Notes about Recipes in this book

• Spiced cranberry and orange marmalade

  • adrienneyoung on October 10, 2011

    Needed a bit of extra sugar.

• Slow braised belly pork with bacon, apples and cider

  • adrienneyoung on December 10, 2011

    I made this with a beautiful shoulder of pork instead of pork belly. And so far it's not impressing me. Straight out of the pot, the sauce is not interesting. I'll give it a couple of days to develop, but if salt & pepper aren't enough, I'm going to have to add stock, reduce it, and doctor it up a bit. Cream? Calvados? Dunno...

• Brussels bubble-and-squeak

  • adrienneyoung on January 02, 2012

    This was good, but not outstanding. A nice way to use up leftover brussel sprouts and mashed potatoes, if both are around. Not a reason to make brussel sprouts or mashed potatoes, though, I'd say.

• Traditional braised red cabbage with apples

  • adrienneyoung on December 10, 2011

    Not the best I've ever had, but promising. Update: really excellent after a few days in the fridge. And yes, it freezes really well. May even improve with freezing.

  • Leo on December 10, 2024

    I make this every winter. I had a small cabbage so halved the ingredients but cooked it in the same sized pot. It was a revelation. Soft after 2 hours, still a good colour and very tasty. I think it was because the ingredients had a bit of space and were not layered too deep. I also added a couple of whole star anise in addition to the other spices which I will repeat.

• Parsnips with Parmesan

  • sharifah on January 07, 2013

    Not that impressed, tasted more of flour than cheese. But I grated the Pecorino (substitute instead of Parmesan) with coarse box grater so by the time I coated all the parsnips, all the cheese were left behind. Next time if I were to make it again, the Pecorino needs to be as fine as the flour (she should've stated this!), so Magimix grated.

  • Pamsy on March 27, 2019

    All 3 of us loved these, a nice change from plain roasted parsnips. Made a big batch and froze half, they were just as good defrosted and cooked a month later.

• Spiced pickled pears

  • KarinaFrancis on July 23, 2018

    Absolutely delicious! I made them to go with the Christmas ham and they were a huge success. The only change I made was to cut the pears into quarters because I only had 2 weeks, I must admit it made it easier to fit in the jar

• English colonial curry with turkey

  • Nichill on January 07, 2017

    Really pleased and surprised by this recipe: the result was a lot better than we would have made 'free style'. We used Bramley apples, rather than dessert. Opinion evenly divided as to which woukd have been better. Bought this cookbook as a post-Christmas sale item. This recipe justifies its purchase and inclusion in our library.

• Arbroath smokie mousse

  • Nichill on March 19, 2023

    This worked really well. It did turn out of the pots, which I was worried about! We found it quite substantial for a starter, so will try splitting across 8 ramekins next time. Will also try with only 3 leaves of gelatine, but it wasn’t excessively bouncy.

• Pot-roasted guinea fowl with Calvados, cream and apples

  • Pamsy on December 11, 2021

    This was tasty for a cold December evening. Followed the recipe roughly, but didn't do the browning of the fowl, as it was cooked in the oven. No cider so used chicken stock and upped the Calvados to 4tbsp. No apples in the fruit bowl, so subbed Waitrose frozen Bramley slices which did lose their shape during cooking but gave a good apple flavour. Could liquidise the sauce to make it smooth, slightly more elegant for entertaining. Another idea would be to saute, in a separate pan, some apple rounds and add them to the above sauce before serving.

• Little mincemeat soufflé puddings with chilled rum sabayon

  • Pamsy on May 16, 2019

    Lovely alternative to Xmas Pudding. Very light and Sabayon is a great accompaniment.