Food, Finds & Forays
Hey there....
Can you believe it’s 8 sleeps until Santa comes? Gosh it’s felt like the longest year yet hard to believe it’s nearly over. And again the world has evolved.
Firstly I need to say a huge thanks for your support and readership. When I first started Food, Finds & Forays I had no idea how much joy it would bring to receive all your beautiful messages and see you cooking my recipes. Seriously you’re the best!! This will be my last letter for the year while I take a break for Christmas and summer holidays. I plan to be back on deck mid-January both here and working so if you need any images, writing or recipe development done to set you up for 2022 please reach out.
This week I’m sharing some sweet xmas dinner memories which have inspired one of my favourite xmas recipes. It’s bursting with Christmas flavours bringing a Christmas twist to an old fashioned comfort food favourite.
I’m also my sharing my plan for our family Christmas get together and my summer holidays reading list. Wish me luck getting through it, there's so many great books hitting the shelves this year.
Wishing you the very best of Christmas cheer, safe and happy holidays and lots of relaxed family time and love.
See you for more delicious news in 2022
Much festive love
Sally xx
PS I’ll be hanging out on Instagram here and there if you want to catch up and see what I'm up to.
Merry Jingle Bells xx
Food
Walking into my Nana’s kitchen through the back door on the evening of the second Sunday of December annually would always make my eyes pop. Even though I knew what awaited I would eagerly skip through the side gate running through the flowers, past the heaving plum tree and up the four steps through their back door. Joining my cousins, aunties and uncles in my Nana and Papa’s small kitchen my eyes would fall longingly on the kitchen table covered with every dessert imaginable. Everyone would gather and mingle sharing stories of the year gone and season’s preparations. We’d all eagerly await the full compliment of family members to arrive before being seated with Uncle Ron’s rousing “howdy folks,” always the final greeting and signal that everyone was in attendance. I suspect he would watch from his front window next door until everyone had arrived before making his cheery entrance seemingly enjoying the groan, jeers and laughter his late arrival would always elicit. Dinner was always a classic traditional roast served on a collection of trestle tables and fold up card tables all dressed in the finest family linens kept only for this annual evening and my Papa’s birthday in June. Plates were passed down the line until everyone was served and the accompanying silence a sign of the enjoyment of nana’s days of labour creating our Christmas feast. While we all munched happily we’d all be preoccupied with that kitchen table. My Nana’s love language was food before love languages were a thing. She’d toil for the week leading up to our celebration ensuring that everyone was served their favourite dessert. There’d always be plum pudding for Papa, a collection of slices for one family, another set of cousins eagerly feasted on loganberry pie and my brother and I would tuck in to apple pie with custard. This tradition that we all still reminisce about is my strongest Christmas dinner memory and one of the biggest lessons I learnt from her. To make the time to make sure there’d always be everyone’s favourites at the table at the one time of the year where there can never be enough food or delicious desserts on offer.
In the spirit of this tradition I’ve tried to create some of my own favourites that we can look forward to every year. And so I offer you my personal favourite, Panettone Bread and Butter pudding. A smorgasbord of Christmas flavours and comfort food all rolled into one using the traditional Italian Christmas bread and the English method of baking old bread in a custard mixture. It can be made ahead and warmed on the day and can even double as breakfast served with yoghurt….or cream and custard because its Christmas and we’re not going to split dairy hairs.
Dating back to the Middle Ages Pane di Toni (as it was originally named after the young chef who invented the dish) or Panettone has evolved through time to become as big a part of Christmas food traditions as Roast Turkey, Plum Pudding, Egg Nog and any other delicious Christmas treat you can imagine. The citrus and fruit flavours reminiscent of the heavier plum pudding or fruit cake options bring a seasonal zing baked in the custard laced with a little hint of spiced rum and tang from a sprinkling of dried cranberries. Inspired by Stephanie Alexander’s Bread and Butter pudding this is my Christmas take on the classic.
Ingredients:
1 medium sized traditional panettone – I use this one which weighs in at 700gm
50 gm butter very soft for spreading
3 large eggs
1 ½ cups thickened cream
1/2 c cream
¼ c caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp spiced rum
1 Tb dried cranberries
1Tb sliced or slivered almonds
1-2 Tb of raw sugar crystals
Method:
Preheat oven to 180c.
Prepare a ceramic or glass baking dish greasing well with batter. I used a 24 cm round as pictured.
Combine eggs, cream, milk, vanilla, sugar and rum and whisk well. Allow to sit while you construct the pudding.
Halve your loaf from top to bottom creating two half circle pieces. Slice each piece in thick slices approximately 2cm thick. Spread each slice with softened butter. The block type that you’d bake with not the spreading type from a tub…because it’s Christmas. Lay slices in dish overlapping at the edges fan like, sprinkling cranberries over first layer of slices then top with a second layer of bread.
Pour custard mixture over bread evenly and gently press bread slices with your flat hand to help the bread absorb the custard. Allow to sit for at least 15 minutes while you clean up, or even a couple hours in the fridge, so all the custard has soaked into the panettone. Just before placing in the oven sprinkle over the raw sugar and almonds, bake 45 minutes.
Check the pudding after 20 minutes to check how it’s browning. My oven can be quite warm at the back so I always rotate it half way through so it browns evenly.
Allow to sit for half an hour before breaking into it to allow it to firm up a little making it easier to serve.
Notes:
Use heavy cream or whipping cream in place of what we call ‘thickened cream’ if you’re reading from the northern hemisphere.
If you’re panettone is a little plainer in flavour you can add a tsp of freshy grated orange rind to the custard.
For a richer pudding spread marmalade or a Christmas flavoured jam on half the slices. Cherry or redcurrant jam works well.
If you prefer an alternative to the cranberries halved pitted cherries are delicious dotted through the pudding between bread layers.
Brandy can be used in place of the rum or omitted if you prefer.
If you want to make ahead you can lever out of the dish when cold and freeze. To reheat, allow to thaw completely and either cover with foil and warm in the oven on 160c until warm through, removing foil near the end to crisp up the top. Alternatively you can cut into wedges while still cold and warm in the microwave.
Finds & Forays
We’re hosting my husband’s family this weekend for an early Christmas lunch celebration. You might recall I mentioned a couple of weeks ago I was planning salads to go with our Christmas Ham along with some roast chickens and perhaps some prawns on the BBQ. It’s going to be 35 degrees Celsius (95 Fahrenheit!!) so my plan is a perfect fit however there may well be a mutiny if there’s no roast potatoes. To shake things up a little I’m going to serve these amazing ones. A perfect twist on the classic with a creamy centre, crunchy outer and delicious salty flavour. I’ll add my roast veg salad to cover all the traditional flavours and perhaps some blanched green beans drizzled with my mustard vinaigrette and toasted pine nuts and a simple tomato salad with the basil that’s blooming in my garden.
Beyond Sunday all the social activities begin in what will be a whirlwind week and leave me looking forward to a week camping in the sunshine (hopefully) and cooling my toes in the gorgeous Ovens River. I have a bit of a reading list I’m hoping to plough through some of which are on my Christmas list that Santa hopefully fulfils. Two biographies have caught my eye. Rock star and movie icon couldn’t be more opposite but both intriguing men, especially with talk of food from the latter. There’s also a few great novels out which I’ll download on the kindle. I’m excited for the new one from Jodi Picoult but I think I’ll need this summer holiday read after that, I'm a huge fan. I love this author’s books too so may also download his new one for an edge of the seat read.
If you’re after some light reads you might also like to check these newsletters I’ve found recently. Ruth Reichl is an American food writer and chef with a life dedicated to sharing her food wisdom and stories. She’s created a daily newsletter over the month of December that I hope will continue in the new year. Some of her food recollections from her career are absolutely fascinating.
Max Brearly is a Perth based writer for several national food and lifestyle publications and has also taken the plunge into newsletter publishing. His irreverent easy going style makes for a fun but informative read. He’s a cook book collector and sharp observer of food culture making his perspective all the more interesting.
Finally I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this one or not but if I have it’s worth another mention. Maggie is one of my favourite authors with her intimate and inspiring memoirs of her own life like reading a letter from a dear friend. Her weekly newsletter The Sit Spot is much the same where she shares her life on her and her partners sheep farm on the Tasmanian coast. I don’t know if it’s Maggie’s exquisite prose or that she shares life in one of my favourite places but her Tuesday arrival in my inbox is the very best way to start a day.
