The Nigel Slater Christmas Chronicles Readalong 2025 - Part 3

[RainbowZebraWarrior]

Hello all, and welcome to Part 3. We Continue our CC journey.

For anyone who has not already had the pleasure, the annual Nigel Slater Christmas Chronicles read along is a real time annual MN tradition.

The Christmas Chronicles (Notes, stories and 100 essential recipes for midwinter) book began on 1st November.
We continue to read along and comment with the book which is set out in diary form. I will make a post each day (or let you know if there is no entry on a particular day)

For anyone new, it's a challenge to see of you can pick up the book as a bargain. Vinted has come up trumps in the past, as has ebay. A rare and precious charity shop find is always a bonus. Don't forget, you can also listen along to Nigel's dulcet tones via Audible.

So, welcome to old friends and new, and don't forget that reading by candle light is particularly enjoyable. Cire Trudon may be one of Nige's candles of choice, but it's somewhat pricey. We don't discriminate against other less expensive brands - even if they are NVN (Not Very Nigel)

Pull up a chair, light a candle, grab a cosy blanket and join in!

H is off the motorway, rest is easy

Completely! My grandmother rarely used a scale and I am always secretly happy when I make one of the few things I can do by sight - can only think of pancakes, Yorkshire pudding and a roux base off the top of my head. She could do various types of sponge, shortcrust pastry (savoury and sweet) and many child-friendly bakes.

It’s been nearly 18 years and there are moments when I miss her like she died yesterday.

Needs must in the pursuit of opera! 😂 @Bimblesalong - that sounds like a very arduous journey indeed, even without any weather related hold-ups. True dedication. @RainbowZebraWarrior - you are better than Météo France. Relentless rain has indeed washed away all our snow which in truth is slightly a relief because after two days of winter wonderland photo opportunities no one really wants to be risking life and limb every time they nip out for a baguette. Bon courage to all those in the eye of storm Goretti - my brother is in the Channel Islands where they have issued a red warning.

Try these, seems difficult to think anything of them, but they're fab.

Digestive biscuits
Ingredients:
110g cold unsalted butter cubed
125g wholemeal flour
125g medium oatmeal
55g sugar
4g salt
1 tsp baking powder
1-2 tbsp milk to mix
Method:
Mix flour/oatmeal/salt/baking power in a bowl.
Using paddle on mixer at medium speed beat butter and sugar together until light and fluffy (no more than 5 mins).
Switch mixer to low speed and add flour.
Use just a smidge of milk to bring everything together.
Put your hand into a sandwich bag and bring the dough together by turning bag outside in. Put dough into refrigerator for at least 1/2 hour.
Flour baking paper and roll out dough between 2 sheets.
Roll out quite thin and give a high bake at 180degC (about 12-15 mins), this makes and keeps the biscuits nice and crisp.

It would be faster to get from mine to Bastille compared to the forecast Sunday trip @LillianGish ! I hope I will be on a cloud of opera and post trip to Santa Maria novella.

all is cosy here and I’m off to find my bed socks soon!

Dedication indeed @Bimblesalongim
hald considering going into London on Saturday, its an hour straight train and I can’t even be bothered with that!

curry looks lovely @frozendaisyand I hope your H is home safe and warm-as I hope everyone is on his thread. The Channel Islands look a bit hairy @LillianGishso hoping your bro has battened down his hatches. Does he like it there? I once got offered a job on Guernsey and often wish I’d accepted it.

Well our hatches are well and truly battened, we have DGS here tonight who is tucked up after sausage, chips, a shower and the last of the chocolate gold coins. The wind and unrelenting rain are powering directly against our apartment windows, the noise is quite amazing.

Thankfully my wonderful DH is going to take DGS to school in the morning, I have one more week off then its back to opening the pub at sparrow fart so I'm going to enjoy my last few days off until July. Our 'New Regime' is going well so far, I'm following the 'no buy, low buy' thread on style and beauty but tbh I'm not sure that many posters understand the concept of 'no buy'😂Hey ho, every cloud and all that, if this weather keeps up for the rest of Jan it will be be easy peasy to stay indoors and go nowhere near any shops.

Take care lovely ladies!!! x

9 January

A fry-up for a rainy day

I am envious of the North, of Scotland and Scandanavia, with it's Arctic air and drifts of snow. The winter of 2016 brought Scotland twice as many days of frost as it did to England, the west of Scotland even more. Further south, the months of December, January and February often seemed to consist of little more than rain. In truth, England had forty-eight days of rain in the winter of 2016, compared to sixty-six in Scotland. Almost fifty days of rain out of ninety-three. To put it another way, it rained virtually every other day.

Hope you're OK and didn't get too battered last night @thebabessavedme (and anyone / everyone else) I'm following that thread on S&B at the moment. I love my S&B threads, but have had to step away from a few as some folk spend thousands. Literally purchasing every day. I think I might spend some time today unsubscribing from some companies. I really want to limit things this year to my absolute favourites and not buy for the sake of buying. I need to save for a new sofa and new windows.

Your dedication is admirable @Bimblesalong I'm not sure I actually love anything enough to put myself through that, but I know how passionate you are about the opera.

Reading back about shallow plate pies and grandmothers baking has made me smile. I have some of my Nanna's old plates. She called them tarts though (even when savoury) so a plate mince pie would be a mince tart. I might need to make one now for nostalgia as my Mum loves a mince tart. I also feel the need to make my mothers Tray Bake. AFAIK it's just a Victoria sponge recipe in a tray, rather like school cake, but with only a thin layer of translucent icing. For some reason, nothing sweet ever tasted as good as this. It was just perfect simplicity. That's likely because I don't like fruit puddings or pies / crumbles / trifle / tirimasu etc. Plain and simple for me on the sweet treats.

I think this is the third chapter where Nigel romanticises about wintry weather elsewhere. I guess this is why he needs his Japan fix, which will be coming up soon.

Hope you've all stayed safe and warm overnight. Couple of inches of snow here and I think it'll be turning slushy quite quickly.

I think the only place I've seen snow overseas was Venice, just before Christmas, which was very pretty but quickly washed away in floods on Christmas Eve. In my mind my Scottish childhood winters were all full of deep snow, of course - I do remember some spectacular snowdrifts!

@RainbowZebraWarrior I've been unsubscribing from lots of emails as they come in over the last few weeks, it's very therapeutic!

Morning everyone.

The book, for the couple of you who were intrigued is Filthy Rich Vampire - truly awful escape from reality. I much prefer my vampire novels to be along the lines of Anne Rice in it's original form - not the current TV adaptation.

Not enough snow for a birthday snow day <sob>. I've bought lots of cakes & have no class teacher for the day instead.

Anyway...must get on. Breakfast to be eaten, shoes on, & off I go <sigh>.

Happy birthday Lucysmam. Hope its a good day despite not being a snow day and enjoy the cake!

Happy birthday!

@lucysmam happy birthday!

Lots of snow here.

@lucysmam happy birthday it’s weekend come home time - I agree with Anne Rice Vampires
@sbplanet thanks for the recipe - everyone is in today not even a flake here so no school closures which is probably a good thing

and yes snow and frost is wonderful if you are a Nigel - can enjoy looking and writing and just generally choosing which bits to indulge in - do you reckon he’s ever scrapped a car? Whilst also being late for something?

@Bimblesalong enjoy the opera

so no baking today - just usual Friday pizza

Thanks guys. TBH when I booked the train back was the usual 2 hours but I’m prepared to style it back this time!
We had some snow overnight but it rained and it has now gone. I hope everyone has been ok overnight. The SW looked awful on the news.

Anyone else wonder why we need unsalted butter, when we then add salt?

It’s one of those enduring mysteries for me.

Our promised 30cm of snow has as predicted been a damp squib. We have the usual inch that’s turning to slush which will freeze lethally overnight. Enough to look really grubby where the ground shows through, rather than that pristine gloss we hope for!

But I liked the look of that sprout salad. I’ll make it today to keep in the fridge as a topper upper. Orange juice, salt and sugar as a dressing makes everything taste better- even iceberg lettuce! I’m going to use some trimmed off ham fat instead of the olive oil. The flavour from the bay and star anise is amazing. I know it sounds a bit weird but I was struggling not to eat it as I trimmed yesterday. I had a big bag of gammon offcuts from the food waste club. Blooming delicious. We had a soup that was effectively the same as the salmon soup, but made with ham.

Anyone else wonder why we need unsalted butter, when we then add salt?
I agree. I just use salted, and omit the extra salt.

Happy Birthday @lucysmam

I like the sound of today's fry-up recipe, but DH doesn't do hot savoury fruit in any form, which actually cancels out a lot of Nigel's recipes - apples feature a lot!

Semi-inspired by the fridge organisers here, and because I am feeling somewhat human today, I am going to do an inventory of the freezer this morning. It is stuffed to the gunnels and I need to start planning meals around what is in there before buying anything more.

I've also been meaning to post on these threads for ages that I finally read Wintering. It wasn't terrible - I know some folk here really didn't get on with it, but it was pretty forgettable and not what I imagined from the blurb. The author was a bit whiny but there were some good and interesting sections - the sauna chapter, for example, was great.

I'm now working my way through Val McDermid's Winter, which is wonderful. I'm resisting the urge to race through it, and giving myself one or two short chapters a day. I can see this as a companion book to CC, and she writes so wonderfully about the season and her memories. It's probably particularly interesting to those who know the east coast of Scotland but hopefully a good read also for those who don't

And on that subject, we have around half an inch of snow this morning, and more flakes are falling. Right now, it's enough to make the world outside my window look like a magical winter wonderland, but not so much that it disrupts life, services etc in any way. Just trying to enjoy this and not think about the inevitable iciness to follow...

As a chef, the official answer is that if you use salted butter, then you cannot control the amount of salt that is in the recipe. Unsalted means you can. It is largely rubbish as far as I'm concerned, but some of the chefs I worked with absolutely lived and died by this rule. They would absolutely only sauté a steak in President unsalted butter, then season liberally with seasalt and pepper. I never thought that using salted butter would actually make much difference but I was frequently scoffed at by some other (always male) chefs.

To add to my precious post, I think it probably goes without saying, but there is a heck of a lot of pretentious bollocks involved in the food and cheffing industries. Most of it gets right up my nose, but I suppose we all have certain things that we are particular about or would admit to being a snob about.

I don't do savoury fruit (no apple sauce, cranberry etc) or 'hot fruit' (hot fruit drinks, hot fruit puddings) at all @PricklyBob which rules out loads of stuff for me. I think I am particularly fussy though. Having said all that, I wolf down Chilli jam and Mango Chutney. Oh, I am also gently working my way through Val McDermid's Winter. I'm just doing a couple of pages a day on Audible. I've loved her books since I was a teen, which has just made me realise how long she's been around! It has also just occurred to me that she's a writer that DD might now be interested in.

I made a yule log cake once and used salted butter in the buttercream. My god it was SO salty. A little bit of salt would have probably been nice but this was BAD (even though it looked lovely ) most of it end up in the bin. Tragic!!

I must admit that's the only time I've been precious about it. I used to make hundreds of cupcakes when I had my café. Buttercream must be made with unsalted butter.

BTW, my previous post should have said 'previous post' not precious post haha!

I can understand Chef types being particular, given how carefully they would season certain dishes, but most household cooks are unlikely to be that precise!

I tend not to use butter for ‘ordinary’ cakes and buttercream. Baking marge has to do. I don’t actually like buttercream, and tend to use ganache or extra thick cream, depending on the purpose. Extra thick cream makes a firm coating and a moist cake. Does anyone remember that student dessert made by sandwiching gingernuts and whipped cream? I use extra thick cream in the same way.

Happy Birthday @lucysmamx
I don’t know much about unsalted butter, but in a bid to get out of the relentless sleet at work today we did a mass soup making session. I borrowed some stock cubes from the farm owners wife and they must have been 98 per cent salt because e ended up with the saltiest soup ever to be made. It must have been that as all that was otherwise in it was an onion, a leek, some carrots, a butternut squash and some questionable parsnips.
At least it got us out of the weather which was incredibly unpleasant today.
a happy Friday evening to all-first full week back done and dusted.