Ottolenghi Advocaat

Efforts to get in the Christmas spirit have taken a literal turn today. My tree is up, shopping well do the way to completion, and I've made my own Advocaat using a recipe from Ottolenghi's Instagram - which I think is properly attributed to Verena Lochmuller who co-authored the latest cookbook (Comfort) and seems fabulous. 

I've never really been an advocate woman - Snowballs were the Christmas cocktail you'd be offered in my teens but I wanted to seem sophisticated so avoided sweet creamy drinks in favour of hard spirits and dry sherry - which I liked a lot and still do, but sophistication continues to elude me. 

Verena's Advocaat is very similar to Whipkül which in turn has a lot to do with egg nog. There's nothing more luxurious in the depths of winter than something rich with cream and egg yolks, warm with spirits, and sweet with sugar. She promises that it will be stable in the fridge for about 2 months, I think to be safe I'd like to drink it faster.

The recipe and method is simple. Take 12 egg yolks (better plan on making a lot of White Ladies or a huge meringue with the leftover whites) and lightly beat them with 500g of icing sugar - do not let the sugar sit in the yolks for long as it makes them hard. Add the scraped innards of a Vanilla pod, pour in and mix 300ml of double cream, and finally 500ml of alcohol Don't over whip either as the air will work it's way out and leave gaps at the top of your bottles. 

Alcohol wise you could use vodka, white rum, golden rum, or brandy. My preference was for a golden rum for the flavour, white rum or vodka would have been cheaper, but if price was my main concern I'd have just bought a bottle of Warninks. Pour into a large jug through a fine mesh sieve to catch any bits and then decant into sterile bottles or jar. Keep in the fridge and use within 2 months. Have a look at the original insta post from Verena or Ottolenghi for a couple of serving suggestions. 

These quantities made about 1.3 litres of alcoholic custard - it would be easy, and sensible to half them. My plan is to give half away instead 

A Book For Christmas - Selma Lagerlöf

I haven't really been feeling particularly Christmasy so far - and yes I know it's still early, but this preparatory part of the season is the bit I normally enjoy. December has so far been a blur, work has been hard (hit by IT issues) and I've been too tired to really do much more than sleep when I get home. Tonight though my mother battled through awful traffic and worse weather to help me get a tree - it took us almost an hour to get barely a mile and back. Mum is worried that I'll be disappointed with the admittedly lopsided tree we found at the first shop we went to, but it was not an evening to traipse around garden centres, supermarkets, or DIY shops in the hopes of finding something better. 

The lopsided bit is facing the corner of the room and doesn't much matter, the rest of the tree is a nice shape, it was a very acceptable price, and I think it has character. I've started candying oranges, think I'll make biscuits at the weekend, started work on a Christmas stocking, have my first card up, and finished A Book For Christmas last night - so I'm slowly getting there.

I bought this mostly because Penguin sent some really lovely promotional material into the shop with it, it was enough to make me look and that was enough to make me buy. Promotional material works. I wasn't familiar with Lagerlöf but the mood isn't far from Hans Christian Anderson - veering dark and with a strong Christian moral. I'd say it's a collection of 2 halves - the first 4 stories I really liked, the last 4 not so much. A Book For Christmas opens the collection and is charming, The Legend of St. Lucia's Day is lengthy and old fashioned but satisfying. The Princess of Babylon and the Rat Trap both hold the balance between entertainment and moral in a way that works for a modern reader.

Redbreast did not work so well for me - too much of a Sunday school feel to it, and perhaps the same for In Nazareth, although the end to that has a kick to it that lifts it a little. The Skull is an interesting mix of Gothic horror and Christian homily that sit uneasily together in my mind, and the same with the Animals' New Year Night. 

What I do like about all of these stories is the old-fashioned sense of real danger from the weather, from poverty, from starvation, and from violence. On a day I saw an advert for a children's book called Krampus' Bad Fur Day I'm feeling a need for some dark to flavour the cosiness of the season.