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Location: Blogs Chef Nick Martin
Posted by: chefnick	Monday, December 25, 2006
Well a very merry christmas to you all, I have just finnished the washing up after a fantastic family festive dinner, We started with roasted lemons filled with brown shrimps, glazed with keldthwaite gold cheese, then the most excellent roast goose with brandy and prune stuffing, roast parsnips and potatoes, carrot and swede mash and buttered sprouts, all washed down with a chilled bottle of Veuve Cliquot ponsardin, i've already made the chicken liver pate and the onion jam for tommorow night, And I've just finnished cooking off 2 large ham hocks that will go with the beetroot relish i made last week, Switch onto BBC RADIO CUMBRIA at 9.30am on Saturday 30th December to hear me Live talking about tasty nibbles and great party food for a great New Year celebration, See ya soon, Nick..

Comments (1)

Re: A Family Christmas..

By admin on Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Hi Nick,

We've just had a lovely few days. The Swedish tradition is to celebrate Christmas on Christmas eve, this involves eating from the Christmas buffet, drinking beer and aquavit, followed by presents in the afternoon. So we spent most of the 23rd cooking and preparing food for the feast.

Almost all of it we make ourselves, starting with 3 types of pickled "sill" or to use their English name, herring. This is really superb, not like anything you get in the UK, one was a "traditional" type of pickle, clear with onions, carrots, spices, peppercorns. One was a tomato juice based pickle, the other, probably my favourite used mustard. As well as the "sill", I made a "gravlax". I have got this recipe off to perfection now, including the sauce.

I made three types of bread, a rye, a cibatta and a wholemeal/rye combination, all using a rye sourdough in some form. We also had some crispbread which we bought. The main course, prepared by Cecilia consisted of a "sill" and beetroot salad, meatballs, Jannson's temptation (shredded potatoes with anchovies and cream...), ham, cheese, pate and a few other bits and pieces.

It is a really lovely meal, accompanied by Aquavit and beer to go with the herring and fish course. There is the obligatory bottle of champagne, as well as wine and other stuff. The meal sort of goes on for a few hours as it is served as a buffet, and inbetween you open presents.

On Christmas day, of course we have to celebrate it according to English customs, essentially a traditional meal, with chicken instead of Turkey, all the trimmings, followed by a huge trifle made to a recipe I found in Mrs Beetons book last year.

Today, we will be making a sage and onion, chicken risotto. This is a simply perfect recipe Cecilia concocted a few weeks ago. All in all a lovely few days.

Hopefully we will catch you on the Radio.

Bye for now.
Martin