I wish I did ham, even though I've never made one before.
I'm stressing out slightly because I'm making beef bourgougion and the beef smelled a bit strong when I unwrapped it. Butcher said it was fine to keep it in the fridge from friday afternoon to tuesday... Just hoping hour long stew time and plenty of wine will save it (alcohol kills stuff right?) My nose has never been particularly good for discovering off foods.
For baking, I've got 3 Christmas stollen at their last rise. Nervous about this as well as I never made something like this before either. Stupid me though to make the almond paste myself, seemed easy and could do it in the food processor. Little did I know the food processor in the picture was a big one, and I couldn't fit the almond flour / sugar in mine. So I had to do it by hand, in a pan. Smells great though. And them seem to be rising.
Goober, it smelt very heavily like meat, is I think the best I can describe (gamey might be the English word for it?), so hopefully that's the bloody / irony smell you're talking about. Like I said, I'm not good at smelling food which sucks (I ordered pho the other day, with shrimp paste and fish sauce, the waitress warned me that a lot of people don't like the smell and send it back, but I couldn't smell anything. Other people at the table could though).
It was wrapped by the butcher in a double layer, and I put it in a ziplock before storing it in the fridge, so that was done right at least.
Good quality beef would have been hung for about a month or so and should be more brown than red. I do find when I first open beef it has a slight smell but should be fine.
meat that has been ung or "aged" will have mold on tha outside, that's why it costs more, moiture out and moluld on. Slivce the mould off still a very dry piece of meat
"I spent years thinking Yorke was legit Downs-ish disabled and could only achieve lucidity through song" - Mr B
Cheers Davy. Had to have a slice. It’s pretty damn tasty. Such a great thing to have around Christmas where you can just grab a slice with some pickles when you feel like it.
Also don’t forget to try the cheese and Christmas cake (no icing) it’s a taste revelation
At least two more hours before they're cooled down and I can cut one... It has the almond paste inside, curious how that'll look like.
This might be a German thing though, do you have something like this in the UK? It's raisins / cranberries / almonds in bread, with a string of almond paste going through it.
Can highly recommend ginger pud. I put 1.5x the amount of ground and stem ginger in and it's lovely. It's served with a toffee sauce made from the syrup you get in a jar of stem ginger so, with that sweetness, I think there's room for even more ginger in the pud, I love a slight afterburn.
Also tried the chestnut and chocolate log I'd made and frozen as an experiment. It looks a mess, got a bit squished in the freezer, but tastes great. Expected a swiss roll texture but it's been compacted into a fudgy torte with cream, ganache and chestnut puree running through it. You don't need much.
Cake looks great, Davy, I always manage to over-brown (NOT BURN) mine on the edges. And your stollen as well, Nina, very tidy. Much neater than the one I made a year or two ago, the mixture was extremely wet so I just kept adding flour until I had a toddler-sized loaf of considerable girth. I don't think it occurred to me to make multiple loaves. I'll have to try that recipe next year.
Not yet - will be trying that tonight. Got a great mature one from the deli (they let me try a bit before buying) that I haven't had yet. Got some stilton too to go with the port I have.