Christmas Crafting, Cooking and, Well...That's It Actually

Merry Christmas, my beloved readers! I hope you're all having a lovely day as we all come together to celebrate the birth of a child into a socio-economic group so crappy that he was likely not to have lived into his early thirties.

This should have been the least of his worries.

I thought I'd take some time this festive day of good will and passive aggressive dinner chat to tell you about all of the wonderful things I made that you didn't. Oh yes, what jolly good fun! This would most likely have been much more useful to post before Christmas Day, seeing as all of these crafts could have been made by you, yes you, in the comfort of your very own home for the people you love hate are more or less ambivalent towards this holiday season, but the chutney (yes, chutney. Patience, young one) was actually a present for people who may or may not be reading this and I didn't want to spoil the surprise.

"Please, take this token of my unquenchable loathing towards your very mortal coil."

There's a lot to cover so let's keep it snappy shall we? First up...

Christmas Decorations/Fuzzy Felt Phone Ffffssock

Home-made Christmas decorations are fun. Everyone loves them and they always get pride of place on the tree. Then you turn ten and no-one cares any more, just like wetting the bed. I lovingly made these very original geek-themed decorations and now they're at the back of the tree or propping up the wonky stand or in the bin or somewhere.

*ffffffwoosh*

The reindeer...

...are always watching.

Production values have increased ten-fold thanks to the lending of my kind brother's camera, haven't they, eh? Ingredients for these are exceptionally simple: just some felt, a glue gun, some scissors and plenty of patience for the portals and a couple of plain black baubles (almost impossible to find, it turns out) and some paint for the bob-ombs and chain chomp. Then just chop, glue and paint your way to adorable geeky bliss. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. Now want to see what Fiona made in the same amount of time?

Gameboy games and silver cravat optional.

A flippin' NES phone sock, bitches! And it's all mine, cause she made it for me. 

Suck it.

Again a very simple concept, however it's apparently surprisingly difficult in practice. Putting the pieces together is just a lesson in lots of glue and a steady hand, but it turns out that hand stitching onto felt is an absolute nightmare, so keep that in mind if you're a budding felt mason on his way up in the felting world.

It's the biggest thing since jute.

On to part two...

Super Sticky Sweet Mango Chutney

Mango chutney is a unanimously adored condiment; fact. Indian people eat nothing but mango chutney. Seriously, ask Gandhi; he lived off it most of his life.

Turns out it's not a great nutritional supplement.

As such I decided to make some of my own miracle juice as Christmas presents for various family members and friends this year. You can find the recipe I used here, but if you have a sever hyperlink allergy don't fear, because I'll walk you though it anyway. First off, ingredients:

- 4 mangos, the biggest you can find (that's right, ladies)

- 4 cloves of garlic (cloves, not entire bulbs)

- 450g/1lb caster sugar

- 2 mahusive baking apples

- 1 tbsp English mustard/mustard powder

- 1 tbsp fresh grated ginger

- 600ml/1pt white wine vinegar

- 1 tbsp cayenne pepper

That amount of ingredients should make up just over three 250ml jars of chutney, so multiply as you see fit. The mangos will probably be your most expensive ingredients, setting me back almost two quid a mango, but the rest you'll likely have hanging around the house already.

Pro tip: save space and double your cot as a spice rack.

A quick note on mango picking: be very careful which mango you choose. I, in my child-like naiveté, picked up the last four mangos in Lidl and was done with it. When I got round to making these pulpy blobs into sticky goop, I found that two of them looked like this.

It looks like an aubergine after the very hungry caterpillar has eaten through it.

 This is apparently what happens to a mango when it's picked too early before it's had a chance to go ripe. The brown parts have a nasty bitter taste and all you can do is cut round them or throw the whole fruit away. I lost two good mangos to this abomination. We had to salvage their mangled carcasses for scraps. It was...it was horrible...

Now I know how the Uruguayan rugby team felt. 

You can usually tell if this has happened to your mango by looking for little black patches on the skin of the fruit, but most of the time you won't know until you cut into it, so choose carefully. A nice, squishy, predominantly red mango will be your best choice.

Left: good mango; Right: bad mango

So you've got your mangos, now peel them and chop them up into little chunks, putting all the adorable chunklets into a big bowl. Sprinkle with salt and leave the bowl overnight. Just cover the top and leave it on the side, not in the fridge; you want the fruit to mush up a little.

Dream squishy dreams.

The next morning you're ready to do some actual cooking-type stuff. Turn on your oven to about 120 degrees Celicius (thats 248 Fahrenheit for those of you still using crude flint tools and ignorance) and throw in your jars with their lids to sterilise. Note that you'll also need to take out anything that was already in the jars, so find someone who really likes jam. Measure out all of the other ingredients and put them in a big saucepan. Peel, core and chop your cooking apples. And here's where lesson number two comes in; this is what one of my apples looked like:

"It looks like he was indeed very hungry.  Book him, Lou."

First off, caterpillar. That's just like, so ew! But then, then, it turns out my apple is as bad as the mango. See those brown spots?

Do you see?!

This is a common apple condition (along with ADHD) called bitter pit, where your poor apple wasn't nurtured as a child with enough calcium so he's grown up dark and bitter on the inside, and now he's buying bicycle locks off the internet and learning how to use a crossbow and collecting computer viruses and dear god, I think I'm scared of my own son...

"If only we'd got him that hockey mask for his Christmas instead of fucking mango chutney!"

Again, the best thing to do is cut around the offending areas and make the most of a bad situation. Luckily you can usually spot this one by looking for little holes, or the titular "pits", on the outside of the apple or by simply avoiding Bramley apples, which are the most commonly affected type of apple.

Racist.

Throw your apples in with the rest of the mixture and heat the lot on a low heat until all of the caster sugar has dissolved. You might also want to open a window; the smell of vinegar gets a little overpowering. Once the sugar has dissolved heat the pan until it starts boiling and add your big bowl of mangos. Obviously don't add the bowl, just the mangos, but...yeah. You know what I mean.

Observe, no bowl.

All you need to do now is simmer the mixture for about half an hour, which in practice is actually closer to an hour, until everything starts to thicken up nicely. Now the recipe didn't think to tell me this but the mixture does thicken even more as it cools down, so don't start expecting a proper sticky chutney consistency yet; you'll want something on the same lines as a particularly thick gravy. Think after elevator full of blood but before free-floating full-torso vaporous apparition ectoplasm. Once it hits that thickness (don't be afraid to drain off some excess vinegar if it's taking too long), decant the lot into a big jug and from there into your hot sterile jars. As soon as the jar is full, screw the lid on tight and leave them on the side to cool.

Leave by fish tank for added aesthetic.

Once they're cool you'll know you've sealed the jars right if that little poppy bit on the lid has sucked back in again and the jar is able to turn on a jukebox just by punching it. And that's you done! The end result is a sweet, tangy chutney that goes great on papadums...

Om.

...humans...

Nom.

...and a variety of other animal species. All you've left to do is label...

...wrap...

...and you've got yourself a lovely 100% bespoke yummy gift for a loved one, friend, or moderately competent delivery guy.

Merry Christmas!

Love from Ben x

Walking on the Beaches Looking at the Nectarines (Doesn't Quite Have the Same Ring to It)

My good friend/arch nemesis Fiona (no hyperlink for you this time, matey; I've plugged you twice already) came to visit recently and as all best laid plans seem to do, the recent spate of good weather decided to break into full on rain-to-ground water-rape, and said plans to go for walks and little picnics and such were devoured suddenly and remorselessly by a swarm of mouse-men. That is how the phrase goes, yeah?

I didn't really understand the film either...

So its raining. You're stuck in an empty house with your girlfriend and you've got the whole afternoon to fill. What on earth could you do to pass the time?

Of course! Bake! Duh, you guys...

Sweet, sticky, baking.

Our first thought was a crumble of sorts. Quick and easy and very yummy. Maybe rhubarb or apple. A classic choice. But sadly, no luck; the only fruit the closest shop had were grapes, nectarines and tomatoes. One of those has very little baking potential and another is a tomato. So nectarines were the last resort. They'd do. They're pretty much peaches anyway, just with the toe-curlingly furry skin sanded down a bit.

A bit like how American Football is like sport with the sport taken out.

Peach pies are a thing apparently, so we decided to just alter this recipe a little and make our own nectarine pie, hopefully inadvertently developing a new culinary sensation in the process.

Here's what you need for the crust:

"2 1/2 cups all-purpose Gold Medal flour
1 tablesp-" Woah, hold on there. Stop the pastry parade for a second.

The main parade float this year featuring Jabba the Hutt flogging Santa in his not-at-christmas clothes.

I don't know what a cup is. Is that a real measurement, like a cubit? If you want to cheat people out of pie do you have to hire the street urchin with the shortest arms (or in this case the smallest begging cup) to make your units smaller? The god of all baking gives us a conversion chart for changing into real units so let's give it another, annotated, go:

"375g all-purpose Gold Medal flour (you can use Silver Medal flour, but you'll only come second in the bake-off)
1(2/3/I like my pie crust really sweet so lots) tablespoon of sugar
1 teaspoon salt
225g unsalted butter, cold and cut into cubes
120ml buttermilk, cold (if you're having trouble getting milk out of the butter, do what we did and use the regular stuff)
1-2 tablespoons water, cold
1 large egg, beaten, for the egg wash"

If you've ever baked, or read a baking recipe, you'll know what's coming next; mix all the dry stuff, then add the chunks of butter and make it all breadcrumby with your hands or, alternatively, use a rolling pin to mush it all together. If you are literally baked, now is the time to put all of the ingredients in a large bowl and eat it with a wooden spoon whilst giggling at episodes of Takeshi's Castle.

He ate the photographer shortly after this. That stuff is a slippery slope...

Once the mix is all mushed together nicely into a flaky mess, bung it in the freezer for fifteen minutes and pop the kettle on. Once the quarter hour is up, take it back out and add the milk, mixing it together until everything comes together in a ball. Chop the ball in to two, flatten those two half-balls into discs, wrap them in cling film and put them in the fridge for upwards of an hour.

Please do not try this on any other type of ball.

Now for the fun stuff. As I said, we tweaked the filling slightly:

8/10 sliced and peeled nectarines
175g sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon (preferably, as in definitely, not in stick form)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
A healthy glug of orange juice (smooth or with bits, we don't judge)
3-4 tablespoons-ish cornstarch

This bit is easy. Chop the nectarines and put them in a bowl.

Like so.

Just a little warning when doing this bit, the pits of the nectarines can be as sharp as your disapproving grandparents after they've had a couple sherries, so be careful if you end up pulling the fruit apart by hand if it happens to be a little under-ripe.

For more information, please see my article on improvised prison weapons that also count towards your five a day.

After you've cut all of the nectarines up and paid a quick trip to the hospital to remove any sharp objects from your person, throw in all of the other above ingredients and stir nicely. 

Then take a weirdly angled shot of your handiwork.

Hopefully by now the hour will be up and you can grab your pastry. If not, get drunk or something.

Works for her.

Roll out one of your discs of pastry to about yay-thick. A yay is commonly considered to be approximately between a little and some, so just about 1/4 of an inch. Chuck it into a pie dish (those are the ones for pies) and make sure it's pressed into the edges. Add your mix. Roll out the other slab of pastryey goodness and make a choice. Lattice or full crust. If you're not sure, flip a coin and let fate decide.

Works for him.

Choose and place your appropriate pastry lid, slice off the excess pastry round the edge of the dish, eat it guiltily, beat that egg from earlier on, take his money, wash him over the top of the pie and throw it into an oven at 190-ish degrees C. Once it goes evenly brown on the top take it out and you're done.

Now we throw it at someone, right?

Boom. Baking. Dawdle. Finishing this article at 2am with work tomorrow. No funny ending. Piss off, at least I posted something.