in a small saucepan, and bring the mixture to a gentle simmer. Cook the carrots in the mixture over a low heat, stirring, for about eight minutes, then add the radishes and cook for a further two minutes. Serve immediately, with some of the glaze drizzled over the top.

Cherry-marzipan Christmas cookies

This one's for marzipan lovers. I love almonds and cherries, and there's something undeniably Christmas-y about the combination. To kick the Christmas angle up a notch, I spent a while experimenting with marzipan, and I've worked out a method that makes marzipan pieces melt into the cookie dough in a gooey, puffy fashion.

I've used sweetened, dried sour cherries, which are now readily available in the baking sections of supermarkets in little metallised plastic packets. They're a very different beast from glacé cherries, and retain a tart bite and juicy plumpness, which is a brilliant contrast to the sweet marzipan and sugary cookie dough. Ground almonds and egg whites give these a near-macaroon texture. They're light and have a lovely crisp on the outside with a slightly gooey, squashy centre - absolutely irresistable.

The plan was to make 30 of these, to eat a couple for dessert, and spend the rest of the week eating a few a day so I could tell you how long they'll last in an airtight box. Sadly, they turn out to be rather moreish, and I discover that as of this morning Dr Weasel and I have both been fishing surreptitiously in the box when we thought the other person wasn't looking. There are only ten left. I think I need to get the exercise ball out before I start to resemble it.

To make about thirty cookies, you'll need:

110g ground almonds
110g plain flour
½ teaspoon baking powder
150g golden marzipan
225g salted butter
225g caster sugar
1 egg white
½ teaspoon almond extract
80g dried sour cherries

Mix the ground almonds, flour and baking powder in a large bowl, and chop the marzipan into tiny cubes (about half a centimetre on each side). Mix the marzipan with the dry ingredients carefully, so each little cube is coated and separate, and set the bowl aside.

In another bowl, cream the softened butter and sugar together with an electric whisk in another bowl. Add the egg white and almond extract and keep at it with the whisk until the mixture is pale and fluffy. Use a wooden spoon to stir the flour and marzipan mixture into the butter mixture with the cherries.

At first the mixture will look as if it won't form a dough, but if you keep at it you'll find it will eventually come together smoothly (in part thanks to the oils in the marzipan and ground almonds). Bring the dough together into a ball with your hands and put it in a freezer bag, seal and leave in the fridge overnight.

When you are ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F). Take the dough out of the fridge and make neat balls of about an inch in diameter between your palms, ensuring that every ball has at least a couple of cherries in it. Arrange the balls on grease-proof paper on baking sheets with a gap of 2 inches between each one, and bake for about 25-30 minutes until the cookies are turning golden (see photograph). Remove from the oven and leave to cool on the baking sheets until the cookies start to firm (about five minutes). Use a spatula to move them onto racks to finish cooling.

Mulled wine

A quick post today - it's Christmas Eve, and the house is bulging at the seams with family, all of whom want something to eat. The Great She Elephant is also spending Christmas with us. Those readers of her blog who would like me to take photographs of her when asleep or looking otherwise ungainly should send bribes to the usual address.

I'm cooking a ham today (the recipe is here). Everybody else seems to be too, it being a Christmas recipe; lots of friends have been asking for the recipe, and my Mum's doing one at their house tonight. It's a Christmassy dish, but it's made all the more Christmassy (Christmasic? Christmasular?) by a good, large glass of mulled wine on the side.

I have spent years perfecting this recipe. If you leave out any of the spices I will set the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come on you, so don't.

You'll need:

1 bottle Merlot (I got a cheap one from Waitrose, which was discounted because it was a bin end)
1 wine-bottle of water
3 tablespoons honey
3 tablespoons maple syrup
2 oranges
1 lime
1 lemon
20 cloves
2 stars of anise
3 cardamom pods
1 cinnamon stick
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
1 grating of nutmeg

Stud one orange with the cloves, and slice the other one. Slice the lemon and the lime, and put all the fruit, the spices, the wine and the water in a large, thick-bottomed pan with the honey and maple syrup. Bring up to the lowest possible simmer, and simmer very, very gently for twenty minutes. Strain through a sieve to get rid of the bits, and serve.

You might want to add a couple of shots of cherry brandy, but I think you'll find you don't need to. It's not that strong, but for some reason it's dreadfully warming and potent, so don't give any to the cat.

Merry Christmas!

Prague Christmas markets

I spent most of this morning thinking of you, dear reader, and doing my very best to take photographs of market stalls while not being noticed. Prague's Christmas markets are the lure for many tourists (including Family Weasel), and tourists, being hungry for culture and local colour, also need feeding.

The main Christmas markets are spread out in the square in the old town, beneath the astronomical clock, and in Wenceslas square. You'll find other, more local marketplaces scattered around the city; these sell the more ordinary fruit and vegetables and were actually where we found the best seasonal food and drink; they move around, so keep an eye out. At this time of year, there's a lot of gingerbread and mulled wine, and lots of sweetmeats made with almonds and other nuts. The picture at the top is of a stall selling gingerbread and wrapped cakes made from hazelnuts (red wrappers) and almonds (blue).

The local almonds also emerged in yesterday's endive salad, whole and blanched. Although indisutibly almonds in flavour (and sweet ones, at that), they're a rather different shape from the almonds you might be used to; they are rounder and shorter, and seem to contain rather more oil.

We came across a stall selling trdlo, a soft yeast dough which is wrapped around a hot metal pin and baked into a cylinder, then rolled in ground local almonds and sugar.

The lady on the left is rolling out the sweet dough, which has been kept warm to rise, and is wrapping it around the metal spindle.

The dough is brushed with egg yolk and handed over to a third person . . .

. . . who grills it over a gas flame.

When you buy a hot, fresh trdlo, you're gestured towards a tray of ground almonds and sugar to roll it around in as much as you like. We saw other trdlo being made in stalls which didn't seem as even and golden as ours were. Watch your food being cooked (if you can) before you commit to buying it. These trdlo were crisp and sweet on the outside, with a beautifully tender crumb.

Away from the tourist areas we found a food market, where you could buy non-uniform vegetables. The greatest curse of the supermarket back home has been to encourage farmers all over the world to produce perfectly straight cucumbers, spherical swedes, beans of identical length and bananas which all curve in a sinister, congruent fashion, nesting together like bits of organic jigsaw puzzle. In emphasing shape and size, we've completely sacrificed taste; I promise you that you will never find a banana that tastes of cardboard in Malaysia, where they grow the things (or, it seems, in Prague, where they don't). These peppers were a delight; different colours, different shapes (and different spiciness, according to the stallholder); you were encouraged just to pick out the ones you liked the look of.

I wish I had an oven here.

Spices are sold in little plastic bags. Although my Czech is non-existent, I was able to identify these by sight (and by helpful words on the packs like 'barbecue' on some of the mixtures) - I'm sure you can too. Everything looked fresh and smelled good. I bought a stick of marzipan from the lady on this stall, but unfortunately it vanished into Mr Weasel's sugar-craving maw before I had a chance to photograph it. Every spice you'd use in a European kitchen was represented here; as well as these bags of caraway, allspice, pepper, coriander and nutmeg, tiny vials of saffron and whole vanilla pods were held behind the counter, out of the reach of shoplifters.

Shopping, especially outdoors, is crucifyingly cold at this time of year in the Czech Republic, where in the winter the temperatures seldom come above freezing. Although I was wearing what passed for ski-less ski gear, I am still, hours later, unable to feel my left ear; bring a hat.

Of course, the big emphasis in Czech cuisine is on the meat. In a little supermarket I found this counter of preserved sausages. (This evening's meal incorporated a sausage a lot like Mortadella - Baloney, for you Americans - preserved in vinegar and chilis. I'll write about it later on.) Every part of the animal is used here, and there are vendors on many of the streets cooking and carving pieces of meat for you to eat on the move.

This man is preparing a piece of ham for spit-roasting. Sadly, his fruitwood-roasted ham knocked the socks off anything I've been able to cook at home; the whole of the Old Town Square was filled with a smoky, porky aroma which went directly from my nose to the most animal parts of my brain, persuading me to hand over my Czech crowns while trying to mask the embarrassing dribble behind my scarf.

The biting cold is easily remedied with a glass of one of the many hot alcoholic drinks you can buy here. You can choose from something called grog, which appears to be Southern Comfort, hot water, sugar and a slice of lemon (deadly and not really awfully nice; I don't recommend it); punč (pronounced 'punch'), which is port and brandy with hot water, sugar and a slice of lemon; and a mulled wine which has been excellent wherever I've bought it. If you visit Prague, you may want to try these drinks in the cafe inside the House of the Stone Bell, the city's oldest building (in the Old Town Square, next door to a bookshop where Kafka lived). It's now an art gallery. You can see the bell on the left of the picture; the building is well worth a visit. Happily, I failed to pupate, fall prey to an execution machine or do anything else Kafka-esque; somebody should really tell the Restaurant Metamorphosis down the road that their name is scaring me away from pushing their door open.

Ham in Coke

Several years ago, I stumbled on a Usenet post waxing lyrical about the savoury potential of Coca Cola when combined with pork. That same Coca Cola that your teachers spent years warning you about in the very darkest terms; at my school they used a can to dissolve a volunteer's recently shed milk tooth away to nothing, and demonstrated its unholy ability to clean pennies with rotten-incisored glee.

I have a caffeine-addicted husband and a yen to flout the outdated authority of my Home Economics teacher. I have spent several years perfecting a ham in cola recipe, and am more than mildly irritated to find that these days, Nigella Lawson is publishing a version of ham in Coke in every book she writes. No matter. Mine's better. Ham needs something sweet and spicy to counter its savoury saltiness - it happens that cola is the perfect foil. I can't think of another way I'd prefer to cook ham now - this may sound a perverse thing to do to a nice chunk of pork, but trust me; it's fabulous.

You'll need:

1kg smoked gammon
1-2 large bottles cola (more or less depending on the size of your pan)
1 red onion
1 bulb garlic
1 stick cinnamon
1 tablespoon coriander seeds
2 dried chilis
20 cloves (give or take a few)
1 teaspoon ground chipotle chili
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground mustard
4 tablespoons maple syrup

Place the gammon in a close-fitting, thick-bottomed pan (important, this thick bottom; you need to avoid singing the bottom of your ham) with the onion, halved, the bulb of garlic, cut in halves, the cinnamon stick, coriander seeds and whole chilis. Pour over Coke to cover (I'm afraid it has to be the full-fat version; Diet Coke won't caramelise properly) and put on a medium heat until it reaches a simmer. Lower the heat enough to keep a gentle simmer, and put the lid on for 2 1/2 hours.

After your kitchen timer has gone, preheat the oven to 200c and lift the whole ham carefully from the liquid (Hang onto that liquid if you want to make Boston baked beans). Leave the ham to cool enough to handle. With a sharp knife, remove the rind, without removing the fat.

You'll be left with a joint of meat with a glistening covering of fat. Use your sharp knife to score the top in diamonds, and stick a clove in each corner of each diamond. Make a paste from the ground cinnamon, ground chipotles, mustard powder and maple syrup, and brush it all over the ham, concentrating on the fatty surface. The sweet mixture will caramelise onto the crisping fat; this is pretty much 90% bad for you, but, unfortunately, it tastes approximately 100% good. I really should talk a friendly social statistician somewhere into working out just how bad for you things have to be to start tasting good; I'm sure there's an interesting graph in that somewhere.

Put the whole ham in the oven, uncovered, for twenty minutes, remove and check that the fatty surface has formed a crust. (If you prefer more crust, put the ham under a high grill for two minutes.)

If you have made a large ham, you can make several good meals from it. Eat it like this, freshly cooked, with some sautéed potatoes; eat it in Pasta alla Medici; use it to flavour Boston baked beans.

If you're having people round for dinner and feel like cheating, feel free not to mention the cola. And if you enjoyed this as much as I do, you'll probably want to check out the sticky chicken pieces in coke too.