Christmas Leftovers - Gourmet Burger Recipe

Ah leftovers, simultaneously the best and the worst thing about Christmas. The best – because you can carry on eating tasty Christmas food, the worst – because after 3 days of nothing but turkey, you can begin to get a little bored. Carine, however, likes to take the opportunity to get creative and do something a little exciting with her leftovers. Last year she made a tasty salad using her leftover duck à l’orange, and this week, she’s going to show you how to turn your trimmings into a delicious gourmet burger!

Carine is doing this with her leftover duck, but it will work with any type of poultry, so what are you waiting for?!

For the Buns

Ingredients

• 2 Eggs – 1 for dough, 1 to glaze
• 4 tbsp milk (full fat) 
• 50g softened butter
• 3 cups Strong/Bread flour
• 1/3 cup all-purpose flour
• Fast-action dry Yeast
• 1½ tsp Sea Salt
• 3 tbsp sugar
• 1 cup water

Method

• Combine warm water, milk, and butter (in a food processor or a bowl)
• With a Thermomix – 3.5mins, 50 degrees, speed 2 then turn to speed 3 halfway through
• Without Thermomix, combine ingredients with yeast, mix well, and leave it somewhere warm
• Once mixture is combined and warm, add all the dry ingredients – strong flour, all-purpose flour, salt, sugar and yeast – couple of tsp (about 7g)
• Thermomix – mix for 3 minutes
• Without Thermomix - mix really well for 3 minutes, by hand, kneading it – don’t worry if it’s sticky, it’s meant to be!
• Then beat your egg and add it to the mixture – once your mixture has cooled down – DON’T add egg to warm mix
• Then your dough will be ready! Expect it to be very sticky.
• Remove the dough and place it on a well-floured flat surface
• Knead it with plenty of flour then shape into buns – with a dough-scraper, if you have one
• Leave to prove for an hour or so then pop in the oven for 15-20 minutes at 180◦.

For the Salad

Ingredients

• 50g shredded red cabbage (or any other cabbage, or Brussel sprouts – any leftover leafy veg, basically!)
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp whole grain mustard
• 1 dash lemon juice
• 1 Tbsp good olive oil
• 1 pinch sea salt
• 1 pinch freshly ground black pepper
• A little hot water

Method

• Shred your cabbage or other leafy veg using a mandolin, a blender, or simply by finely chopping
• Boil some water and blanch the veg for 30 seconds
• Remove from the hot water and rinse in cold running water
• In a bowl, mix all your other ingredients until they are thoroughly blended
• Add your cabbage and mix together.

For the Chips

Ingredients

• 2 roasting potatoes – again, if you’ve got leftovers from Christmas dinner, use these!
• 2 tsp melted duck fat
• Pinch of sea salt
• Pinch of black pepper
• 1 Sprig rosemary

Method

• Boil your potatoes and slice into large, thin chip-shapes!
• Sprinkle them with salt and pepper, and spread on a little of your leftover duck fat (if you made duck) or butter/oil if you didn’t
• Spread over a baking tray and pop in the oven at 190◦c for 10-15 minutes until golden brown and crispy.

For the Burger itself

Ingredients

• Leftover duck meat (or whatever meat you had for Christmas Dinner!)
• Leftover orange sauce (this could be replaced with gravy!)
• Carrot purée, made from any leftover carrots or from the sieved carrot mixture if you made our Duck à l’orange.
• A little hot water

Method

• This bit is the easy part. Remove all leftover meat from the carcass and shred it into a microwave-safe bowl 
• Add a few tablespoons of your sauce à l'orange or gravy – make sure the mix is not too wet, you just want the sauce to hold the mix together 
• Mix it well and warm in the microwave for approximately 2 minutes.
• Take your leftover carrots and pop them in the blender with a splash of hot water to make a carrot puree

To assemble, slice your buns and lightly grill them, spread on your carrot puree and top with duck mix and salad. And there you go - the perfect, gourmet, duck à l'orange, Christmas, leftover burger. Leave the dry turkey in the past!

Fancy French Feast - Duck a l'Orange Recipe

In Carine’s house, Christmas is – at the very least – a two-day affair. Her Swedish husband and mother-in-law rule the roost on the 24th, with their Swedish Christmas, complete with meatballs and mustard and pickled herring. Then, on the 25th, it’s Carine’s time to shine with a “posh” French feast. And the star of the show? Canard à l’Orange.

This dish may seem to many of you far too fiddly and complicated to try to recreate on Christmas Day, but we assure you it’s actually fairly simple. And we’re going to show you just how simple right now!

Ingredients

• 1 whole duck (ideally, plus giblets), about 2 kilos for 6-8 people (but for 10 people, Carine normally goes for 2 ducks)
• ½ cup vinegar
• 150g Caster Sugar
• 6 Oranges – 3 for the sauce, 3 for decoration
• 1 small cup Gran Marnier
• 100g butter or – even better! – duck fat from your roasting duck
• 2 Carrots
• 2 Onions
• 1 clove Garlic
• 1 bunch Thyme
• 2 Bay Leaves
• 500ml White wine
• 1 tbsp tomato puree 
• Salt 
• Pepper

Method

Roasting your Duck

• If you bought a duck with giblets - well done! – remove these and place your duck on a wire cooling rack in your roasting tray. You want the duck slightly elevated so the fat can run off and your duck can get nice and crispy.
• Rub your duck all over with salt and pepper – on both sides!
• Pop it in the oven at 190◦ for about 90 minutes.
• Baste it with its own juices every 15-20 minutes.
• After the first 20 minutes, you can cover it with some foil to make sure it doesn’t dry out.
• After 45 minutes or so, pour off some of the fat and juices and set it aside – you’re going to be using it later.
• That’s it for the duck!

Making your Sauce

• Take one large, oven-proof pan. 
• If your duck came with giblets, add these now and brown them on a high heat. If your duck did not come with giblets, don’t worry! It’s not the end of the world.
• Pop in the butter or 3tsp of the duck fat you set aside.
• Add the onions and garlic – finely chopped – along with the thyme and the bay leaves.
• Cover the pan and leave to simmer on a low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
• While that’s happening, chop your carrots into discs and add those to the pan.
• If you want an extra duck-y flavour, you can also add in a few tablespoons of the duck juices.
• Cover the pan and simmer for a further 5 minutes on a medium heat.
• Add the wine.
• Pop the pan in the oven for about 45 minutes.

• Now you are going to make what is called a gastrique, which is a basic sweet-n-sour sauce made from sugar and vinegar.
• Put your sugar in a pan and caramelise – adding a tablespoon of water to help it along. Don’t stir it lots, just let it sit until it starts to go brown
• Add the vinegar.
• Warning – this is NOT a nice smell, so be prepared for something pretty pungent
• Also, when the cold vinegar is added to the hot sugar, it can spit a bit, be careful not to burn yourself!

• Peel the zest of 3 oranges and cut into small pieces – like you might find in marmalade
• Blanch the pieces of zest in boiling water – just boil the kettle, pour the water over the zest and leave it to sit for a bit.
• Juice the 3 oranges. 
• Add your chopped orange peel to your gastrique

• Remove your onion-carrot mixture from the oven.
• Add the tomato puree, the Gran Marnier, and the orange juice.
• Pop it back on the stove and leave it to simmer on a low heat.

• Pass the carrot mixture through a chinois or fine sieve, making sure that no bits get through
• Add the sieved carrot mixture to the gastrique
• Add salt and pepper to taste.
• And your sauce à l’orange is done!

Serve your duck whole and carve at the table, before adding sauce and fresh orange slices to the plate. Have it alongside green beans and crispy roast potatoes (cooked in duck fat) and voila! A very French – and very tasty – Christmas dinner. Joyeux Noël!

Edible Christmas Gifts - Hot Chocolate Sticks

With just a week and a bit to go until Christmas, it is highly likely that, for some of you, present-based panic has set in. If you read our blog a few weeks ago, you may have got some lovely vanilla extract ready, but if you fancy something a little more traditional, we’ve got the perfect edible gift for you – Hot Chocolate sticks.

These delightful little sweet treats are perfect for the Christmas season – not only are they a delicious and thoughtful gift, they are also a wonderful warming treat to enjoy during a long cold January, post-Christmas.

This recipe can be done in one of two ways – one which can be made with normal bars of chocolate, which you can get from your local supermarket, but is best done with a blender, and one for which you don’t need a blender which is made with cacao butter and raw cocoa powder.

Recipe 1

Ingredients

• 50g Cocoa butter - 1kg is about £15
• 100g Raw cacao powder - 1kg is about £13 BUT you can make it with normal cocoa powder
• 1 can (normally 397g) Condensed milk
• Double cream
• Icing sugar, to sweeten, to taste

Method

• Weigh out all your ingredients
• Put your cocoa butter in a bain marie (a heatproof bowl over a pan of boiling water)
• Add the cocoa powder.
• Mix until smooth.
• Add the cream and continue to mix.
• Add the condensed milk and keep mixing.
• Taste, and add icing sugar if you want it to be sweeter.
• Coat the inside of your moulds with coconut oil or some other mild-tasting oil.
• Pour the mix into moulds and allow to cool in the fridge for 1 hour
• Then add the sticks.
• Allow to cool entirely in the fridge overnight.
• Remove from moulds, wrap in cellophane.

Top Tip – add some fun extras like spices - how about powdered cinnamon to make it Christmassy?! – or little marshmallows, like we've done below.

Recipe 2

Ingredients

• 600g of bar chocolate (dark, milk, or white) – you could do a mix
• 375g condensed milk
• 125ml Double Cream

Method

• Pour condensed milk and double cream into a pan, mix a bit then heat it GENTLY on medium heat until it starts to simmer
• Make sure it doesn’t stick – keep stirring it.
• Blitz up your chocolate in a blender or – if you don’t have a blender – just chop/bash it up as small as possible. You are aiming for a powder-like consistency if you can so it will melt as quickly as possible.
• Turn the temperature right down on your cream and condensed milk mixture.
• Pour your blitzed up chocolate into a heat-proof bowl and add in your cream and condensed milk mixture.
• Mix thoroughly, making sure there are no lumps.
• Pour into moulds – or into a normal deep baking tray, lined with greaseproof paper, to be cut into squares later.
• Pop your moulds or tray in the fridge for 3-4 hours.
• After 4 hours, pop in your sticks, then put back in the fridge overnight.

Top Tip – Use three different kinds of chocolate, split your cream and condensed mixture into three, and make different coloured layers, like we've done below – or you could make swirly patterns in it. It’s up to you!

To use either of these lovely chocolate sticks, all you need to do is heat up a cup of milk and swirl the stick through it for the perfect wintry hot chocolate. (Or, don’t bother with the sticks at all, and just enjoy it as a delicious, rich pudding!) Have fun!

Merry Christmas Markets!

Nothing says Merry Christmas like a tasty foodie gift. Thankfully, Carine will be selling a multitude of delicious stocking fillers at a number of Christmas Markets across London this month.

This Friday she will be heading to Wimbledon High School from 3-5:30pm and these are some of the delicious things you can hope to find… if you get there quick enough!

Hot Chocolate Sticks

Choose from triple chocolate or chocolate with marshmallows – these cocoa treats are perfect for winter. Simply swirl them into a cup of warm milk for the best hot chocolate yet.

And, even better, tune into the blog or our YouTube channel next week, and we’ll show you how to make a version of these yourself!

The Green Sauce

Curious about this “green sauce” we keep talking about? The top-seller in Carine’s Marie’s Little Jar line will be available to sample at each of her Christmas markets!

Also available will be her hot-hot-hot chilli sauce, The Red Sauce. With a delicious, aromatic flavour like nothing you’ve come across before, this one is not for the fainthearted!

Peanut Candy

A childhood favourite from her home in Cameroon, if you’ve never had peanut candy before you are in for a treat! These Peanuts roasted with sugar are the ultimate moreish nibble. You may want to get more than one packet…

Carine will also be selling lovingly-packaged Christmas hampers so, if you can’t pick just one thing…you don’t have to! The ideal Christmas gift for a food-loving someone who wants to try something a little different. 

Come say hello in Wimbledon on Friday or keep your eye on our Twitter account for other upcoming markets!

Urban Foraging - Chestnuts

Chestnuts are a fabulous, wintry ingredient which can be used in all sorts of Christmassy recipes – whizz them into your stuffing for a little earthiness, add them to a nut-roast for your vegetarian friends, or simply roast them and eat them with a little salt. You can buy chestnuts in your local supermarket for around £1 for 100g, perhaps a little more or less if you go for a trendy farmers’ market, but we’re going to give you a few tips on how to find them for free, right on your doorstep!

Carine loves to forage, be it for windfall plums spotted by someone’s garden, or mushrooms in the woods of Sweden, there is nothing she likes better than to be out of doors, looking for food. And chestnuts are some of her favourites which can be found in the heart of London, so she took us urban foraging to demonstrate.

The two locations she chose this week were Clapham Common and Putney Heath – both medium-sized green havens most commonly used by dog-walkers and families with small children. I’d love to tell you exact locations, but Carine has sworn me to secrecy – partly because part of the fun is stumbling across these treasure troves yourself and partly because...Carine doesn’t want you stealing all her chestnuts! She spotted the trees on Clapham Common one day when she was taking her daughter to playgroup and it goes to show how little these natural foodbanks are signposted.

Here are a few tips to follow to ensure you find a bumper crop:

1) When it comes to nuts, there is a high possibility that a squirrel or two will beat you to it. Since they need the food too, we don’t suggest you fight them off, just try to go early on in the season and there will be enough for you both.

2) Make sure you know the difference between the chestnuts you can roast and eat (“sweet chestnuts” - larger) and the chestnuts you make conkers with (smaller). Take a look at our pictures to be sure.

3) You’re going to need gloves because chestnuts can be very spiky – if you don’t have suitable hand-wear, place your chestnut on the ground and gently prise them open with your feet, rolling them around a bit first with your foot to loosen them up.

4) Try to go for ones which are already starting to open – this shows they are ripe.

5) Chestnuts often come with three or so inside – two little ones and one big one, go for the biggest.

And there you have it! The perfect winter day out – pick your area, bring the family (and plenty of gloves) and go exploring! You don’t need to look just for chestnuts either, while we were out, we also found some apples and Carine plans to whip something up using them both. So keep an eye out for that and, until next time, happy foraging!

And, to see a bit more, check out Carine's YouTube channel HERE.

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