The Vicar’s Wife’s Cook Book

½ red cabbage, de-cored and cut into chunks

1 apple (I used a Cox’s), quartered and cored

1 red onion

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 garlic clove, peeled and crushed

2 tablespoons white wine

1 green cabbage, de-cored

knob of butter

salt and pepper

First, get out your food processor and find your slicing disc. Use it to cut up the red cabbage, the apple and the onion. (You could use the other half of the cabbage to make the red cabbage and Stilton slaw – see here (#litres_trial_promo)) Put the oil in a large pan and add the red cabbage, onion, apple and garlic. Put a lid on the pan and make sure the heat is at medium. Give it all a stir from time to time and let it cook for about 15 minutes, or until the cabbage has softened but still has some crunch. Then pour in the wine and let it bubble away.

Meanwhile, finely shred the green cabbage and add it to the pan, stirring until it is wilting nicely, which should only take a few minutes. Add a knob of butter and season.

Toffee and Apple Crumble (#ulink_65f79344-c254-50fc-b5c6-285eb9f990da)

If the title of this dessert conjures up a picture of funfair toffee apples, I do apologise. Banish those thoughts of toothache-inducing candied fruit on sticks and instead think of sticky, caramel sweetness (oh dear, that’s all a bit confusingly redolent of Mackenzie parsnips). This pudding produced lively remembrances of crumbles from the past. My husband’s sister talked lovingly about her mother’s thick crumble toppings. ‘Goodness, you are just so toppist!’ exclaimed the brother-in-law ‘Fine,’ came the reply, ‘you can have my bottom and I’ll have your top.’ An interesting prospect …

1kg Cox’s apples, peeled, quartered and cored

juice of 1 lemon

8–10 tablespoons ready-made toffee sauce (this is almost a 220g jar)

225g plain flour

175g chilled butter, cut into small pieces

pinch of salt

50g porridge oats

150g demerara sugar

You will need a 2-litre ovenproof dish. I mistakenly used one with ridges on the bottom – don’t: all the lovely caramel sinks into the cracks and has to be scraped out laboriously.

Preheat the oven to 190°C/Gas Mark 5. Slice each apple quarter into 4, place in a bowl, stir in the toffee sauce and lemon juice and then spoon evenly over the base of the dish.

Now take out your food processor and throw in the flour, butter and salt and blitz until the butter is mixed in and the mixture looks like rough breadcrumbs. Stir in the oats and sugar and work the mixture with your fingers a little until it starts to stick together in little clumps. Sprinkle the mixture on top of the apples. Cook in the oven for 40–45 minutes until golden and bubbling, and serve with cream or ice cream.

A celebration of old traditions and new friends

It’s late November and my son has already been talking about Christmas for weeks. On a dark and rainy Sunday I opt to give in to his excitement and serve a lunch with more than a sniff of festive tradition about it. Some newly acquired friends are with us and, as we finish our meal and share unusual moments from our pasts, the lovely Helen calmly relates one of her own memories: ‘I once fired an AK47 in the desert at a cactus. I was on a holiday with an ex-con. Later, I stroked a tarantula. After that, my friend broke his leg and we went skiing.’ As far as surreal anecdotes go, we couldn’t really top that and rapidly moved on to coffee.

DUCK LEGS WITH PORT AND CRANBERRIES (#ulink_7e14f1a3-81b5-5a54-bdea-fe01bd212c30)

CELERIAC AND POTATO GRATIN OR MASH (#ulink_20613705-ead8-5920-9611-5ff7a26c0431)

TURNIPS AND LEEKS WITH HONEY, CORIANDER AND SOY (#ulink_ce801f2e-2435-5c02-9ecf-cc94f557b63f)

WINTER FRUIT PIE (#ulink_1940ecb1-d1e0-5239-a297-5e45799ecc23)

Duck Legs with Port and Cranberries (#ulink_1ddbb04c-0a7e-538d-bd32-1bf5e9f5b1a5)

I assembled this dish the evening before, along with the gratin, to make Sunday a little less frantic. This also meant that I could scrape off some fat that was sitting on top of the duck. Fat is to duck as hormones are to teenagers: it oozes out of them.

Using duck legs is a good way to serve duck to more than a few people if you have an eye on the purse-strings: it’s much cheaper to buy all legs than two whole ducks, and there’s also no need to get the carving knife out. I served this dish with two root vegetable side dishes and some spinach for a flash of green. I don’t offer a recipe for the spinach: just wash it, drain it in a colander and throw it in a hot pan, lid on. It’ll only take a minute or two to wilt, then you just need to drain it of any excess water and chop it up a bit. Add a little seasoning, butter and maybe some nutmeg, if you wish.

6 duck legs

18 shallots, peeled and left whole

2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed

1 tablespoon plain flour

450ml port

200ml chicken stock (fresh, or made from a good-quality liquid bouillon)

finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange

10 juniper berries, crushed

6 sprigs of thyme

200g cranberries, fresh or frozen

3 tablespoons ready-made redcurrant jelly

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

salt and pepper

Heat up a big frying pan without any oil and brown the duck legs (they may need to go in the pan in batches). Remove the duck legs to a large roasting tin, then add the shallots and garlic to the pan, stirring now and then in the fat emitted by the duck – you are aiming for a nice caramel colour. (Incidentally, if the thought of peeling all those shallots sends you reaching for the tissues, pop them in a pan of boiling water for a couple of minutes before you do so: it takes the sting out of them and the skins come off much more easily.)

Once the shallots and garlic have had their frying time, add them to the duck legs. Check the oil level in the pan; some fat will have come out of the duck, so pour off all but 1 tablespoon but don’t discard what’s been poured off. Pour it into a small bowl and pop it in the fridge – it’s a roast potato’s best friend. Add the flour to the remaining tablespoon of fat and stir for a couple of minutes before adding the port and the stock. Finally, add the rest of the ingredients and pour them over the duck in the roasting tin.

You can either cook the dish then and there at 200°C/Gas Mark 6 for an hour, or else refrigerate it and bring it to room temperature before cooking it the next day. The finished dish, with its sprigs of green thyme and flaming cranberry jewels, is a pageant to all the holly and berries that are still to come.

Celeriac and Potato Gratin (#ulink_1809f89e-385f-5a3e-b8df-9204fed36f11)