Christmas

Figgy Pudding for my ‘National Trust Book of Puddings’

24th November 2019 by Regula 4 Comments

Today is Stir-up sunday and the most important day on the pudding calendar. Today is the day to prepare the Christmas pudding, or plum pudding. Why this should be done a month before Christmas is something I’ve written about in a previous posting here and in my book Pride and Pudding. But this year I wanted to give you an alternative to the traditional plum pud.

A figgy pudding is just another name for a plum pudding – and both of them generally refer to puddings made with raisins or currants and no figs at all. However there have been recipes for figgy pudding in the late 19th century, but those recipes did refer to puddings made with figs and didn’t give a recipe for plum pudding. Using dried figs, this results in a dark and luxurious winter pudding. Why not have this as your pudding on Christmas day for a change this year?

This is a recipe from my little book the ‘National Trust Book Of Puddings‘ which was published in april (2019)….

When it comes to Mincemeat, you have to plan ahead

11th October 2019 by Regula Leave a Comment

Mincemeat is an ancient recipe that gives you a taste of Medieval times gone by when the usage of this mixture was widely common for sweet as well as savoury dishes. That is if you were well off, dishes with these rich ingredients were the privilege of the very rich and one of the first recipes dates from the 14th century scroll presumably written by the chef of King Richard II.

Mincemeat is best made at least a month in advance so that the flavours can mature. You can use it for different recipes: as a filling for Mince pies of course but also for Eccles cakes and a couple of other British bakes.

The combination of fruits and spices for mincemeat is often diverse, but raisins, currants and candied lemon, cedro and/or orange peel are standard. Some old recipes also contain prunes, dates, figs or candied ginger. Spices are usually cinnamon, cloves, mace and nutmeg. There is always grated apple or pear and sometimes also lemon or orange juice – mostly from Seville oranges (these are very acidic and also the basis for English marmalade – see recipe here).

You can make the mincemeat in this large quantity and store it in the fridge for up to 6 months in sterilised preserving jars.

And then for a little joyeus news: my new book ‘Brits Bakboek‘ has been nominated for ‘Het Gouden Kookboek’ a prestigious kookbook award in the Netherlands. I’m absolutely chuffed and honoured to be nominated as the only Belgian on the list!
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Stir-up Sunday, History and Plum pudding

18th November 2016 by Regula 5 Comments

Let me start with blowing my own trumpet, it’s my blog so I’m allowed! I’m pleased to have tracked down a copy of Delicious Magazine while in Budapest because in it they have elected my book Pride and Pudding as one of the best books of 2016! After the hard work creating this book I am of course flattered and beyond happy to get this kind of news! So thank you again Delicious Magazine UK!!

Now on to the news of the day!

This weekend will mark the last Sunday before advent which is traditionally Stir-up Sunday. According to (rather recent) tradition, plum pudding or Christmas pudding should be made on this day. It is a custom that is believed to date back to the 1549 Book of Common Prayer (though it is actually not); where a reading states ‘stir up, we beseech thee’. The words would be read in church on the last Sunday before Advent and so the good people knew it was time to start on their favourite Christmas treat.

It was a family affair: everyone would gather to stir the pudding mixture from east to west, in honour of the Three Kings who came from the east. Sometimes coins or trinkets would be hidden in the dough; finding them on Christmas Day would bring luck and good fortune.

There are a lot of legends and claims made about the origins of the plum pudding. Some say it was King George I who requested plum pudding as a part of the first Christmas feast of his reign, in 1714. George I was christened ‘the Pudding King’ because of this myth but there are no written records prior to the twentieth century to tell us that this king deserved this title.

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To make Ypocras

24th December 2013 by Regula 7 Comments

And then it is suddenly christmas again… it seems only yesterday that it was september and now we are only moments away from januari. It will be march in the blink of an eye and when it’s august you will be wondering where those months have gone to.
When you are a child, the days seem to drag on like weeks and the weeks like months but when you are all grown up… you wonder where that hour of free time went to and when you are finally able to start reading that book you’ve got to read in the summer.

To warm your spirits after the last busy weeks of the year 2013, a year that has brought me excitement, friendship and a new venture of which I will tell you all about very soon – I had mulled wine on my mind.
The sweet scent of the warm wine and spices always transport me back to the christmas markets in Aachen. My parents and I would drive to Germany especially for it each year. Even from a young age I would be allowed half a cup of mulled wine to warm my hands and to bring a rosy blush to my ice cold cheeks. It was one of the highlights of my year, to take in the different scents in the air, the aniseed of the artisan candy being made, the greasy smell of Reibekuchen, the aroma of spices blended with chocolate from the Aachener Printen biscuits and the mulled wine and rum.

Sometimes the very unlikely of foods and drink can be the ones that have been around for centuries and some recipes never changed very much.
Mulled wine or ypocras as its name was for centuries, has been around since the Middle Ages but mulled spirits pre-date Medieval times. I found a recipe for a fine spiced wine in a Roman cookery book that looks a lot like the recipe for ypocras. It is commonly thought that the drink is named after the Greek physician Hippocrates, however this is not so. It is more likely that ypocras has this name because the herbs and spices were strained through a conical filter bag known as a Manicum Hippocraticum – sleeve of Hippocrates. The Old French name for Hippocrates was ypocrate which explains the etymology of the Middle English name ypocras, hipocras, ipocras, ippocras, hvpocras, hvppocra, and many more variations.

The spice mixture for ypocras was known as ‘Gyle’ and usually contained cinnamon, grains of paradise, long pepper and cardamom pods. These spices were bruised with a pestle and mortar and then left to steep in the red or white wine overnight or possibly even longer to soak up all the flavours.
One can assume that ypocras was used for medicinal purposes rather than for feasting as in recipes it is often mentioned as the perfect tipple after dinner to aid digestion. The oldest recipes therefore include many more herbs which will have given the spiced drink more of a cough syrup flavour than the enjoyable winter warmer we know today.
The first English recipe for Ipocras dates from approximately 1390 and goes as follows:

Pur fait Ypocras,
Treys Unces de canell. Et iij unces de gyngener. spykenard de Spayn le pays dun deneres. garyngale. clowes, gylofre. poivr long, noiez mugadez. maziozame cardemonij de chescun i.qrt douce grayne de paradys flour de queynel de chescun dimid unce de toutes. soit fait powdour and serve it forth.

The recipe is more a list of ingredients and assumes the cook knows the proportions and that a red or white wine is to be used. Sugar was a precious ingredient and only for the lord and master so Ypocras would only contain sugar in the wealthy homes while the common folk sweetened their drink with honey.

Ypocras was common enough to be mentioned in literature as Chaucer wrote In his Merchant’s tale in the 14th century “He drynketh Ypocras, Clarree and Vernage Of spices hoote t’encreessen his corage.” and John Russell’s The Boke of Nurture even contains a ypocras recipe in verse.

Through history we find a vast amount of recipes for this spiced drink, but not only for the spiced wine. Before hops were being used in beer, there was a mixture of herbs known as the ‘Gruut’ that was used to flavour and preserve the beer. Mankind has always been searching for flavourings to tinkle the taste buts.

After the 16th century recipes become more richer including more sugar, oranges, lemons, almonds and apples. My recipe uses cinnamon, cloves, long pepper, nutmeg and clementine juice with a few tablespoons of home made sloe gin. I used raw cane sugar which worked rather well instead of white loaf sugar.
Sometimes I will add marjoram and cardamom like in the first recipe but because of the marjoram it started to taste rather savoury. It is still very pleasant and not a flavour you’d expect in a mulled wine so it is a definite option to add it if you want something different. The long pepper added enough spice so I didn’t need to use the dreaded ginger but if you are a ginger lover, feel free to add it as you please. I would have loved to add Grains of paradise but I had no way of getting my hands on them.

Regula Ypocras

What do you need

2 bottles of red wine, not your cheapest, not your most expensive.
4 buds of long pepper, crushed – email me if you can’t find it, I know where you can get it.
5 cloves1 fresh bay leaf
1 teaspoon of grated nutmeg, freshly grated please
1 stick of cinnamon
100 g raw cane sugar
the peel and juice of 1 clementine
3 tablespoons of sloe gin, or cherry brandy, you can omit this

Optional

1 sprig of marjoram
1 pod of cardamom, bruised

Method
heat up 200 ml of red wine with the sugar and the spices, juice and peel until it dissolves, boil for 10 minutes and then simmer for 5 more. Add the marjoram if you are using it and leave to cool, when nearly cold or cold, add the rest of the wine and the sloe gin and leave to take up those lovely flavours overnight. You can even freeze the wine and spice mixture before adding the rest of the wine.
Strain, bottle and keep in the fridge until needed then gently heat up before use – don’t allow it to boil or you will loose the alcohol and we won’t want that.

You might also enjoy
Raspberry vinegar >
Sloe Gin >
Damson cheese >
Cobnut Brandy >

Traditional lowland gingerbread: kruidnoten

4th December 2011 by Regula 13 Comments

The feast of ‘Sinterklaas’ is on December 6

‘Sinterklaas’ is a traditional Winter holiday figure still celebrated today in Belgium and the Netherlands and other parts of Europe.

Saint Nickolas is an elderly man wit a long full white beard. He carries a big book that tells whether each child has been good or naughty in the past year. He traditionally rides a white gray and delivers the gifts to the children by riding his horse over the rooftops assisted by his helper ‘Zwarte Piet’ (black Pete) who’s face is blackened from the soot of the chimneys.

Parallels have been drawn between the legend of ‘Sinterklaas’ and the figure of Odin, an important god to the Germanic people and worshiped in North and Western Europe prior to Christianization. He was accompanied by black ravens, Huginn and Muninn, who symbolised the night – Odin himself was the embodiment of light.

Other European countries see their Sinterklaas accompanied by a black demon with a long red tongue, his name: Krampus. Naughty children would be punished by Krampus, just as Zwarte piet in Belgium and the Netherlands would stick the naughty children in their large hessian sacks and abduct them. Fear is always a part of ancient traditions, though in recent years the scary part has been completely erased in my area, focussing on not getting any presents if you’ve been bad, rather than being abducted in a sack by the blackened Zwarte Piet. There’s also been a lot of controversy surrounding the recent version of our black demon. At some point in the Netherlands, Zwarte Piet grew black curls to accompany his blackened face, the blackness now completely covering the whole body with black gloves and stockings to complete the look of an African lackey. The story had changed from that of the ancient natural religions of night and day, good and evil, to a story that Sinterklaas freed slaves in Spain who then pledged their allegiance to him out of gratitude. The image of Zwarte Piet was a happy one, he was always depicted with a broad smile, but behind that smile a lot of negative thoughts appeared and in the last decade it’s been frowned upon to dress Zwarte Piet with black curls and lackey clothes – and rightly so. Traditions change all the time, and there is no definite tradition of Sinterklaas, so this change from Zwarte Piet to Roetpiet – or Black Pete to Pete Soot is a good evolution of the custom.

For children it’s never about politics, but all about gifts and sweets. It is customary to put one shoe in front of the fireplace on the 5th of december. The evening is called ‘Sinterklaasavond’ or ‘Pakjesavond’ (boxing evening). Carrots, turnips or apples are put in the shoe as a treat for ‘Sinterklaas’ horse. Sometimes a bottle of beer would be left for Zwarte Piet. The next morning the carrot would be gone, the beer bottle empty and the children may find candy or a small present in their shoes.

When I was a child I used to go and choose the best looking and largest carrot and turnip at the market. The next morning, there were chunks bitten out of the carrot and turnip and the beer bottle was empty. How magical!

We all knew there was no ‘father christmas’, ‘Santa’ or ‘Santaklaus’ but we were firm believers of ‘Sinterklaas’. I remember the disappointment I felt when I found out ‘Sinterklaas’ didn’t exist. I was in bed, trying to stay awake so I could see ‘Zwarte Piet’ as he came down our chimney. I didn’t see him, I heard my parents whispering about my present and assembling the dolls house I’d asked for. The disillusion was gigantic and I remained shocked for days. I didn’t tell my parents “I knew” until the next year when they told me themselves, I desperately wanted to hang on – I wanted to believe.

In Belgium they say finding out that ‘Sinterklaas’ doesn’t exist is the first disappointment you have in life. After that, you are a big girl or boy.

Typical ‘Sinterklaas’ treats traditionally include: mandarins, oranges, kruidnoten, pepernoten, chocolate letters (the first letter of the child’s name), speculaas, chocolate coins, marzipan figures and fruit and a figurine of ‘Sinterklaas’ made of chocolate.

The ‘kruidnoten’ (spiced nuts) are traditionally thrown into the corner of the room by the ‘ Zwarte Pieten’, some say this was to warn of evil spirits.

These little round cookies date back to the Middle Ages due to the arrival of exotic spices such as pepper. Pepper was thought to possess aphrodisiacal powers and was therefore used to bake fertility cookies. These were thrown at newly weds on their wedding day alongside traditional fertility symbols like rice and flowers.

This throwing of fertility symbols had also been part of an old pagan sowing feast that was celebrated at the beginning of December. The throwing resembled the farmer that sows his fields and it was meant to invoke good spirits.

Under the influence of the Catholic Church the sowing feast had slowly been replaced in the 16th century by the ‘Saint Nicholas feast’. But traces of the pagan tradition survived by throwing the then fashionable ‘pepernoten'(similar to kruidnoten) around.

So this is my recipe for the little ‘kruidnoten’, if you need to warn of evil spirits or invoke good ones, you better get started.

What do you need

250 g rye flour

1 tsp of baking powder

125 g dark brown sugar

100 g soft butter

3 tablespoons milk

1 tablespoon ‘speculaas spice mix’ (see below)

a pinch of sea salt

For the speculaas spice mix:

6 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 teaspoons ground nutmeg

1 teaspoon ground clove

½ teaspoon ground black pepper

1 teaspoon ground cardamom

1 teaspoon aniseed

Method

Line a tray with greaseproof paper and preheat your oven to 160° C

Mix all the ingredients together and knead briefly to combine well.

Shape little balls, the size of a nutmeg and place on the prepped tray, leaving space for them to expand.

Bake them in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes.

Optional: after they are baked, you can dip these little biscuits into chocolate. I feel dark chocolate works best with the taste of the spices.
Store in an airtight container to keep the biscuits crunchy.

Don’t forget to put your shoe by the fireplace tonight…

I gave these cookies to my co-workers

Christmas

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