Get ahead Christmas: Jamie's gravy

Dear Reader, I thought I would start this post with a confession. I have more than a soft spot for Jamie Oliver. It was his recipes that got me interested in trying to cook new and different things. Before then I was very much a family cook in the same ilk as my Mum, but Jamie made things like Thai Green Curry and risotto accessible. I was still in the concious competence stage of learning to cook and believed I needed every ingredient and to follow recipes to the letter. Oh how times have changed. What hasn't has the soft spot for the Naked Chef. Whether he's revamping school dinners, or working with young people at Fifteen, I admire his social awareness, as well as his cooking. Oddly during the riots in the summer, I nearly got caught up in them by wanting to go and eat at his Italian in Birmigham, thankfully a burly Police Officer dissuaded me of that plan!

So Saturday afternoon just gone I was found bashing 7 bells out of chicken wings, veg and spices in the name of Jamie's gravy. Mum had wanted to try it, and when I read that you could make it ahead and freeze it I was won over. Whilst as I've already said this week, that Christmas dinner is just a roast - albeit as one commenter mentions, with a paper hat - getting things done ahead of time will reduce the amount of space I need on the oven or hob, which is a huge tick when you're working in a tiny kitchen, and also it's one less thing to worry about. I just need to get it out of the freezer the night before and heat it through with the turkey juices for extra flavour. That said, if you don't fancy any faffing on Christmas day it really doesn't need it, this gravy really packs a punch.

I haven't got a copy of the recipe to hand, and made 2 batches together so this makes a lot - I would say enough for 12-16 (more if you're feeding littlies) the Pantry take on Jamie's Gravy.

Jamie & Penelope's festive gravy

2 onions, peeled and quartered
4 sticks celery roughly chopped
4 carrots, roughly chopped
Handful of rosemary sprigs
Handful of sage leaves
Some bay leaves (fresh if you have a bay tree. Santa, if you're listening?)
16 chicken wings, bashed a bit
Salt
Pepper
Olive Oil
8 tablespoons flour (I used cornflour, that's just what we had, I wasn't being cheffy!)
4 litres water, recently boiled
120 ml sherry

Put the veg and herbs in a roasting tin, and top with the bashed up chicken wings (I put them in a sandwich bag and hit them with a rolling pin)
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, drizzle with olive oil
Cook in a gas mark 6 oven for about an hour - until it's nicely cooked but not burnt. In Mum's oven this took an hour and a half
Put your roasting tin on the hob, and light a burner. With a potato masher bash 7 bells out of the contents of the roasting tin, until it's pretty much a mush. I kept turning the roasting tin around as one burner didn't heat all of it, and two was too much for me to manage.
Add your flour and keep bashing until it's all combined
Add the water and sherry and stir in so that everything is all covered
Turn up the heat, bring to a gentle boil
Turn down the heat and simmer for about half an hour
I was shattered then, so we covered it and left it overnight before draining through first a colander and then a seive into large bowls.
This made 4 pints of amazing gravy. We froze them in freezer bags flat so they take up less room in the freezer and defrost quickly.

A note from mum and I, this smelt (so I'm told) amazing at the end of roasting, and I could easily have eaten it as a dinner. I suspect it's going to taste like a roast dinner in itself. It's thick and luscious.

Another note, if you used thighs not wings and stopped after roasting this would make an amazingly simple and tasty dinner.

Another another note, if you stripped the meat off the bones after cooking and blitzed with a stick blender, then added the water this would make the most amazingly healing soup.

Because of room, I'm just going to heat this through and add a few spoons of turkey juices to it, but mum is going to reheat hers in the turkey pan (after draining off the fat) I have no doubt hers will be amazing, but I'm going for the easy to manage with one working arm option.

Apologies for lack of photos, but mushed up veg really isn't that pretty. I'll work on that.

Easy Christmas stuffing

So it's now 5 days until Christmas, how are you feeling? Have the children broken up from school yet? Or did they break up last week and have already declared themselves as bored? This post is a recipe - shocker I know, and also a way to get ahead ready for the weekend that family can help with - both Guides and Brownies (so 7-14) really enjoy the ickiness of helping out with this. One more thing to tick off that to do list.

Stuffing. I love it, it's not a roast without it - which is how Mark feels about Yorkshire puddings. My lovely sister (the gorgeous one in the picture up top) is half of the inspiration for this recipe. Last Christmas she made a fruited stuffing from scratch and I really enjoyed it. She won't be with us this Christmas as she's at her inlaws, but when I pop this in the oven I'll be thinking of her.

However this version is becoming known as Division Commissioner stuffing. And to explain that I have to tell you a little story. Two years ago I applied for my Guide holiday licence, prepped a GFI Glamorama themed holiday and worked incredibly hard to make it a success. Alison, our Division Commissioner was our QM - who saw I had bought a leading brand of dried stuffing and promptly declared "we won't be using that!" At this point she knocked up stuffing for 20 people using 'stuff' lying around the Guide kitchen. I was slightly gobsmacked to say the least. And it was yummy, much wetter than packet stuffing ever is. Fast forward 2 years and the older guides in a much bigger Guide unit wanted to know if we were having Alison's stuffing? So I picked up the phone and got the recipe. Well I say recipe, it's more of a guideline.

Now for Guides I made this vegetarian, leaving out the sausage meat, however for Christmas in our house it is firmly carnivourous, and I used skinned lincolnshire sausagemeat to increase the herbed flavours, if you like  it peppery try cumberland, and if you prefer a simple flavour then any good pork sausagemeat will be great. I get mine from the butchers around the corner, as they make their own sausages and the quality is immense. If I were using one from a Supermarket it would be a Sainsbury's TTD as they are amazing quality (and gluten free)

I should say, that this is a really easy recipe for children to help with. Use the food processor if you're not happy letting them loose with knives. I would use the food processor with my Brownies, but with supervision my Guides are fine with knives. Make sure their hands are clean and get them to smush up the sausagemeat.

Division Commissioner's Stuffing (this quantity serves about 8, it doubles or even triples beautifully)

2 onions, blitzed in the food processor
25g butter
1 Bramley apple, peeled, cored and diced (I confess, I blitzed it with the onions)
800g Lincolnshire sausages, skinned and smushed up
Handful of sage leaves, chopped up
4-6 slices of stale brown/ wholemeal/ granary bread, crusts cut up and blitzed into breadcrumbs

Fry the onion in the melted butter until it starts to soften
Add the apple and cook for a little while longer
Leave the pan on one side to cool down (it need to be easily handle-able)
Mix with the remaining ingredients and seasoning - do this with clean hands in a big bowl
Make into balls and put on a buttered baking tray, and cook for about half an hour

If I'm doing this at home I then pack it into a foil lined 1kg loaf tin and freeze it until it's needed.
Take it out of the freezer on Christmas eve, and when defrosted, cook as above but for about 40 minutes.

If you want a veggie version, add extra apple and onion and breadcrumbs to make up the weight.

This is what we're having on Christmas Day with our turkey. Just think if you make it today (you could easily sub the apples for eating apples and use any sausagemeat you have in the house), freeze it you don't need to even think about it again until Saturday evening.