The Hairy Bikers Home for Christmas episode 5: The Hairy Bikers create mouthwatering festive dishes and get into the spirit of the season with special guest Nicki Chapman.
Christmas is a wonderful time to celebrate with food and the Bikers have the perfect dishes to add a bit of winter sunshine and warmth to festivities. They create a Turkey jambalaya, a spicy lamb shank and a madeira cake with a chocolate, chilli and ginger fondue, as they find out how Nicki spends her Christmas. Alongside the recipes and fun, there are also fantastic ideas for homemade edible Christmas presents.
The Hairy Bikers Home for Christmas episode 5 recipes:
Rainbow vegetable ‘couscous’
Colourful veg are chopped into the shape of couscous for this fresh-tasting and light dish. The dressing is optional if you decide to serve this as a salad – otherwise it makes a great side dish with a stew or tagine.
Method
- Take each vegetable individually and pulse in a food processor until resembling the texture of coarse breadcrumbs. Be careful not to over process as you don’t want them to go mushy – this is particularly important when you come to the red pepper and you could dice this as finely as possible instead if you prefer.
- Cover the base of a large frying pan with water – just enough to cover it and no more than 100ml/3½fl oz. Add all the vegetables, and season with salt and pepper. Cook on a medium heat, stirring regularly, until the liquid has evaporated and the vegetables look fairly dry – this should take around five minutes.
- Allow the vegetables to cool, then fluff up a little using a fork, and stir through the herbs. If using, whisk together all the dressing ingredients in a bowl and season with salt and pepper. Serve with or without the dressing.
Chocolate, orange and spice fondue
Orange and spice make this chocolate fondue so nice. Serve with cubes of madeira cake, leftover Christmas pudding and fruit.
Method
- Put the whipping cream and milk into a saucepan along with the orange zest, cinnamon stick, vanilla pod, chilli, cloves, allspice berries, mace, peppercorns and ginger.
- Slowly bring up to the boil, then remove from the heat and leave to infuse until the cream returns to room temperature. Strain through a sieve into a clean saucepan.
- Break up the chocolate and it add to the cream. Melt the chocolate into the cream over a gentle heat until the chocolate has melted, whisking regularly and then constantly towards to the end until you have a smooth sauce.
- Transfer to a fondue bowl and leave to stand for 10 minutes, then if necessary, start reheating very gently with a tea light or fondue burner underneath. Keep an eye on this while eating as you do not want it to start over-heating – it will split.
- Serve with cubes of madeira cake, leftover Christmas pudding or cake, or any fruit.
Easy Madeira cake
Perfect with a glass of madeira or sherry, madeira cake is so good to have around at Christmas. As it’s denser than the average sponge, it is also perfect for trifle.
Method
- Preheat the oven to 170C/150C Fan/Gas 3. Butter and line a large loaf tin.
- Cream together the butter, caster sugar and clementine zest – you can do this either in a stand mixer or with hand-held electric beaters.
- Mix the flour and baking powder together with a pinch of salt. Add the eggs one at a time to the sugar and butter mixture, sprinkling over a couple of tablespoons of flour with each addition and mixing well.
- Fold in the rest of the flour followed by the clementine juice – the texture will be slightly firmer than the dropping consistency you need for a lighter sponge.
- Scrape the batter into the prepared tin and sprinkle with the caster sugar. Bake in the oven for between 55–60 minutes, or until a cake skewer comes out clean. The cake will be a rich golden-brown and may have cracked lengthways down the middle – this is normal for a madeira cake.
- Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin before transferring to a wire rack.
Cajun seasoning
You can buy ready-made Cajun seasonings and some of them are pretty good, but you can’t beat the taste of the freshly made version for jambalaya and the like.