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Rose jellies

We couldn’t stand the thought of a heavy pudding on Christmas day, especially since we had had the Girdlebuster Pie for my husband’s birthday the day before. Sparkling rose jellies seemed to fit the bill as they are light and refreshing after a big meal.

They are very quick and easy to make and obviously can be done the day before you need them.

6 oz sugar.
pork gelatine as directed on the packet.
1 bottle sparkling rosé wine.
1½ pints of water.

Make up the gelatine as directed on the packet, calculating how much you will need for the amount of fluid in the recipe. If you use powdered (beef) gelatine then you just sprinkle it into the sugared boiled water. However we haven’t eaten beef products since before the media got hold of the BSE story so I used pork gelatine, which comes in thin sheets which you have to dissolve in a bowl of water over a pan of hot water. Snip the sheets up first.

Pour the 1½ pints of water into a pan and add the 6 oz of sugar. Stir and bring up to boiling point, making sure that the sugar has dissolved. Remove from the heat.

Now add the dissolved (or powdered) gelatine into the sugared water. Whisk well together and place the pan in a cold place to set the jelly. After about 1 to 1½ hours the jelly should be on the point of setting. Now carefully add the bottle of wine and stir it into the jelly mixture. Ladle the jelly into pretty serving glasses or dishes and leave to set again, which should take about 3 hours.

The bubbles from the wine should be trapped within the jelly, giving a lovely texture to the dessert.

This recipe can be made with something like Schloer or a similar sort of grape juice, if you are making it for people who need to avoid alcohol. It would be especially popular for young teenagers whom you don’t want to feed booze to, but who have grown beyond the jelly and ice-cream stage.

The quantities which I have given will feed about 10 people. As you can see from the photograph, I added raspberries to mine when the jelly was setting this time. In future I won’t bother doing this as the raspberries tasted very tart compared to the jelly. It might work if you soaked the fruit in some more booze beforehand, but that would make it quite alcoholic.

I have tried this recipe using a white sparkling wine but I much prefer a rosé one as the fruitiness of the wine really comes out when it is very cold.

I added some raspberry juice to whipping cream to top them off.

With raspberry cream topping

This year however, as they have both finished university and found good jobs, one has his own place with his girlfriend and the other is planning to move out very soon, they were both doing their own things, very strange.

We had a bit of a drink together and after a short time decided just to go to bed as the pavements are still too dangerous for gallivanting about on even in the daylight, very icy.

We were all strung out along the east coast of Scotland from Dundee to Burntisland. From Burntisland beach you can see the firework display which they have on Edinburgh Castle battlements. At midnight all the ships in the Firth of Forth hooted their horns. Everyone ended up back at home base in Kirkcaldy for the New Year meal. I know that as the cook I shouldn’t boast but I must admit that it was a great leg of lamb.

The cooking reminded me that in my family home it was the tradition to have a huge meal on Hogmanay. Whilst I was doing all the house cleaning, my mum was busy cooking an enormous steak pie with all the trimmings which was ready to be served around about 10.30/11.00 at night on Hogmanay. The idea was that if the men got a big stodgy meal inside them, then they wouldn’t get so drunk after midnight – they needed something to line their stomachs.

Notice that I said ‘the men’, because when I was a youngster very few women drank alcohol. A very small sherry would be the most that any of them would have. I can’t help thinking that things would be much better if we went back to that way of behaving. I’ve seen some terrible mother role models for young girls recently. Why would any woman want their children to see them paralytically sozzled? Mind you, it isn’t any better if fathers end up like that too.

Well that’s me got my first blog moan of the year over with and my last post about this new year.

I don’t do resolutions. I’m just hoping that this year will be a better one for everyone and the world in general.

If you want to see some Scottish cliches look here.

This is one tradition which I never had any intention of keeping going and if there is some dust from 2009 still in the house, who cares, not me anyway.

I think it will be a quiet Hogmanay for us this year, although you never can tell until we get there.

As promised in an earlier post, I’m going to be rejigging my blog for the new year. At the moment, it’s very basic as I wasn’t sure if I would carry on with it, but as I’ve had lots more visitors than I had anticipated having, I’ve really been encouraged to continue. It doesn’t seem to matter that I don’t have a post every day, I’ve always prefered quality over quantity in anything.

Look out for a Scottish cliche at ‘The Bells’.

Girdlebuster Pie

I would be the first to admit that the photograph doesn’t look great, the ice-cream bubbles to the surface in places making a strange effect but crucially, it tasted yummy.

I used tiramasu ice-cream as I couldn’t get coffee flavoured but it worked really well anyway. The great advantage of this dessert is that it can be made so far in advance and frozen until it is needed.

It is very rich and I would say that it is enough to give 12 portions. Five of us managed to get through half of it, and the rest I put back into the freezer until next week.

The recipe can be found at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/you/article-1059850/Girdlebuster-pie.html.

Every now and again I like to read something quite different from my usual diet and this one fitted the bill.

It’s an alternative history which has Sitka, Alaska as the Jewish homeland instead of Israel. The lease on the land is running out and with possibly as few as 1 in 5 of the inhabitants being allowed to stay on there, they are all having to apply for permission.

The book is a murder mystery which follows the tried and trusted formula of the hard drinking detective, with a failed marriage in the background.

I would have liked a glossary as there were lots of Jewish/Yiddish words bandied around and I sometimes had to guess at their meanings. I suspect some of them were made up. I used to know a lot of Jewish words as I read a lot of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chaim Potok and such as a youngster, but I’ve forgotten a lot. They always had a glossary.

There were characters called ‘boundary mavens’ who rigged up poles and strings along the neighbourhoods so that Jews worried about breaking the Sabbath when they carried things or walked their dogs could get around the Jewish rules. This strikes me as being so typical of the religious zealots who always seem to spend a lot of time bending rules to fit their consciences. Well, I found it funny.

The novel got rave reviews, which is a bit of a mystery to me. It was entertaining but it wouldn’t be on my – one to read again list.

I quite enjoyed this book except for the odd bit of – what can I say?
Schmaltz.

However, despite that we all agreed that it was a great Christmas, everything just seemed to be in harmony and we all had a really relaxing time.

We all had a bit too much to eat but only one bottle of wine was drunk between all five of us. I didn’t actually have anything to eat at all until 3 o’clock – not even a bit of chocolate, I just didn’t feel like eating. The result is that I am still weighing in at 9 stone exactly, even although we haven’t been able to get out for our customary hour of walking each day, due to the weather.

All in all a jolly good time was had by all. Now for Hogmanay!

We haven’t been able to get to our relatives to give them their Christmas presents either so Christmas is going to be delayed this year, until the roads are safe to drive on again.

Winter has come, the snow has fell,
Wee Josie’s nose is froze as well,
Wee Josie’s nose is frozen skintit,
Winter’s diabolic – intit!

I thought that I would inflict a terrible piece of Scottish doggerel poetry on you, just in case you weren’t feeling bad enough!

I always look forward to the winter solstice, it is the time that we should really be celebrating instead of Christmas. Now I can look forward to brighter days ahead and even if we are in the midst of a horrible freeze, I still feel that we’ve got to the top of a really steep hill and we’re freewheeling along to the spring now.

Scotland has loads of standing stone sites which obviously had great significance for our ancestors and they are really interesting, atmospheric places to visit.

Take a look at the Maeshowe website if you want to find out more.