Those of you on Twitter will have noticed that I had a rather big meal last night as part of my Winter Solstice celebrations. I figured I might as well blog about it.
The unexpected appetizer (because the main course took longer to cook than expected) was crackers and a roulé cheese favored with cranberries. It was rather sweeter than I expected, and very nice.
The recalcitrant meat was turducken. Iceland called it a “three bird roast”, so maybe John Madden is trying to copyright turducken, or perhaps they just thought us Brits would be put off if we thought it was something American. But turducken it was. Next time I’ll defrost it before cooking. That might get it to cook more reliably.
That came with roast potatoes, honey roast parsnips and steamed vegetables (cauliflower, green beans and carrot), plus gravy and an Australian chardonnay colombard mix white wine.
Dessert was key lime pie, followed by coffee (freshly ground Fair Trade Colombian) and chocolate cake. And my reward for doing the washing up myself (Kevin being elsewhere) was a glass of Jura Prophecy.
Most of this was a total cheat. When there’s only one of you cooking a huge meal seems like way too much hard work. But it is quite impressive what you can sling together out of the big grocery stores these days. They seem to have finally grokked the idea that some people who shop there are not housewives with a family to feed. Also I’m in the habit of cooking several days food at once.
Of course it would be nice to have more time to cook, and someone to cook for, and a home big enough to serve dinner at a table. Hopefully these things will come.
Talking of food, you may have noticed that the meal did not include a cheese course. That’s partly because I’ve been eating a lot of cheese for lunch and didn’t want to overdose. For lunch today I tried something I found in Tesco earlier in the week. It is a Cornish Brie-style cheese called St. Endellion (another one of those Cornish saints whom few people, least of all the Pope, has ever heard of, though Endellion was supposedly a god-daughter of King Arthur and David Cameron’s daughter has Endellion as one of her middle names). It is made with double cream and is very yummy. Recommended, especially after all of the mass-produced Brie I have been eating of late.
Yes, St. Endellion is yummy. Also, I agree about the faff of cooking for one… I love “proper” cooking, but only when somebody else will share the eating.
I reckon David Cameron’s daughter can be grateful they chose Endellion instead of Austell or Budoc or Minver…
Well the kid sort of chose it herself by electing to arrive three weeks early while the parents were in the village of St. Endellion on vacation.
(BTW, I had to read the Daily Malice to find that out. The things I do for you people. ;-))
She’;s clearly going to have excellent foresight.
And I thank you for the Malice reading, from the bottom of my heart.
Can anyone really overdose on cheese? I’ve tried that many time but have never succeeded. That brie cheese do sound dangerous though…
Sounds like a mighty feast and it is a shame indeed that you had nobody to share it with and to do the dishes.
Hugs.
I’m a bit prone to high cholesterol, so yes, I can overdose on cheese.
I managed to share the meal by proxy with a bunch of people on Twitter and Facebook. When people ask me how I’m spending the holidays I tend to reply, “I’m spending them online, that’s where all my friends will be.”
Iceland called it a “three bird roastâ€, so maybe John Madden is trying to copyright turducken, or perhaps they just thought us Brits would be put off if we thought it was something American
Three possibilities.
a) It’s a specific instantiation of the more general three bird roast, and we’re more prepared to consider the generality. (The one I collected at lunch time was a turkey/duck/pheasant one, which seems to be the common one in butchers round here.)
b) When not getting called a three bird roast, it gets called a ballotine (or ballantine at places that don’t know the correct spelling). Yet another name seems rather redundant.
c) The American name is just a little too close to ‘turd-yuck-ew’!
Endellion was supposedly a god-daughter of King Arthur
I suspect the Papacy is trying to avoid too many obviously fictional characters in the list.
Arthur is not that much more obviously fictional than Saint George.
There are a whole lot of Saints in Cornwall who are unknown elsewhere. This dates from a time when the process of beatification was somewhat less centrally controlled than it is now.
The existence of any fictional saints will be a distinct problem for any organisation that purports to be the custodians of absolute truth. They’ve got, as you say, St George in there, and I suspect quite a few more whose actual authenticity may have been somewhat dubious.
On the parallel point of saints being more locally recognised in days of old, yeah. I can’t imagine the control freaks over in Rome being too happy with the idea that the locals have the ability to decide on who is a saint or not. These days they have a very rigid procedure (though it’s funny how some fast tracking takes place for their very favourite sons and daughters).
And oh yes – you need to let it defrost properly. If you’re going to get the internal temperature that is required (I use a meat thermometer to be certain), then the outside will already be cooked before that large lump of ice in the middle has melted. You want the heat coming in through the outer layers to be actually cooking the meat, not having to melt ice first. You’ll either not cook the centre properly (which is of course bad news), or the outer layer has had to cook for much longer than it should have had to, and it’ll be dry and tough and not nice at all.
I’ve been advised to let ours defrost for 48 hours.
I’m also slightly nervous, in that last night was the first time I’ve cooked a roast in the oven, so I don’t have this oven’s quirks sorted out yet. (It was pork, with yummy crackling, but the tatties didn’t crisp golden the way I like.)
Yeah, normally I treat “cook from frozen” instructions with great suspicion, but this time my natural paranoia failed to engage.
A meat thermometer is a good idea. I shall add it to my list of kitchen gadgets to buy when I can safely venture as far as Bath.