Christmas!

It's taken a while, but I'm finally getting round to posting photos of my Christmas feast. We decided to have it at home this time, and celebrated it on Christmas Eve with the delightful Miss Kitty Valentine, my cushion-making partner in crime Aldona and her family.

In true over-the-top Polish tradition, our dinner consisted of at least 12 dishes (since I'm not actually Polish, I don't know if it is true that a Polish Christmas dinner has to include 12 dishes, it's just what I've been told.) 

The coffee table had an array of sweets - (from top), homemade panforte, a quince, ginger and walnut cake based on this recipe, and some untraditionally shaped gingerbread biscuits (gingerbread T-rex, anyone?). Aldona also brought along some makowiec (poppyseed cake) and more biscuits.

The star of the night, a perfectly roasted goose! Manbacon (who can be partially seen behind the bird) cooked the goose himself, following a great recipe by the Hairy Bikers. He also managed to rustle up succulent salt beef, as well as plenty of delicious apple and pork stuffing. 

£10 notes to wipe our greasy hands and lips on, because we're hedonists and filthy rich. You can't see it, but we also had a stack of £20 and £50 note-napkins. 

Wild mushroom dumplings in beetroot soup (above), as well as some bigos, plenty of cured pork products, some marinated herrings, and possibly some other stuff as well. 

The aftermath - empty vodka bottles, half-finished bowls of soups and stews, burnt-out candles, crumpled napkins and wrapping paper, plenty of half-eaten food, and one stained tablecloth. Our guests were sent away with boxes stuffed full of food. 

Bigos And Banana Bread Baking Bonanza

No, not bigos-banana bread - because that would be disgusting. At least, I think it would, but I haven't actually tried that combination yet, so who knows, eh? What I actually baked this past Sunday evening were bigos and cheese muffins, and a banana loaf.

The banana loaf was inspired by Loumm's tempting banana, cinnamon and walnut loaf recipe. I substituted some coffee for the milk used in the original recipe, and used some mixed nuts instead of just walnuts - the whole thing came out delicious, if I do say so myself.

The bigos muffins, on the other hand, came about as an answer to the question "Where else can I hide some bigos?"

That Manpoppet of mine was gripped by an insatiable craving for massive amounts of hunters' stew on the weekend, and cooked up a great big monster of stewed cabbages and meats on Saturday. I'm not exaggerating when I call it a 'great big monster' - that baby weighed about 5kgs!

Faced with the terrifying thought of eating only bigos for the next fortnight, I had a quick look around the kitchen, and whipped up some of this little muffin monsters.

Ingredients

350 gm plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate soda

1 tsp baking powder

100 gm butter

300 ml milk

1 egg, beaten

300 gm bigos

200 gm grated cheese

Directions

Makes about 12 medium muffins.

- Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius.

- Sift flour into a mixing bowl, then rub butter into flour.

- Mix milk and egg into flour mixture.

- Using a wooden spoon or spatula, mix in the bigos and grated cheese. I used Edam as it was the only one I had in my fridge at the time, but it would be interesting to try some softer ones like mozzarella or even Brie in the future.

- Spoon the mixture into a lightly greased muffin tray. You can fill them all the way to the top, as the mixture doesn't rise too much during baking.

- Bake in the oven for 20 to 30 minutes. Stick a skewer through the middle of a muffin (or a butter knife if you're like me and aren't organised enough to have skewers), they're done when the skewer comes out clean. There may be some melted cheese clinging on to the skewer though, so as long as there's no floury stuff clinging to your skewer, you're good to go!

* Bigos - we made ours, but you can find them in jars at supermarkets and Polish grocers. So, there's no need for you to go to all that trouble making 5kg of stew just to make these muffins.