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Crystallised Ginger. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding.

December 24, 2015

She smiled to herself. ‘All the same old things, the Christmas tree and the stockings hung up and the oyster soup and the turkey – two turkeys, one boiled and one roast – and the plum pudding with the ring and the bachelor’s button and all the rest of it… all the old desserts, the Elvas plums and Carlsbad plums and almonds and raisins, and crystallized fruit and ginger. Dear me, I sound like a catalogue from Fortnum and Mason!’ 

The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, Agatha Christie

---

I haven't been 'home' for Christmas since 2008. It's expensive to fly at this time of year and, unlike many of my Antipodean friends, I have no interest in ever again experiencing a Queensland summer. The grey skies, blustery winds and afternoon twilight of an English winter suit me perfectly. I particularly love this country at Christmas; all those songs of my childhood, about chestnuts and winter and snow, suddenly make sense. But, of course, it isn't easy being so far away from my parents, my beloved sister and brother-in-law, my cousins, grandparents, aunts, uncles and friends. There's a reason Tim Minchin sings (so beautifully) about it.

Luckily, and to my immense joy, I have found a surrogate family in the UK. Their house in Gloucestershire - twelve pairs of shoes piled beside the door, the Guardian arriving on the doorstep each morning, a biscuit tin filled with Swedish treats, and a room of my very own - is as familiar and dear to me as any I have ever lived in. And the people in it are my family, in everything but blood. 

I've known them since I was born, mostly via letters, photographs and three memorable holidays in the years I lived back in Australia. I first spent Christmas in their home aged 22, immediately intimidated by the intelligence, wit and talent of my now sister, brother, and cousin. I wanted to be a part of their gang, a member of the group with something to offer. But I didn't play an instrument, or make films, and I couldn't keep up with their comedy shorthand. Thankfully, they also love food as much as I do. And so I cooked. I roasted and sautéed and stuffed and rolled. I made us elaborate midnight feasts, on arriving home from gigs. I baked cakes for birthdays and holidays and weekends in the country. I started, with greater confidence, to suggest ideas for meals, including the all important Christmas Day dinner. Seven years on, I have begun to make it my profession.

Early on, when wandering through the house, I discovered Anna's bookshelves. I found that we have similar taste - for years we both worked through the classics included on all those 'Top 100 Books to Read' lists, and shared similar opinions on so many of them. We love Potter, and His Dark Materials and share a great and enduring love for Agatha Christie. I read at least one of Christie's books every Christmas. They are like a warm bath or a mug of builder's tea: comforting, familiar and particularly welcome in winter. I have now read them all, but return to my favourites like old friends, unconcerned that the denouncement will not come as a shock. I think I like them better this way, reassured that I am standing beside Poirot, Marple or Tommy and Tuppence, rather than staying a step (or several) behind.

This year, I have missed many of my Christmas traditions. I have been living out of a suitcase for the past few months, so haven't made chutney, or marmalade, or mince pies. I haven't bought a tree on Columbia Road Market. I haven't wrapped presents in brown paper and string, or made Christmas cards. And then I arrived in Gloucestershire this week, to a gingerbread house, and a tree to decorate, and a shelf full of Agatha Christie. So I made come crystallised ginger - a favourite in this house, and in my grandad's, on the other side of the world.

A very Merry Christmas to you all.

Crystallised Ginger

Makes around 100 pieces

Ingredients
200g ginger (peeled weight)
300g golden caster sugar, plus 100g extra for dusting
Cold water
2tbsp honey
Pinch salt

Equipment
Teaspoon
Small saucepan
Sieve
Measuring jug
Medium saucepan
Slotted spoon
Cooling rack
Baking tray
Greaseproof paper

1. Ensure that your ginger is fresh, firm and fragrant. Peel it by scraping a spoon over the skin - you'll lose far less of the flesh than you do with a peeler, and it's even easier to work around a knobbly thumb of ginger this way. Slice it into very fine discs - around 1mm thick.

2. Place the ginger slices in the small saucepan and cover with water. Place the saucepan over a medium heat, and simmer for 15 minutes. Strain off the cooking liquid, setting it aside for later, then cover the ginger with more water and boil for a further ten minutes. Strain the liquid, again retaining it for later.

3. Put the sugar, honey, salt and 375ml of the ginger cooking liquid in the medium saucepan. Add the cooked ginger too. Bring the liquid to the boil, simmering until the syrup resembles honey. 

4. While the syrup is bubbling away, prepare a cooling rack with a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper underneath, to catch the drips and excess sugar. Rub the cooling rack with a tiny amount of flavourless oil so that the ginger doesn't stick.

5. Prepare a bowl with the extra sugar. Remove the saucepan of ginger from the heat and scoop the pieces out a few at a time with the slotted spoon, dropping them into the sugar and tossing them around. Transfer to the cooling rack and allow to dry for a couple of hours, or overnight. The ginger will keep for a few weeks at room temperature. You can eat the pieces as is, or chop them up and add them to biscuits, cakes or puddings.

NB. The leftover gingery syrup can be poured over ice-cream, or pancakes, or added to cakes. Any excess sugar can be used for baking.

← Boeuf en Daube. To the Lighthouse.Marshmallows. Tomorrow, When the War Began. →

If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands. 
Douglas Adams
~
My lovely neighbour @kimifrancisart dropped a Tupperware filled with local duck eggs around last night.
I boiled them this morning and then scooped out the yolks with sourdough soldiers and tenderstem broccoli.
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
Calvin Trillin
~
Leftover wedding porchetta ramen. Warming, if you want it to be, but also sharp, and zingy, full of pickles, and welcome on this gloriously sunny day.
It's the only thing that interrupted my incredibly busy day of sitting, and reading Kate Atkinson's latest (Transcription - coming out from @penguinukbooks later this year).
Sophie took four and made them into sandwiches with the venison. She added a slop of soup as a relish, and they ate them with both hands. Sophie’s hair blew in her mouth, and she tied it back with one of Matteo’s bow-strings. She couldn’t remember having been so happy before.
Rooftoppers
Katherine Rundell
~
Soft, buttery homemade bread rolls, a parcel of sticky, charred sausages, and a homemade tomato relish. 
The best of all possible picnics. Recipe up now on the blog and @guardian (search for my column Novel Recipes).
It is simply that there is something intrinsically right about them, and there are some flavours and textures that work together so naturally that they defy the meddlings of any creative cook. There are flavours and textures that work together in perfect harmony.
Appetite
Nigel Slater
~
@ahalfbakedidea and I have had a busy couple of days. 
We've finally announced the first of our seasonal book-inspired feasts (a summer meal from the Cazalet Chronicles), our collaboration with @waterstonestcr. We'll be serving up roasted lamb, salmon croquettes, plum tarts, and elderflower cocktails - we can't wait. 
We're off to Edinburgh today, to make hundreds of macaroni pies, haggis-stuffed porchetta, and a thousand roasted potatoes.
AND, while we're at it, we've redesigned and updated our @foodbyfeast website (just look at that teal!). We're here for all your dinner, wedding, event, or general cake needs. (Top left photo from The Little Library Cookbook, taken by @leantimms)
I'm so thrilled to announce that The Little Library Cookbook has been shortlisted for the @fortnums Debut Book Award.
I have to admit I had a small cry when I found out - it's beyond everything I could have hoped and imagined when I finished the first draft eighteen months ago. 
It's worth saying too that my words and recipes could easily have vanished in the enormous pile of brilliant food books published last year were it not for @leantimms' glorious photos, @jessiebags' stunning design, and the whole team @headofzeus - especially the inimitable Maddy and wonderful Clemence - and the sales team and booksellers who got behind it so enthusiastically. 
And, of course, Evie (my dear friend @anna__myers' girl), who helped me make dumplings, and silly faces during the book shoot.
Edward Ferrars: I-I've come here with no expectations, only to profess, now that I am at liberty to do so, that my heart is, and always will be, yours.
Sense and Sensibility
~
Sunday afternoon. Sense and Sensibility, Thelma and Louise, pots of tea, a batch of @mollyyeh's chocolate chip and tahini biscuits, and the promise of take out pizza later.
"I can look after her all right sir," said Tommy, at exactly the same minute as Tuppence said, "I can take care of myself."
Partners in Crime
Agatha Christie
~
This morning I went for a run, made a pot of coffee, tested some ricotta and clementine pancakes (with roasted rhubarb), and read a couple of Tommy and Tuppence short stories. And I was still at my desk by 10am.
I don't love everything about working freelance, but having my desk some 40 steps from the kitchen table is definitely hard to argue with.
"Open the whisky, Tom", she ordered, "and I'll make you a mint julep. Then you won't seem so stupid to yourself... Look at the mint!"
The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald
~
Five days to go - The Little Library Cookbook is almost out in the States!
Plus, the sun is shining gloriously here today. I'm going to celebrate with a mint julep.
Photo from the book by brilliant @leantimms.
But if they were afraid of lemon meringue pie, this would be an irrational fear, because lemon meringue pie is delicious and has never hurt a soul.
The Wide Window 
Lemony Snicket
~
I've spent today as I spend most bank holidays: in the kitchen. 
There are chickens roasting with potatoes and artichokes in the oven, a broccoli pesto being blitzed up as I type for a salad, and leeks steaming on the stove (I'm doing @dianahenryfood's leeks with breton vinaigrette from How to Eat a Peach🍑).
There's a lemon meringue pie waiting for us for later, and Christie on the telly this evening. 
What bliss.
Spring is made of solid, fourteen-karat gratitude, the reward for the long wait. Every religious tradition from the northern hemisphere honors some form of April hallelujah, for this is the season of exquisite redemption, a slam-bang return to joy after a season of cold second thoughts.
Barbara Kingsolver
~
A pile of books for April reading. I do, admittedly, have a book to write, a wedding to cater, and columns to file, so if I make even a dent in this, I'll be thrilled. But right now, on 01 April, I'm filled with ridiculous optimism, certain I'll power through this collection of new novels, food books, and old favourites I brought back with me from Australia. ~
Clockwise, from top left:
@dianahenryfood's latest: How to Eat a Peach. I started it on the train last Friday - it's glorious and inspiring and filled with things I'm desperate to eat. 
Josephine Johnson's Now in November (thanks @headofzeus).
Sweetbitter, by Stephanie Danler, for the @whatpagepod book club.
Madam, Will You Talk? by Mary Stewart (new to me, thank you @mmdotcox and @hodderbooks - I'm SO looking forward to it!).
Katherine Rundell's Rooftoppers.
My ancient, battered copy of Paddington.
Laura Shapiro's What She Ate, about some of my favourite women, and about food. 
Dorothy Whipple's The Priory, published by my beloved @persephonebooks.
@thomeagle's First, Catch, which looks GORGEOUS, and I am so excited to dive into. It has a chapter titled 'On dressing greens with anchovy', which means I know already that I'm going to love it. 
Some Anne Shirley, because it's April.
A little reminder of Japan, thanks to Kazuo Ishiguro and An Artist of the Floating World. 
My dear favourite Looking for Alibrandi, a friend from my teenage years. 
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, by Anne Brontë.
We need to remember what's important in life: friends, waffles, work. Or waffles, friends, work. Doesn't matter, but work is third.
Leslie Knope
~
I talk a lot here about writing, about recipe testing, and about work that I do on my own. 
In reality, about half of my working life (some weeks significantly more) I share the load with my kitchen wife @ahalfbakedidea.
When we work, bustling around her kitchen, or setting up catering tents in fields, or planning menus over lunch, there is so rarely time for lovely photos. When I'm quiet on here, you can almost guarantee we're working somewhere together, mugs of tea brewing, oven on, washing up piling up.
This past week, we made hundreds of little cakes, hosted a West Wing supper club, and tested recipes for upcoming weddings. On Thursday, we sat with our laptops, and with bacon sandwiches, and planned supperclub menus (@foodbyfeast The Crown menu now online!), placed grocery orders, and plowed through emails. What luck, to work with such a friend.
"It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."
The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath
~
I'm so excited to let you know that The Little Library Cookbook will be released in the US in less than two weeks! I'll be celebrating until then, posting some of @leantimms' gorgeous pics of the recipes inspired by American novels: The Bell Jar, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Green Eggs and Ham.
The US edition is filled with the same recipes I love, but with a brand new cover, and some additional notes about ingredients - I'm so looking forward to hearing how it works in your kitchens across the Atlantic.
You can pre-order it online now (and please do if you're planning on getting a copy - it really does help!) by following the link in my profile.
  • Kate
    I'm having a day off. I'm going to sit in the sun with a beer and read Kate Atkinson's new book, and tonight I'll m… https://t.co/vlBDlIKWMp
    about 23 hours ago
  • Kate
    Oh my god I just remembered I took photos on foggy Friday in the woods. https://t.co/dvrLEZsqG9
    about a day ago
  • Kate
    Dreaming today about the best pie in the world. Can't wait to get to this one in my recipe testing list. https://t.co/ZMr4Kn44H1
    about a day ago

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