Hot Spiced Mead - A Winter Warmer Cocktail

Although the German market in Edinburgh disappeared long ago, the Highland market was around until New Year. When we visited on New Year's Day, we all had sore throats from the partying the night before, as well as sore heads. After some tasty burgers from Well Hung & Tender, we found a stall selling hot mead, which we hoped would be soothing as well as restorative.

It was indeed both, and quizzed the girl behind the counter for the ingredients. Mead, wine, honey, sugar, apple juice and spices were in there, but she wasn't sure of the quantities.

I'd forgotten about it until the other day, when perusing the alcoholic offerings of the local deli in search of something to cheer me up in the darkest days of January. Some mead was purchased, quickly spiced, heated and drunk.

Cinnamon, cloves, star anise, mace.

I left out the apple juice, but reduced the alcohol content by gently simmering the drink for a minute or so before serving. I used a similar selection of spices to that of mulled wine - cinnamon, cloves, star anise and mace. Without the apple juice, I substituted a good squeeze of lemon to make it a bit fruitier. Annoyingly, it was only after I finished drinking that I thought I should have put a shot of Cointreau in there to get a zesty edge to the flavour.

Hot Spiced Mead

Hot Spiced Mead
Serves 1 - but can be easily multiplied to make more, you don't need to add more spices unless you are making more than 4-5 portions.

2.5 ladles of mead
1.5 ladles of white wine
0.3 ladles of sugar
1tbsp honey
good squeeze of lemon juice
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
4 cloves
1 blade mace

Place everything in a saucepan, and stir to dissolve the sugar and honey. Simmer the liquid gently for 30 secs to soften the alcoholic impact (but don't boil it all off!) and serve.

Tarte Tatin

For New Year, we had T's brother, and 2 of their cousins staying in the flat. We had tickets for the outdoor concert in Princes Street Gardens, and the temperature was forecast to be -5C that night. With a few extra mouths to feed, and a warming meal needed, I decided to make a roast dinner followed by tarte tatin.

I attempted a tarte tatin last summer. It didn't go well. The pastry was undercooked and underwhelming, and the caramel wasn't sticky enough. I was determined that this one would be better, and decided to go with trusty old Leiths' recipe.

The first thing I noticed is that the pastry wasn't puff, or even ordinary shortcrust. It had rice flour as well as wheat flour. The pastry came together quite easily, who needs a food processor when you have a pastry blender? I rolled it in to a large disc between two sheets of baking paper.

Tarte Tatin

While the pastry was resting in the fridge, I chopped two cooking apples, and melted sugar and butter together in a frying pan. Leiths said to add lemon zest, but I decided a bit of cinnamon and nutmeg would be a bit more seasonal and warming. I layered the apple slices around the pan, and tried my best to make them look neat and even, but the in the end my presentation efforts were thwarted by my short attention span, and unwillingness to dip my fingers in boiling caramel.

Once the caramel had cooled slightly, I put the pastry lid on, and left it in the fridge until we'd finished our roast dinner. Once it went in the oven, the smell of the apples and caramel, with a hint of the spices, was wafting around the flat. It smelt great, but would the pastry be cooked? Would the caramel be ok, and would the cooking apples still be sour?

Mmmmm, leftover tart...

When it came time to turn the tart out on to a plate, it was obvious the pastry was cooked. The apples looked soft and sweet, and the caramel looked dark and glossy - success! Except, the very caramel in the centre of the tart was a little burnt. So not quite perfect, but near enough.

It was delicious served warm with a scoop of natural ice cream (plain cream flavour, no vanilla. I bought it by accident once and am now converted.) The spices warmed it up even more, and the caramel was almost right (apart from the burnt bit). The apples were soft, but still retained their shape and a bit of crispiness. We got through most of it that night, but I've been enjoying the leftovers reheated with ice cream. Or on their own.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup

For New Year's Eve, I made roasted red pepper and tomato soup. I based it on this recipe from BBC Food. As it was by the Diabetic Society I thought it would be a healthy dinner to help us get through that large amounts of alcohol we were planning to consume later that night!


I grilled the peppers until they were blackened, and then put them in a plastic bag to sweat. At first, I found them quite hard to peel, although once I got to the bottom of the bag they were much easier. Next time I think I will get them really black, and then sweat them for quite a while, and they should be really easy to peel. At this stage they were really soft and although the blackened parts had burned through to the flesh, it had only caramelized it instead of burning it. They were so soft I was able to tear them up instead of slicing them.


I then added them all to the pan, with 2 onions and 2 cloves of garlic. Next time I would probably use 4 cloves of garlic as 2 didn't seem to add that much taste. I also substituted the vegetable stock for half chicken stock, and half homemade vegetable stock. I liked that it was thickened by a potato, as I find that soups thickened with flour don't always work very well. I used tinned plum tomatoes, but next time I would go for passata instead. I also let it stew for about 30 mins while I cleaned up the kitchen to try and deepen the flavour before blending. Although the recipe says it serves 6, I got 8 portions out of this (4 are now in the freezer).

I served the finished product with a slice of toasted french bread spread with pesto. The pesto went really well with the red peppers, although the flavour wasn't as deep as I wanted. However it was pretty technically easy to make (although the skinning was time consuming), and looks quite impressive, so a win overall.

Dinner is served

Chocolate Terrine

In preparation for celebrating New Year's Eve, I made a chocolate and vanilla terrine. A terrine is so called after the earthenware dish is it cooked/made in, and is not a specific type of dish. I've never made a terrine before, although I have made a layered chocolate mousse, and would be quite interested to make a meaty one that needs to be cooked.

The technique for the terrine was fairly straightforward, and was nothing I hadn't done before. As I had a lot going on, it was a bit chaotic in the kitchen, so I messed up some stuff that I really shouldn't have.

The tin wasn't lined too well, so the outside of the terrine had lots of wrinkles and cracks in it. Luckily once it was sliced these didn't show up too much. The second accident was while making the white chocolate mousse, I accidentally let the pan boil dry under the melting chocolate, which melted the side of my mixing bowl! Luckily I caught it before the plastic got through to the chocolate, so the damage to the bowl is only cosmetic. I had to reheat half the dark chocolate mix to top off the terrine, and I did it in the microwave as the mixing bowl was in use elsewhere. I think I must have overheated it a bit, as when I ate a slice this evening it was grainy. It wasn't too bad, but when you compared it to the other dark chocolate layer it had a noticeably different texture, despite being from the same original bowl of chocolate. Lastly, I forgot to bring a whisk with me, and T's kitchen is (in my opinion) not the best equipped! I think if I'd been able to whip the cream rather than just pouring it in straight from the carton it would have been a more stable product.

Despite these setbacks, the final dish was quite tasty and I've eaten a couple of slices already!