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Posts Tagged ‘recipe’

Carol Service Tipples: Spiced Cranapple

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , on 14 December, 2009| 6 Comments »

This Thursday evening we are hosting the staff and governors of our church school here at the Vicarage for ‘mulled wine and mince pies’. That’s what our invite said, anyway. But as many of the staff have to drive home, we will also be serving a wonderful non-alcoholic alternative, given to me by another Vicar’s-wife-in-training, when the Vicar was at theological college. Her original name for it was spiced cider, but that is not very helpful, as it really is non-alcoholic, so I’ve renamed it Spiced Cranapple. It is mulled winey in flavour and not too sweet, as some non-alcoholic punches can be. Serve it at your carol service or at the Vicarage and enjoy!

Enjoy the warmth

Ingredients
1l cranberry juice
1l apple juice
250ml (1 cup) orange juice
5 cloves
3-4 cinnamon sticks
2 tbspns sugar
1 orange, halved and sliced into rounds

Combine all the ingredients, bring to the boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes to allow spices to infuse. Can also bring to boil and transfer straight to thermos pots and leave to infuse that way for church events (and keep leftovers warm for Vicarage use the rest of the week…mmmmm).

Anyway. Best get on with the pastry now. Not sure how many mince pies I’ll need for Thursday but I definitely need to start making them today.

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Vicar’s wife in frugal cooking shock

Posted in Food, Snacks, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 4 November, 2009| 6 Comments »

Or not. A shock that is. I was busy peeling potatoes for the church lunch club yesterday. As well as the keen band of ladies who run the club, the Vicar’s Apprentice Happy was also wielding a peeler.

Once we’d finished peeling the 12kg or so of spuds, I offered to take the peelings home to put on the compost heap. And I was recalling the cook in Nanny McPhee (a favourite movie in the Vicarage – I can’t think why) who rustles up a gruel that includes various vegetable peelings. ‘Maybe I should be making Vicarage gruel’ I pondered.

Then Happy (who has a background in the hospitality industry) mentioned that he’d made parsnip crisps from parsnip peelings whilst working in a posh hotel once. ‘Why not try potato peeling crisps?’ was the suggestion.

So home we went with our bagful of peelings. I pulled out the longer and thinner ones and popped them on a baking sheet (actually four baking sheets), drizzled them with some olive oil, heated my fan oven to 200C and popped them in on a five minute timer.

That wasn’t long enough, but after about fifteen minutes they came out great. Some of them were still a little uncrispy and I switched the oven off and left them in to dry out.

Once out, I sprinkled on a little fancy French sea salt and the Vicar, Happy, Polly and I demolished them extremely quickly. Next time I’m trying this technique with parsnip and carrot peelings too. And I might use an olive oil sprayer to make sure the oil is rather better distributed.

Happy’s Peeling Chips
Long veggie peelings (potato/parsnip/beetroot/carrot)
Olive oil
Sea salt

Preheat oven to 200-220C (Gas 6). Lay peelings in single layer on non-stick baking sheet. Drizzle or spray with olive oil. Cook for 10-20mins until brown and crispy. If any peelings are still a little uncooked at the end, switch the oven off and leave to dry out. Remove to bowl and sprinkle with sea salt to taste.

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Anniversary lunch recipe

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , on 30 April, 2009| 2 Comments »

Yesterday the Vicar and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.

I’ve got a bit hopeless at anniversaries these days, but spotted some English asparagus going cheap at Sainsbury’s that morning. So I cooked two big bundles of it. We added shaved parmesan, freshly ground black pepper, drizzles of lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil and some Sainsbury’s Basics salami, which is very thinly sliced.

It was delicious, and at a perfect temperature after the Vicar took it into the living room first to get better light for his photograph. We ate it with bread on the side to mop up the oil and lemon.

Impressive, eh?

Looks professional, eh?

PS The Joker was messing around with this post before I put it up and tried to re-type the title. He called it “Annaversy lunch”. Ahhh.

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The hazards of masala chai

Posted in Abroad, Food, tagged , , , , , , , , on 14 February, 2009| 2 Comments »

I love the strong, sweet and spiced Indian drink known as masala chai – spiced tea. Usually I go round to my friend Starstudent’s. She makes great masala chai. I normally visit her and have two mugfuls of the delicious drink. I always visit in the morning.

Delicious but not for insomniacs

Delicious but not for insomniacs

You make masala chai by boiling your water in a pan with the teabags and some spices – cardamom, cinnamon and others according to your family tradition eg fennel, ginger, cloves. You boil it for a good while and then add a good helping of milk, sugar to taste and boil for a little longer. Then you strain and serve.

When we visited our friends the Kanns last night I drank two mugfuls, just as usual. Very tasty. But also very high in caffeine (because the teabags are so well boiled I guess).

So I was watching the ceiling at 2.30am. Grrr.

What was really annoying was that I’d done this before. When we lived in Singapore, the church we attended was a Tamil congregation and they served masala chai after the evening service. I had to limit myself to a single cup and couldn’t drink the coffee at all, or I couldn’t sleep. Wish I’d remembered that before I tanked myself up on the caffeine last night.

I wonder how it tastes made with de-caff teabags?

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