Flicking the Vs: December 2015

When my folks come around later this week, we're going to have a traditional Christmas dinner - nut roast, roast spuds, sprouts, the works. But for Mr Flicking the Vs' family, it's less of an old school affair - we just have a load of different bits and pieces on the table, bit of bread and salad, everyone gets involved buffet style.

I've already made the cake for dessert ahead of time, and so I thought I'd get stuck into making the savoury stuff as well for good measure. First up, I thought I'd make some palm heart pies. I've made and frozen them to good effect before, and the theme for this Christmas is very much 'make stuff you can't mess up'.

Only I sort of did mess it up. I went out in the terrible weather yesterday to go and pick up some yoghurt for the sauce that goes in the pies. When I got back home, I thumbed straight to the recipe, only to find that there wasn't any yoghurt required.

Still, the yoghurt-less pies turned out rather lovely. First, get one red onion fried off, then add a few sundried tomatoes, and a tin of palm hearts, chopped up. Then stir in 1tbsp of flour, cook it off for a bit, 250mls of non-dairy milk goes in next, and you have your pie filling. Cut out some circles of ready made puff pastry for the mini pies, fill them, and stick them in the oven for 20 minutes at 200C.

Due to the wonders of ready made puff pastry (Jus-Rol, you're jus the best), the pies turned out none too bad.

So the pies worked out well, but now due to my shopping list foul up, I had a huge whacking great tub of yoghurt to use, and I don't even like yoghurt, really. What to do with it? Christmas cake it up. Add raisins, mixed spice, and make it taste all festive.

I had a bowl of yoghurt for breakfast, with a big dollop of Christmas compote on top, and wondered why I don't eat yoghurt more often.

Christmas compote for yoghurt

Ingredients
One bramley apple, peeled and grated
One small carrot, peeled and grated
30g of raisins and dried cranberries, or similar
Five glace cherries, quartered
The zest and juice of one small orange
1tbsp of light brown sugar (or more to taste)
One clove
Pinch of allspice, cinnamon, ground ginger
Small handful of chopped nuts

How you do it
Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and warm over a low heat for 30 minutes or so (don't worry about stirring it all the time, just the last five minutes or so - before that, just the odd stir is just the job.)
Once all the liquid has cooked off, and the compote is shiny and thick, take the clove out. Then, stick a load on your yoghurt, add some nuts and maple syrup and go feel impressed with yourself.

breakfast

A Christmas compote recipe for topping your yoghurt

When my folks come around later this week, we're going to have a traditional Christmas dinner - nut roast, roast spuds, sprouts, the wor...

Remember yesterday I made a sandwich that had brussels sprouts and Tofurkey in? Dear reader, I think I may have a problem. I did exactly the same thing again today - I took some Tofurkey and brussels sprouts and put them in a dish they were never meant to be in.

That okonomiyaki recipe that I've been living on recently? I put brussels sprouts and Tofurky in that, and made a sort of car crash between a Christmas dinner and a Japanese pancake.

You know what? It sort of worked. I stand by earlier statement that you can pretty much put any veggies in an okonomiyaki and it tastes good.

You also know what? I think I'm over Tofurky and brussels sprouts in stuff. If you see me trying the same thing again, take me by the hand and lead me away from the stove.

Still, here's a visual memoriam to a dish I can't imagine I'll ever cook again, and to the restorative power of sriracha and vegan salad cream:

But away from this madness, I actually made something decent. Yeah, I know, I was surprised too.

I like to give Mr Flicking the Vs' ma homemade biscuits every Christmas and I decided this year, I was going to try making some biscotti. I did a test run the other day to see if I could pull it off. I made a basic biscotti dough and added clementine juice, almonds and cranberries. It was... fine. OK, nothing special. Fine. But I really like Mr Flicking the Vs' ma, and wanted to make something really delicious.

So I tried again, and made a basic biscotti dough with hazelnuts and dark chocolate. They turned out really well - all the taste of a Ferrero Rocher in a biscotti. The thing I love about biscotti is that they can last for ages. Only if you make ones that taste like Ferrero Rocher, I don't think they'll be staying in the biscuit tin for a long time.

Hazelnut and chocolate biscotti

Ingredients

250g self raising flour

100g vegan caster sugar

half a tsb of bicarb

Pinch of salt

One flax egg - one tbsp if ground flax in three tbsp of water

2tbsp of neutral tasting vegetable oil

3tbsps of apple juice

30g of hazelnuts, roughly chopped

50g of vegan dark chocolate, roughly chopped (or you could use chocolate chips)

How you do it

Preheat the oven to 160C and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.

Mix together the flour, sugar, bicarb, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine the flax egg, oil and apple juice.

Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients, then work them together into a non-sticky dough. The dough shouldn't be wet, but if you feel it's not coming together after being worked a fair bit, add a little water half a teaspoon at a time and then work the dough again.

Once it's all come together, add in the hazelnuts and dark chocolate and knead the dough until the goodies are equally distributed.

Then, turn the dough out onto a flour work surface and divide the dough into two.

Using your hands, shape the dough into two lozenges, about 25cm by 5cm and 2cm or 3cm thick.

Put the dough into the oven for 30 minutes.

After that time, take the dough out of the oven and leave it to rest for 10 minutes. Turn the oven down by 20 degrees.

After ten minutes, slice the dough into slices on the diagonal, about 1cm or 2cm thick.

Spread the slices out, cut side down, and put into the oven for 10 minutes.

After that time, turn the slices over so the other cut side is on the baking sheet and leave to cook for another 10 minutes.

Then, leave the biscotti to cool. Once they're that, brew up some tea and get dunking.