Christmassy CDs

For anyone still thinking about getting hold of some good Christmas music, here are some of our favourites. I'll do a couple of posts on this theme over the next few days, starting today with what could loosely be called carol collections. Most of them mix the very familiar with a few not so well known tunes; some keep only a few of the ones we know really well and are a more involving listen. For this post, I've picked two with less well known music and two which select the majority of their programme from the most beloved carols of all.

I'll start with a couple of records for someone looking for something more than a big collection of the most familiar carols. The first is Christmas at St John's, with St John's College Choir in Cambridge. This is structured like a service, with carols and motets separated by antiphons (chant) and it works really well. The music traces a narrative from Advent (O come, O come, Emmanuel) through to Christmas (finishing with O Come, all ye faithful and the antiphon Hodie Christus natus est), which is also effective. There are a few of the carols we all learnt as children as well as more modern classics like Howells' A Spotless Rose, Warlock's Bethlehem Down, and some brilliant, even more recent pieces like Judith Bingham's powerful The clouded Heaven and Morten Lauridsen's sublime setting of O magnum mysterium.

This has become one of my favourite Christmas records in a very short space of time and it's well worth exploring.

CD Choice: MDT
Download choice: Hyperion Records

Next is a CD that's a real change in scale from the massed voices of the John's choir. Just four male singers, augmented by three female voices for some of the music, creating a warm, intimate sound based on medieval texts and carols. I Sing The Birth by New York Polyphony is a wonderful record. There are two settings of the text of the 'Coventry Carol', Lullay lulla..., the setting from the medieval mystery play and the twentieth century version by Kenneth Leighton. Away in a manger is sung to a traditional northern French tune, which works really well. And with the older music there are more contemporary pieces, like Andrew Smith's settings of Veni Redemptor gentium (commissioned for this recording) and his Nunc dimittis, and Peter Maxwell Davies' haunting The Fader of Heaven.

There's a great deal of thought gone into the sequencing of the music in this programme and the combinations of successive sections of plainchant, polyphony, medieval carols and plainchant once more, interspersed with the modern music, makes this a really rewarding journey. And hopefully one you'll want to repeat many times.

CD Choice: MDT
Download choice: Amazon Downloads

Back to the English choral tradition and back to the more familiar, here is the choir of the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral in another brilliant Christmas CD from Hyperion Records. Adeste fideles is a great compilation of some of our best-loved carols. Beginning with O come, all ye faithful and ending with Hark! the herald angels sing, it's a really well performed selection of many of the carols we've known all our lives. So we have, Once in royal David's city, O little town of Bethlehem, Harold Darke's arrangement of In the bleak mid-winter, Away in a manger, The holly and the ivy, and Silent night.

You would probably describe all of the music on here as classic, timeless Christmas music. But there are some which are probably less widely known, like Patrick Hadley's joyful I sing of a maiden (with a sixteenth-century text), Herbert Howells' lilting Sing lullaby and John Tavener's minimalist and striking The Lamb. If you don't know Bethlehem Down, then you really should, because Peter Warlock's carol is a very beautiful thing, and the arrangements by Andrew Carter (folk carol I wonder as I wander and the French tune to, and the textual adaptation of, Bede's A maiden most gentle) are really effective. It's a lovely CD, this one, performed with great warmth, a full sound and with some super singing.

CD Choice: Europadisc
Download choice: Hyperion Records

The CD to get if you want pretty much all the carols you knew as a child is the next, and last, one. One of the finest non-ecclesiastical English choirs for a number of years now has been The Sixteen, under their music director Harry Christophers. They've released what consists of a real treasure trove of Christmas music, whether that's big oratorios like Bach's Christmas Oratorio and Handel's Messiah (twice: once with Ton Koopman, and more recently on their own), Britten's Ceremony of Carols, medieval English Christmas music, and this one, A Traditional Christmas Carol Collection.

I'd say this was pretty much your best bet if you want to get pretty much all of the really popular carols, sung beautifully and with great sound. Sometimes carol collections can come across as being a bit overblown or sentimental. Here the relatively small size of the choir gives each of the carols a transparency and lightness that stops them cloying. One to put on in the evening on Christmas Eve with some mince pies and mulled wine. Follow this link to see the tracklist (and to hear some snippets), which will save me listing them all! It's the only one of the CDs on this page which includes my favourite when I was little, God rest you merry, Gentlemen.

CD Choice: Europadisc (single CD). Or, as part of The Sixteen's Christmas Collection (3 CDs), Europadisc.
Download choice: The Classical Shop

Mincemeat and Mince Pies...

I made our first mince pies of the season over the weekend - using some of last year's mincemeat. It has kept really brilliantly - no hint of drying up (or worse!) and the flavours of all the yummy fruits are even more rich. When I was a veggie I used to make Delia Smith's mincemeat using vegetarian suet to replace the beef suet. Her technique of heating the ingredients together so that the suet melts and coats the fruit means that there is very little chance that the mincemeat will ferment in the jar (a risk with all that sugar and fruit). It's very tasty too.

I still prefer to make veggie mincemeat so I can offer mince pies to everyone without concern, but I don't like to use veggie suet any more because its main ingredient is often palm oil. Palm oil is hard to avoid but we try give it a miss when we can because of the issues around the sustainability of its production. So last year I was delighted to discover a fantastic recipe for mincemeat that doesn't use suet at all. It's in a fabulous preserving book from the National Trust - Good Old-fashioned Jams, Preserves and Chutneys by Sara Paston-Williams.

Mincemeat Cooked in Cider

400ml medium cider (Aspalls, Dunkertons, Thatchers, Westons are good options available in supermarkets)

450g soft dark brown sugar

1.8 kg cooking apples, peeled, cored and roughly chopped

450g currants

450g seedless raisins

100g natural glace cherries, chopped

100g blanced almonds, chopped

Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon

1 tsp ground mixed spice

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground cloves

2 tbsp rum

Place the cider and sugar in a large pan and heat gently, stirring occasionally, until the sugar has dissolved. Add the apples to the pan , and stir in all the remaining ingredients except the rum. Bring the mixture slowly to the boil stirring all the time. Reduce the heat, half-cover with a lid and simmer gently for about 30 minutes or until the mixture has become a soft pulp, stirring occasionally. Test for sweetness, adding more sugar if necessary. Remove from the heat and set aside until completely cold. Stir in the rum, then pack into sterilized jars, cover and store.

The great thing about this recipe is that it produces an excellent moist result and has a lovely fresh fruity flavour because of all the apples involved. I can say with certainty that it keeps well for at least a year. It also makes a brilliant filling for baked apples served with lashings of fresh cream.

For me, good buttery shortcrust pastry is absolutely essential for mince pies. Puff pastry is an absolute no-no, but I do fiddle about with the shortcrust. The following recipe makes a fabulous melt-in-the-mouth pastry with a hint of orange to complement the flavours of the mincemeat.


Orange and almond pastry for mince pies

(makes enough for 12)

100g plain flour

25g ground almonds

60g butter

25g caster sugar

finely grated rind of 1/2 orange

a pinch of salt

1 egg yolk

a little orange juice (possibly!)

Put the flour and almonds in a bowl and add the butter in small pieces. Use your fingertips to rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs (you can used a food processor or food mixer to do this quickly). Then stir in the sugar, orange rind and the salt. Add the egg yolk and bring the mixture together with a knife and then your hands. You may need a little juice from the orange to moisten the dough, but go very slowly when adding it because you don't want it too sticky.

Pop the dough in a poly bag or wrap it in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes or so. Meanwhile preheat your oven to gas 5/190C and butter a 12 hole mince pie tin. Get your mincemeat, a teaspoon, a rolling pin and your preferred pastry cutters ready - I like to use a star shape for the top of my pies.

Flour your worktop and roll out 2/3s of the dough thinly (around 2mm) and cut out 12 circles. Put the circles in the baking tray and fill each circle with 1 heaped teaspoon of your chosen mincemeat. Do not overfill because if the mincemeat overflows during the cooking process then the mince pie will stick to the tin. Now go back to your pastry, roll out whatever you have left and the remaining 1/3 pastry together. Cut out the tops of your pies and place them over the mincemeat. You can now brush the tops of the pies with milk, but tbh I don't bother because I like to give them a nice thick sprinkle of snowy icing sugar after they've cooked and cooled a bit. Put the tray in the oven and cook for 8-10 minutes until the tops of the pies are golden brown. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for a few minutes in the tin then remove to a cooling tray.

Delicious with a glass of sherry or a cup of tea, or on their own, or with cream, or with ice cream, or custard....

TV and Radio

More TV and Radio for the week ahead. Some of which is on in about half an hour, so I'd better get my skates on. Highlights of the week include some nice looking documentaries on BBC4 about games and playing and the Victorian Farm Christmas on Friday on BBC2. Plenty of food stuff as well if you need to set your mind at rest about what to eat.

I'll do the radio first, as there's not so much of that. On Monday-Friday on Radio 4 at 9.45am, the book of the week is The Pantomime Life of Joseph Grimaldi. Well it's tenuously Xmassy, but it is well and truly panto season now, and Wednesday's episode features the famous clown's Mother Goose..

More seasonal is the afternoon play on Radio 4 on Tuesday at 2.15pm, Winter Storm: the darker, more dangerous side of winter outside our cosy homes, as a Scottish poet is lost in a snowstorm in the American Midwest. Should be worth a listen.

TV, however, is not holding back and there's quite a lot on this week:

Sunday

BBC1, 7pm: Countryfile
James Wong goes to get some mistletoe at Tenbury Wells.

More4, 7pm onwards: some kind of Christmas-themed food night

7pm: Come Dine With Me at Christmas
8pm: Christmas at River Cottage
9pm: Jamie Cooks Christmas
The last one is a prog that we really enjoyed last Xmas, highly recommended. Poor old Jamie Oliver gets a lot of stick because he is, let's face it, pretty irritating. But his recipes are often great – watch this if you are in any way anxious about cooking Christmas dinner. It's also on 4OD I think, if you want to watch it nearer the time.

Gold - creaky old Christmases from the late 1990s.

9pm Harry Enfield & Christmas Chums, from 1997
9.55pm Jonathan Creek, Xmas special from 1998

It's still too early to watch Christmassy films. I skipped over the Radio Times page featuring a gurning Vince Vaughn in a desperate-looking festive movie and I advise everyone else to ignore it thoroughly.

**********************

Monday

Channel 4, 8pm: Dispatches – Christmas on Credit
If you want to put the wind up yourself in the run up to the end of the year.

Five, 8pm: Gadget Show Christmas Special
Presumably a TV equivalent of all those newspaper articles about gifts you'll never buy anyone.

BBC4, 9pm: Games Britannia
There are three episodes of this, this one starts things off with a look at the long history of games. Christmas and games? Endless Monopoly marathons in the school holidays are what Christmas is made of. The later episodes in this series look even better.

**********************

Tuesday

Channel 4, 8pm: Kirstie's Home-made Christmas
Three days of Channel 4's property guru Kirstie Allsopp on Christmas. Could be good, if they don't do it as sub-Nigella lifestyle pap.

ITV1 10.35pm: Christmas Tales: Trees
I can't see this being much use. There'll probably be some superficial history and the usual myths about nature worship from the Mists Of Time trotted out, but then I'm probably being unkind. I don't think I'll be watching as I find presenter Fiona Phillips annoying to say the least. At least she won't be banging on about the MMR jab, though, unless the programme goes seriously awry.

BBC4 9pm: Hop Skip and Jump: the Story of Children's Play
Two part series which has a vague link to Xmas, as, er, a time when children do lots of playing.

**********************

Wednesday

Channel 4 8pm: Kirstie's Home-made Christmas
Part two of the Allsopp-fest. Sometimes I wonder if TV executives think we've got nothing better to do with our lives than commit three evenings in a row to their offerings.

Good Food, 8pm: Corrigan's Family Christmas
I have no idea if we even have this channel lurking on our TV somewhere. If we do, then this looks like it might be worth watching. I like the sound of the North African soup and any blurb that mentions steamed pudding is ok in my eyes.

**********************

Thursday

Channel 4, 8pm: Kirstie's Home-made Christmas
Final part

**********************

Friday

ITV3, 5.50pm: Heartbeat
If you like this sort of thing. A presumably heartwarming, repeated Xmassy episode.

ITV1, 8pm: Christmas for a Pound: Tonight
Cut-price Christmas programme as people head to the Pound Shop. Why not just buy less stuff?

BBC2, 9pm: Victorian Farm Christmas
This is the one we've been really looking forward to. Proper retro Christmas on the Victorian Farm, with our three intrepid heroes taking us through the time when Christmas was reinvented, modernised and turned into the time we know and love.

Good Food Channel
Christmas crazy tonight, with multiple repeats throughout the day of:

Nigella's Christmas Kitchen (6pm)

La Lawson, her family and her chums swan around in fur coats in the middle of July in a lifestyle-fest that defines the word contrived.

The Nation's Favourite Christmas Food (8pm)

Two Fat Ladies Christmas (9pm & 11pm)
Gary Rhodes's Christmas Special (9.30pm)

I'm sure if you miss these there will be plenty of repeats...

So there's just about time to catch those 7pm programmes (or find them on some iPlayer, 4OD kind of thing)...

Cakes!

Things have been hectic round here for the past few weeks, with orders to make and pack up for Craft Matters, an injury to the creative half of our activities (fortunately not as bad as we first thought), and all those other things that end up filling the days. The thought that we could re-decorate the front room in time for Christmas may have been a bit ambitious...

So, it's only today that we've got round to starting on the Christmas cake. Fortunately, our 'White Christmas' cake recipe can be made pretty last minute, so it's not a disaster. We were very pleased to find last year that health food-y shop Julian Graves stocked large pieces of candied peel:



It's not quite the same as the wonderful peel the people at the Cheese Shop in Cambridge used to order in from France, but it's still way better than the mixed, chopped peel we're all used to. Here is all the fruit, soaking in some vodka:



Cakes all round at the moment. This weekend is, in the Netherlands especially, a big celebration - tomorrow night is Sinterklaasavond because December the sixth is the feast of St Nicholas, or Sinterklaas, the main inspiration behind our Santa Claus. There's more information about all this on the Dutch Embassy in Kuwait's site. It used to be on their UK Embassy site, but they seem to have got rid of it as part of some swanky upgrade. Anyway, there are pages on the traditions and also some recipes.

With Saturday and Sunday in mind, we've got a muffin recipe inspired by some of the traditional food eaten at Sinterklaas gatherings. I have very fond memories of the Sinterklaas party organised by our Dutch teacher when I was at college, drinking mulled wine (bisschopswijn) and eating pepernoten and speculaas biscuits. These lovely treats are all spiced with very Christmassy things, just the sort of thing for a cold, dark December evening.

Different families and bakers have their own Speculaas spice mixture - but they always include cinnamon & nutmeg. The trick is to mix up a batch of the spice mix, and then use this for a load of biscuits - and our muffin recipe too if you like.

Our Speculaas spice mix: (if you want to have some left over for biscuits)

4 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp ground nutmeg
½ tsp ground coriander
½ tsp ground allspice
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp ground cardamon
½ tsp ground mace

Spice mix: (if you're just making the muffins)

1level tsp ground cinnamon
¼ tsp ground cloves
¼ tsp ground nutmeg
pinch of ground coriander
pinch ground allspice
pinch ground ginger
pinch ground mace

Muffin mix:

250g self-raising wholemeal flour
50g butter
1 tsp baking powder
75g granulated sugar
2 tsp Speculaas spice mix
100g currants
75g marzipan, cut into 1cm cubes (optional! If you don't like marzipan add the same quantity of chopped nuts or more dried fruit)
2 eggs
250ml buttermilk (or plain milk if you don't have access to buttermilk)
flaked almonds for topping (optional)

Method:

• Grease a 12 cup muffin tin or line with paper cases. Preheat the oven to Gas 5/190C.
• Rub the butter into the flour until you have a fine sandy mixture (you can of course use a food mixer or processor to do this.
• Stir the baking powder, sugar, spice mix, currants & marzipan into the flour & butter mixture.
• Measure buttermilk (or milk) into a jug then beat in the eggs.
• Add the liquid mix to the flour mix & stir gently to combine. It's important not to stir too much or the muffins will not be light & airy - stir just enough to combine & don't worry too much if there are a few floury bits in the mix.
• Fill the 12 muffin cases/cups & sprinkle with flaked almonds if you are using.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes, until muffins are firm to the touch and lightly browned.
• Eat whilst still fresh - these muffins are best whilst they are warm from the oven. They freeze well & can be reheated after freezing by wrapping them in foil & putting them in a hot oven (Gas 7/230C) for 5-7 minutes.

TV & Radio update...

The Delia Christmas machine rolls into action again tomorrow, as the nation's cook takes part in a phone in on Radio 4's Woman's Hour. Hopefully it'll be more successful than her Christmas programme which went out last night.

Mostly, the problem was that it was on too blooming early. Delia and Mr Delia came across as slightly odd people celebrating Christmas, on their own, in Autumn. While the blackberry put out its fruit in the garden, poor old Delia was decorating her house and having low key jolly times with no friends other than Mr D. Oh, and a strange personal Christmas broadcast from Sir Terry Wogan. It was a bit like a glimpse into the mind of a mildly deranged Christmas obsessive. I was pining for the faked up fur-coats-in-midsummer japes of Nigella Lawson and her fragrant chums by the end of it. Or wishing we were about two weeks more into Advent.

I hope that the pressure to screen it this early was from numpties at the Beeb, rather than Ms Smith wanting more time for her new book to fly off the shelves. A new book which is in fact rather good - unlike the odd, out of step TV programme last night. A missed opportunity, this one.

Advent Crafts and Activities

Sunday may have been the start of Advent in the church year, but 1 December is the day when calendars and candles are pressed into service in the countdown to the big feast. The boys woke up this morning to find that the elves had been in the night (presumably welcomed by Love Lottie's needle felt Elwin on the left) to leave a decoration and some chocolate coins.

There are two great sources of Advent activities for this post. We're really looking forward to watching the Victorian Farm Christmas episodes and the BBC have a pretty good website to go with the series. They feature a vintage activity for each day in the run up to Christmas, today's being how to make Victorian Christmas cards. Pretty apt, as it was the Victorians who adapted the traditional New Year greeting into the huge phenomenon we know today. The activities they've chosen all look quite fun - but they should have given us a real taste of Victorian drudgery with instructions on how to shred your own suet for the pudding. :-)

Then there's UK Handmade's Made In The UK blog, who are also posting daily activities to be getting on with during Advent. Today there's a really delicious looking recipe for spiced butter cookies. Something to check each day, there.

Lots to do, as December opens with a suitably frosty day.

TV and Radio

A brief post today, some TV and radio highlights as we enter Advent. Not much so far - thank goodness! - but there are still a couple of musical and foodie things to look forward to.

Radio 3 has a live broadcast from St John's College, Cambridge this afternoon (4pm to 5.30pm), A Service for Advent with Carols. The John's choir is usually a treat to listen to, and they are singing some lovely music, carols like John Joubert's beautiful setting of There Is No Rose and Holst's This Have I Done for My True Love, some Lassus and a motet by William Byrd. These broadcasts are a great way to hear sacred music in something resembling its intended context.

If you like choral evensong, there is also an advent theme to the regular Radio 3 broadcast, from Rochester Cathedral on Wednesday at 4pm. Both will probably end up on the iPlayer if you miss the original broadcast.

One thing it really pays to get sorted in your brain well in advance is what you have planned for food. With a cracking new book out, Delia Smith is also on the BBC with a programme which will I guess draw upon it, on BBC2 on Tuesday 1 December at 9pm. Delia's Classic Christmas. We reckon (proper post coming soon!) that the new book is a real return to form, so hopefully the programme will be good too. Again, as it's on the BBC, it should turn up on the iPlayer.

It seems a bit odd to us that a programme like this with a bona fide Big Name has been scheduled so far away from Christmas and stuck in at 9pm on BBC2. But BBC scheduling is an arcane and mysterious thing. Maybe she'll be talking about things that need a few weeks to get ready.

It's the last episode of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage on Channel 4 on Thursday 3 December at 8pm. According to the blurb, he'll be looking at baking for Christmas gifts, which is a good thing to get sorted nice and early, at least in terms of planning.

So that's it for now. As we're not yet in December it would be weird and a little creepy for the schedules to be filled with Christmas cheer. So we'll avoid posting about anything that's just too out of season - like Film4 showing Miracle on 34th Street this afternoon. It's a great film, but really needs to be seen much later in the year. I hope people in TV land don't think black and white films too old hat for broadcasting on and around Xmas Day.

Another post on TV and Radio next Sunday, I think. Including one thing we're really looking forward to, The Victorian Farm at Christmas...

Finally - do let us know if we've missed anything!