JDPegs: Kitchen Day

It has been a cold weekend, and we have even had our first snowfalls, some of which has remained on the ground! Yesterday we cleaned, rearranged some pictures on the wall in the front room and then relaxed. For the first time ever, I started to make Mincemeat, something I have always meant to do. Well, I can check that one of my bucket list! It was a two-day process, but quite straightforward, and the result was mouthwateringly successful, if I do say so myself. I used Delia Smith's recipe as a guide:

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/main-ingredient/mincemeat/home-made-christmas-mincemeat.html, but, as always, tweaked it to my liking. I used a little over a pound of Golden Delicious apples (4, peeled and chopped), added some dried cranberries instead of some of the raisins, and added some finely chopped crystallized ginger. I also left out the nuts. Basically, you combine all of the ingredients in a large, oven-proof, stoneware bowl, which looks like this:

Then, the bowl is covered with a clean tea-towel and left in a cool place overnight to allow the flavours to combine. The bowl is then loosely covered in foil, and baked in a 225'F oven for 3 hours. After it's removed, the ingredients are mixed every so often as they cool, to coat them in the melted suet and juices.

The smell was a combination of Christmas + Heaven!

Once cooled, the brandy was added and I divided the recipe amongst 4 properly sterilized Mason Jars.

I plan to use some in a Mincemeat Wellington for a dessert for an upcoming dinner party. I thought I'd bake the mincemeat in a large, rectangular puff pastry tart, then serve it with cardamom-infused custard. Stay tuned for that one!

I also made Carrot Cake cookies, a recipe I got from one of Martha Stewart's cookie recipe books. I've made them before and they were a huge hit with the household. They are basically hermit-like cookies chock full of grated carrot, raisins and oatmeal, then cream cheese icing is layered between two cookies to make a sandwich. A very decadent sandwich!

Cookies ready for baking

After baking

Ready for eating

I also wanted to do a test run of an appetizer I plan to make for this year's Christmas dinner party. Every year, I try to do a different theme, which gives me a bit of a challenge and also helps tie all of the courses together. In past years, I have done Morrocan and traditional British, so this year, I thought I'd attempt an Indian-themed Christmas dinner based on a more traditional menu. I always try to make one hot and one cold appetizer, so I thought of making Indian-style Lamb meatballs. I figure they would be good finger-food if I put toothpicks in them and served them with a mint-cilantro sauce, and the lamb-mint combination is very traditional. I combined a few recipes I found online and in a recipe book, and they turned out wonderfully!