A kitchen in Fife – happy family cooking from a kitchen in the Scottish countryside.
For me winter cooking is all about the combination of savoury and sweet. Think roast turkey with sweet, slightly tart, glistening cranberry; toasted goat’s cheese with citrusy marmalade; pork stuffing rich with sticky chestnuts, apricots and prunes.
Seasonal fruits bring a vibrancy to Christmas cookery, lightening heavier dishes while adding a vivid pop of colour. Delicate apple slices give winter salads a wonderfully sweet crunch alongside bitter chicory; velvety quince puree pairs beautifully with game; rosehip syrup makes a fragrant dressing for duck; and jewel-like pomegranate seeds with orange and fennel are my favourite accompaniment to a Boxing Day ham.
A less familiar seasonal fruit is sea buckthorn berry. These bright orange berries grow wild on our coastline through autumn and winter. Acidic and sharp but when coaxed into a sweet jelly the flavour becomes exotic, reminiscent of passion fruit with a citrusy edge – so unlike anything you would expect to find growing wild in Scotland at this time of year.
We’ve been stockpiling and now the freezer is full of the spiky branches, ready to pop off the frosty berries and make a shining orange jelly to serve with the turkey on Christmas Day: a twist on the traditional imported cranberry.
Simply weigh the berries, put in a pot and add half their weight in water. Bring to the boil and simmer, squishing with a wooden spoon to extract the juice. Strain through a muslin, weigh the juice, return juice to the pot and add 1.5 times the weight in sugar. Boil, stirring until it reaches setting point (105C) – this should happen quite quickly (be careful not to overheat). Pour into jars to set in the fridge.
Music to cook to
My music to cook at this time of year has to be Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas by Frank Sinatra. Whenever it comes on it makes me stop, look up from the mountain of Christmas preparations, take stock and remember what’s really important.
