Christmas Cravings Blog Tour...

Jaffareadstoo is delighted to be part of the 

Christmas Cravings Blog Tour

Christmas Cravings is a festive romance standalone episode from the Greedily Yours series.

How could everything suddenly have gone so wrong for Mia Maxwell? She’s published her own foodie book, travelled around the world blogging her new recipes and has the perfect boyfriend in rugged, countryman Tom.

But since being spotted with her ex-boyfriend Paul, Tom has refused to even speak to her let alone see her for Christmas as planned. The warm, spiced wine of the German Christmas markets is little consolation for the hole in her heart.

Will Mia's Christmas turn out to be sugar and spice and all things nice – or a deflated soufflé of loneliness and regret?

Christmas Cravings is published on 20th November, price £0.99 in eBook.

 Greedily Yours Episode 1-8 are also all now available, price £1.49 each.

***

Here's a delightful guest post from Emma all about those dreaded Christmas Cooking Disasters...

It is Christmas 2013. Perhaps I should have seen that as a bad omen, given how superstitious I am, but I didn't. So I was happily looking forward to, for the first time in my life, hosting my very own Christmas dinner. Let me be clear, this is something I had been dreaming about and, in a way, preparing for since my teens, or at least early twenties, when every year, from the Sainsbury's magazine and the Observer food monthly I would cut out the Christmas food specials. I would drool over Nigella's accounts of how to host the perfect few days of friends and family. Jewelled couscous stuffing to go with an artful goose or a crackling duck perhaps. Or even if I stuck to the traditional turkey which I'd grown up with, I knew that I'd caramelize those parsnips, delicately sprinkled with cinnamon and serve up the perfect starter, cocktails and twist on a Christmas pudding as if I'd been doing it all my life.

In all my poring over Christmas recipes and dreaming of a house I've never had, ie. perfectly organised, huge oven, every cooking gadget known to man and an ability to cook a huge meal, while looking as polished as Nigella does on telly, I failed to pick up on the reality of Christmas. Early rising, huge stress about whether you will manage to time everything to perfection and the weight of expectation that hangs, somewhat heavily over the whole affair.

So when it finally came, I decided to stick to what I knew, or rather what my Mum knows, (in case I needed help) and ordered the biggest turkey Germany could provide. I think I was the talk of the town that year as I proceeded to order all sorts of other “weird”, ie. English, ingredients from my local butcher, so that I could make sausage rolls with my own stuffing, the Turkey, the stuffing for the turkey, rashers of bacon, sausages etc. etc.

Weighed down by a huge bag of meat, I then realised that I do not possess an American style freezer or oven.  Fitting the whole lot in the fridge and then oven was going to be a challenge; when 6 people's food, milk, cheese and vegetable needs were already stuffed in the fridge and needed to last for the several days of Christmas when German shops totally shut down. There would be none of that popping to the corner shop or to Sainsbury's on Boxing Day for those forgotten bags of peas in Germany. So I over catered, for fear that I would forget something; and had large plastic boxes stacked outside on the balcony full of food that we couldn't have possibly devoured in a month, let alone a couple of days.

Christmas day dawned, and I put on the Pogues, “Fairytale of New York” and proceeded to attack the tasks in my usual haphazard manner. All thought of planning and timing had gone out of the window. I refused all help and scrubbed and peeled the potatoes, the Brussels and made the sausage meat stuffing. Mum stepped in for consultation on the bird and we put it in the oven, stuffed with pork and apple and swaddled in bacon and then tinfoil. The oven was humming away, 40 mins on about 250 and then turned down to a lower heat. I had started on the cranberry sauce and was feeling quite good about my abilities to have done all this without recourse to tears or shouting.

Everyone else set off for a walk and I fended off my mother in law quietly coming over to check how things were going by shooing her away. (This is something you don't understand, I thought smugly) and proceeded to stir my sauce and check on the marinating onion in the milk and bread for the bread sauce. Delia was my only companion for a few hours and I ticked off the tasks. In retrospect, I should have worried that I couldn't smell the delicious aroma of roasting meat. But I was so busy thinking “I have this sussed” it didn't even occur to me to check the turkey.

Then the clock turned 3pm and the ubiquitous Kaffee und Kuchen were brought out to respect my German in law's traditions. I refused (who wants to eat a big slab of stollen when you've got a delicious Turkey to come) and carried on cooking, feeling virtuous. Then my mother in law asked me again “how is the Turkey, do you think we should check it?”. Sighing loudly, I humoured her, and opened the oven, to a blast of, well....nothing. No warm air, no delicious sizzling or golden flesh. The Turkey was still well and truly flaccidly pink and white and was totally uncooked. The bloody oven had broken down. It had been ticking merrily away on timer, but the fan and heat function had, well, ceased to function and all those hours of prep, were wasted.

That's when I broke down in tears and ate a huge slab of stollen, all my build up to this big day had totally crumbled, and I looked like the novice I am.

Luckily, my mother in law and mum rallied around and we managed to get the oven working on the baking function. I'm not sure what temperature we finally cooked that turkey on and the lovingly prepared stuffing had to be scraped out and cooked separately, as did the potatoes because there was no more room in the poor beleaguered oven, but eventually, at about 9pm, we sat down to Turkey and all the trimmings. And you know what, despite the tears and despite my bruised pride, it did taste good, well, at least our English contingent thought so. The Germans politely tucked in (but later said there were too many things on the plate for their taste); by that time, several bottles of wine later, we were all passed caring and the most important thing, Christmas Day had been saved. The following year? It was back to my Mum's for a stress free Christmas Day when the most I do is prepare a few Brussels and stir the bread sauce.

One day though, I'm still hoping to serve up that jewelled couscous and a goose or duck, but next time I do so, I think I'll wait until I have a fully functioning double oven at my disposal and a MUCH bigger fridge. What did that disaster teach me? that my mum all these years has done an amazing job. Something I should really have acknowledged a long time ago really, instead of thinking that I could do better.

You can find Emma Hamilton with all of her foodie and writing photos on Instagram: EmmaHamiltonAuthor.

Huge thanks to Emma for her Christmas Cooking Disasters guest post 

and also to Hayley at edpr.co.uk for her invitation to join in with this delightful blog tour.

Do visit the other stops on the tour...

~***~

Blog Tour : Greedily Yours by Emma Hamilton

A delicious new series from Bastei Entertainment

Published twice weekly from 15th June 2015, price £1.49 per eBook

Book 1 : Taste Test

About the book


Mia Maxwell loves food. She loves it so much that she’s made it her career.

Everything in Mia’s life appears to be perfect. By day, she runs a food PR consultancy and by night she’s a busy food blogger, delving into new recipes and sharing delicious meals she’s enjoyed. Her boyfriend Paul is always whisking her away on fantastic holidays around the globe, helping her forget his daily comments about her weight and his businesslike approach to their life together. After all, no relationship is perfect, is it?

When Mia’s work takes her down to the countryside of Cornwall to manage a local food festival run by the kindly Lord Trelawney, she takes an instant dislike to his grumpy son Tom, who makes his aversion to ‘pushy Londoners’ very clear. But as the festival gets underway, Mia is surprised to find that he shares her passion for food and cooking. As her time in Cornwall turns out to be far more eventful than she could have imagined, Mia has no idea that her whole life is about to be cast adrift…

**As part of this delicious blog tour I can share with you**

Aunt Agatha's Cornish Fish Pie

My mum taught me the potato pastry but I think she got it from a cookbook originally, I’m just not sure which one. Do I need to find out?? I just make up the base depending on what fish and vegetables I have but obviously I have read lots of recipes for fish pie, including Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Rick Stein. 

For the pastry crust

300g of floury potatoes

250g of butter

250g of flour

A generous teaspoon of nutmeg

A good pinch of salt

Lots of ground black pepper

A dollop of clotted or double cream or Greek or Turkish yoghurt.


For the filling

A kilo of mixed fresh fish in season.

I like Haddock, Pollock, Salmon, Bream and Mackerel.

Chopped Squid can be good to add in too and seafood, mussels, cockles and crab, just see what your fishmonger has fresh.

3-4 red onions (depending on size)

4 cloves of garlic, chopped small or crushed

100 g of fresh tarragon, or a good bunch to your taste if you’re picking it from your garden or balcony.

3 grated carrots

A teaspoon of turmeric

A good shake of cumin seeds

A good shake of sweet paprika

A good squeeze of tomato puree - from a tube, about half the tube.

2 teaspoons of nutmeg

250 g of peas, frozen or fresh

1 fennel bulb including the fronds

2 large leeks, finely chopped

A good shake of seaweed, chopped nori works well

Rock salt / sea salt

Pepper

Fish stock

Clotted Cream or Double cream or 10% Greek or Turkish yoghurt depending on how sour you like the taste to be.

1 lemon squeezed.

Flat leafed parsley if you want it.

Thyme or Lemon thyme if you have it.

You can alter all the ingredients depending on how many you’re making this for, I just chop and add as I feel. What you’re aiming for is a lovely creamy sauce with lots of fresh fish cooked down and then topped with a golden potato pastry crust. 

First you need to get the potatoes boiling for the pastry topping. Scrub and chop the potatoes up, if you don’t want to weigh them I take about 5 or 6 potatoes. Boil them in a pan of salted water. 

Then, chop and fry the onions and garlic, add in the grated carrot and the leeks and fennel and soften in butter or coconut oil and cook with the salt and pepper. Sprinkle in the Nori or seaweed to taste, the turmeric sweet paprika, the nutmeg and the tomato puree. When that has cooked down, add in the cumin seeds and then add in the fish and cook it gently on a medium heat, squeezing over the lemon juice and then adding in the fish stock gradually as everything is cooking to make sure nothing dries out. Whilst you leave that gently simmering, put on the oven and heat it to about 200 degrees or medium hot on a fan or top baking setting if you have one. 

Then prepare the pastry by cutting in the butter with the flour and salt and nutmeg until you have made fine breadcrumbs. Keep checking the fish base that it’s cooking gently and not drying out. 

By the time you have made the pastry the potatoes should be done. Drain them and then add in a pinch of salt, the dollop of clotted or double cream or thick yoghurt and the nutmeg and pepper and mash or pass through a potato ricer so the potato is really smooth. Add that to the flour and butter that is in crumbs and combine until the whole is a fluffy pastry. If you have the quantities right, you should be able to roll out a thick crust although it will be harder to handle than normal pastry. If it’s really falling apart, add in a little more flour and keep mixing until it binds together. Leave to sit a bit in the fridge or on the side. 

Meanwhile add the chopped tarragon and dried if you need it and clotted or double cream or thick yoghurt into the fish mixture and stir until it looks thick and creamy. Pour the lot in to a big pie dish, maybe around 30 cm long by about 20cm wide. Try and roll out the pastry and then place it on top, make a couple of cuts in the top of the pastry and if you want, fashion a little shape like a star or little fishes for the centre of the pie. If you really can’t roll out the pastry then dollop it on top as though it is normal mashed potato and make sure it completely covers the fish mixture underneath. It will still crisp up in the oven. Put the pie in the now hot oven for about 35-40 minutes or until the pastry is nicely golden brown and crisp. 

This is a messy dish so serve with a deep serving spoon to make sure you get all the creamy filling as well as a good helping of potato pastry topping. 

You can serve with green beans, broccoli or just on its own. 

About the Author

Emma Hamilton is the pen name for a food-loving journalist and writer. Once a staff producer and then freelance reporter for the BBC, CBC, and Deutsche Welle, she has also written for a number of magazines and newspapers, including The Guardian, BBC Magazines, The Mail on Sunday, Four Four Two and Italy Magazine. She has worked on a number of series and documentaries, including one about food and culture around the world. Emma spent six years reporting from Italy and has made radio programmes in many countries including Lebanon, Ethiopia, the USA, France, Germany, Russia, and Cameroon. When she’s not cooking, reading about food or eating it, she splits her time between presenting, producing and writing. She loves yoga, running, gardening and spending time with her husband, friends and family at home.

My Thoughts:

Taste Test is the first episode in an eight part serialisation of the Greedy Girls novellas and gives a tantalising taster of food, love and zesty adventure. We are introduced to Mia, a food blogger of Greedily Yours, whose four year on/off relationship with her boyfriend, Paul, forms part of the novella. But it is with her friend, Lizzie , who runs a cup cake cafe, where the fun lies.

A quick read at 79 pages, Taste Test is the perfect accompaniment to a lunch break in the park. Easily loaded onto your kindle, this lovely story is less than the price of meal deal and so much better for your waistline. The pages fly by, and by the cliff hanger ending, I was more than eager to start book Two...enticingly named ,Salty Tales...!

At the end of this novella are a series of delicious recipes of which Aunt Agatha's Fish Pie is one such scrumptious treat.


Bon Appetit !!

**Enter this Delicious Giveaway **

to win an e-copy of

Greedily Yours Episode 1 : Taste Test.



My thanks to Hayley at ED Public Relations for my invitation to join this lovely blog tour today.



a Rafflecopter giveaway