Hello everyone. I do hope your Bank Holiday Weekend is going swimmingly and that you are enjoying the sunshine (& showers!).
I have uploaded my ‘Knead to Know’ Zoom talk from September last year to my YouTube channel. I know there were several people who couldn’t make it on the night. It’s completely unedited except for the Q&A section at the end.
I talked about how I approached writing Knead to Know: A History of Baking by asking myself, “What is baking?”, a trickier and more philosophical question than you might think; the origins and history of the very first bakers; Early Medieval bread and bakers; Yorkshire Christmas Pyes; and the Denby Dale Pie.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
You know what it’s like; you go to the home baking aisle of the supermarket and pick up a bag of flour, thinking ‘I’m sure I’m running low’, buy a bag, only to find there is, in fact, a large bag sitting, unopened, in the pantry. Unsure what to do with them, I asked social media whether I should make some scones, saffron buns or lardy cake with it (three recipes I have been meaning to post for years now). The answer came in: 3-way tie. I shall endeavour to do all three for you over the next month or so.
Up first, then, are scones, the must-have for a modern Cornish or Devonshire cream tea. I have written about cream teas both on the blog and in my book Knead to Know, the excerpt of which you can find on my YouTube Channel.
This is the recipe I used when I had both my restaurant and artisan market stall, so it is very tried-and-tested. I have provided some variations for you beneath the method: cranberry and orange, cheese, and walnut and Stilton. When the restaurant was open, we served a savoury cream tea using a cheese scone, swapped clotted cream for cream cheese and exchanged the jam for curried beetroot chutney or onion marmalade.
Classic recipes – especially Scottish and Irish ones – use buttermilk instead of plain milk. As buttermilk is increasingly difficult to get hold of these days, I’ve used milk, but you can swap the two. If you do, use 15 g bicarbonate of soda instead of 25 g baking powder. One final thing: I use strong white flour instead of plain to give the scones a boost in the oven, again, not traditional; in fact, it was a trick picked up from Paul Hollywood in his book 100 Great Breads. This doesn’t mean you can knead the dough roughly as though it is for bread; you still have to use a light touch with mixing, rolling and cutting out. Hopefully, my method will help you achieve great results.
I’ll follow soon with a post on the history of scones.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
Basic Scones
A note on measuring liquids: 1 ml of milk weighs 1 g, so it’s easier – and much more accurate – to weigh it on scales rather than reading the graduations on the side of the measuring jug.
Makes 12 to 15 scones.
500 g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
30g baking powder
½ tsp salt
75g butter
75g caster sugar
80g quartered glacé cherries, raisins or currants (optional)
200 ml/g whole milk
2 medium eggs
Egg wash: 1 egg or egg yolk beaten with ½ tsp salt
Granulated or Demerara sugar for sprinkling
Preheat your oven to 200°C.
In a bowl, mix flour, baking powder and salt and rub in the butter – you can use the flat beater attachment on your mixer with this, or good old fingertips. Stir in the sugar and fruit (if using).
Beat the eggs with the milk, and steadily mix the liquids into the dry ingredients. If using a mixer, keep it at a slow speed. Make sure all the flour is incorporated, bring the dough together and give it a brief knead on a floured worktop until the dough is smooth.
Keeping your worktop floured, roll out the dough to a thickness of 1.5 to 1.75 cm (a generous ½ inch), and cut out into rounds. I normally use a cutter of a diameter between 7 and 8 cm. It is important to take care when cutting: make sure you dunk your cutter in more flour and tap off excess before cutting. This is important because if there are splodges of sticky dough on the cutter, it will seal the edges of the scones, preventing a good rise. Also, don’t be tempted to twist your cutter, as this will have a similar effect. Arrange the cut-out scones on 2 lined baking sheets.
Bring the leftover dough together with your hands to form a cohesive dough without kneading it too much – we don’t want tough scones! Roll out again and cut out. Repeat until all of the mixture is used up.
Brush with egg wash being careful not to let any dribble down the sides – again, this will hamper the rising of the dough – then sprinkle with sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown and well risen. If there is uneven browning at the 10-minute mark, switch the trays around in the oven.
Cool on a rack.
Scones are best enjoyed on the day or the day after they are made. They do freeze well. Enliven them by popping them in the microwave for 10 to 20 seconds.
Eat with butter or clotted cream and jam.
Variations
Cranberry and Orange
Make as above, but add the zest of two oranges to the dry ingredients, and use dried cranberries instead of raisins or currants. Juice the oranges, pour into a measuring jug and top up with milk to 200ml/g.
Classic cheese scones
Use just 25 g caster sugar, and add 100 to 125 g grated Cheddar cheese once the flour has been rubbed in. If you like, you can add ½ teaspoon of dried herbs and a good pinch of Cayenne pepper. Use 230 g/ml of milk instead of 200 g/ml. Sprinkle some finely grated cheese (Parmesan is good) over the egg-washed scones before they go in the oven.
Walnut and Stilton scones
As above, but use 100-125 g grated Stilton and 80 g chopped walnuts
Last Hallowe’en I hosted an online event with food historian and expert in Gothic food Alessandra Pino called Monsters and Their Meals. The discussion focused upon the function of food and drink in Gothic stories, Dracula and Frankenstein, stories that contain two of horror’s most iconic monsters. We also talked about the more subtle monsters and the food in Jane Eyre and Rebecca. To top everything off, we talked about some real-life grotesque foods from history that are stranger than fiction. I’ve just uploaded it to my YouTube channel for your viewing pleasure.
I hope you enjoy it. We hope to host another event this Hallowe’en, so watch this space for announcements. In the meantime, give the channel a follow, I’ll be adding more videos over the coming months.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
A hospitable Yorkshire housewife would consider her tea table was barely spread if it were not liberally supplied with these delicious cakes, constant relays of which should be served steaming hot.
A split and toasted fruit teacake, liberally spread with melting salted butter is one of life’s simple pleasures. For those of you who are not already in the know, a Yorkshire teacake is a round, slightly flattened, enriched, soft breadcake usually containing a little sugar, spice, dried fruit, and candied peel. There was a time when England had scores of regional fruited or enriched bread cakes and loaves, but they have largely gone by the wayside. Others that spring to mind are Bath buns, Wiltshire lardy cakes and Lincolnshire plum bread.[2] These types of cakes and breads are much more appreciated in Wales, Scotland and Ireland, or so it seems. The Yorkshire teacake has escaped its regional roots, so much so that it has lost its Yorkshire identifier and is simply called a teacake by most people.
Just-baked teacakes with plenty of salted butter
Yorkshire teacakes can be traced back to the opening decades of the 18th century when they were called ‘Yorkshire Cakes’. They will have been very expensive because they are enriched with eggs, butter, milk, and plenty of sugar and dried fruits.[3] By the 1880s, they are called Yorkshire teacakes.[4]
Working-class families enjoyed them too, but there was invariably less fruit, just a touch of sugar, half-and-half milk and water, no eggs and lard instead of butter. I like this more austere version, though I do go will all milk (full fat, of course) and much prefer lard to often over rich butter. Looking through recipes, the amount of lard varies greatly from a knob to over five ounces per pound of flour.
It’s very important that the teacakes are nice and soft. To achieve this, heed this excellent advice from Florence White:
Immediately after taking from the oven, rub over with buttered paper, and cover with a light, clean blanket; this gives a soft skin.[5]
When they are freshly baked they are lovely eaten untoasted, but any older than that and they must be split and toasted (or if you want to go hardcore Yorkshire, strong Cheddar cheese[6]).
It occurred to me that I hadn’t baked a batch of teacakes for a good few years, and I was thereafter craving them, so I baked a batch. They are so worth making at home and I give you my recipe, should you fancy having a go yourself.
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Recipe
This is quite a sticky dough and I would recommend making this in a stand mixer with a dough hook, but they can be made without one; just be prepared to be very sticky in the first 10 minutes of kneading. If you prefer plain teacakes, omit the fruit and spice and add half the sugar.
Makes 8 teacakes:
500 g strong plain flour, plus extra for kneading and shaping
30 g caster sugar
1 tsp salt
1 tsp instant yeast
½ tsp mixed spice or ½ a grated nutmeg
80 g softened lard or butter, or a mixture
300 ml warm milk or half-and-half milk and water
Around 2 tbs vegetable or sunflower oil
80 g mixed dried fruit
30 g candied peel (optional)
Extra milk for brushing
Add the flour, sugar, salt, yeast and spices to a mixing bowl, make a well in the centre and add the softened fat, then tip in the warm liquid. Using a kneading hook, mix the ingredients on a slow speed until everything has combined, then turn up the speed a notch or two and knead for about 10 minutes until smooth – it won’t be very elastic because of the lashings of lard.
If you want to do this by hand, mix the ingredients with a wooden spoon. When thoroughly mixed, leave it to stand for 15 minutes or so; this gives the flour to absorb some of the liquid making for easier hand kneading. Knead on a lightly floured surface for around 15 minutes.
Brush a clean mixing bowl with the vegetable oil, gather up the floppy dough as best as you can (oil your hands, it makes this bit much easier), tuck it into a ball and pop it in the oiled bowl. Cover with a tea towel or cling film until it has doubled in size. This will take a while; even sat close to the radiator, my dough took over two hours.
Now take two baking sheets and line them with greaseproof paper and set aside.
Tip the dough onto a floured worktop and press out into a square, add the fruit and knead it into the dough. You do this step in the oiled bowl if you like. When everything is reasonably equally distributed, cut the dough into 8 equal-sized pieces. Using just a very little flour roll the pieces of dough into tight balls, then roll them out into circles with a floured rolling pin so they are 4 to 5 cm thick. Sit them on your baking sheets as you make them.
When you’ve done all 8, cover them with tea towels or place a container over them so they can prove again. In my experience the second proving takes about half the time of the first. As they prove turn your oven to 200°C fan (or equivalent). If you have a steam setting on your oven, use it. If you don’t, place a roasting tin in the bottom of the oven to heat up, and when you put your teacakes in the oven, tip some water into the now very hot tin and close the door.
Before and after the second proving
When they have doubled in size, brush them with milk and pop them in the oven. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. Test whether they are ready by tapping the base of one: it should sound hollow.
Remove the teacakes from the oven and immediately throw a double layer of tea towels over them to keep them soft as they cool.
Hello everyone, hope your February isn’t looking too gloomy. Here’s something to cheer you up: news that season B of A is for Apple: An Encyclopaedia of Food & Drink has kicked off.
For those not in the know A is for Apple is a podcast hosted by Sam Bilton, Alessandra Pino and me. Each season we take a letter and focus on it; last time we did A, so now we are doing B. We all present a very short piece about our chosen topic and then discuss it. There’s usually a theme to the episode, but Sam (who was the head host in episode 1) was kind and gave us a free choice. I chose berries, Sam chose the Banting diet, and Alessandra bananas. It’s available to listen to on all podcast apps, just search for “A is for Apple” and hit subscribe. If you’re not a podcasty person, here’s a Spotify inbed for you:
For my piece I interviewed Rachel Webster, Curator of Plants at Manchester Museum, and quickly following episode 1 was the uncut interview talking about berries, flowers and fruits – and comes with some gob-smacking facts! Listen here:
You can also follow the podcast on Substack for free: click this link to check it out. There are bonus recipes and other bits and bobs to be found there.
Next episode Alessandra is in the driving seat and she gave us a theme: Places. What places beginning with B would you choose!?
At the end of 2024, I gave you my recipe for Bakewell pudding. The plan was to follow with my recipe for Bakewell tart. Alas, life, Christmas and then a holiday to New Zealand got in the way.
But I always get around to things eventually and I give it to you today!
The Bakewell tart, despite it being dearly loved by Brits, was originally made as a cheap, dumbed-down version of the rich Derbyshire pudding: the puff pastry swapped for shortcrust, and the buttery almond filling swapped for an almond-flavoured sponge cake.
I write about the histories of the Bakewell pudding and tart in Knead to Know: A History of Baking, so pick up a copy if you want to know more.
I have been using this recipe for years now and it’s a real crowd-pleaser. When the restaurant was open, I served this tart warm with a lemon-flavoured cream and received a big bear hug from a diner: there could have been no better seal of approval in my book! The secret to its success is that I make a frangipane rather than a sponge cake filling, bound together with just a tablespoon of flour.
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Recipe
Makes 1 x 21 cm/8 inch tart
For the sweet shortcrust pastry:
200 g plain flour
100 g salted butter, diced (or half-and-half butter and lard)
50 g caster or icing sugar
1 egg, well beaten
Cold water (see recipe)
For the filling:
100 g salted butter, softened
100 g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g ground almonds
30 g self-raising flour
¼ tsp almond extract
3 or 4 tbs raspberry jam
30 g slivered almonds
First, make the pastry: Place the flour and fat(s) in a mixing bowl and rub the fat in until the mixture resembles fresh breadcrumbs. You can do this by hand using fingertips or with the flat beater of a stand mixer on a slow speed. Make a well in the centre and add most of the egg. If using a stand mixer, slowly mix it in, pouring more egg into any dry patches. If doing by hand, use a butter knife to mix (this prevents overworking of the dough). You should have a cohesive dough that can be brought together with your hand – if it does seem dry, add a tablespoon of cold water.
Knead briefly, cover and allow to rest in the fridge for 20 to 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 180°C and place a baking tray on the centre shelf
On a lightly floured work surface, roll out the pastry to the thickness of a pound coin, and use it to line an 8”/20 cm loose-bottomed tart tin or ring.[1] Prick the base with a fork and place it back in the fridge to firm up.
Now make the filling: using a hand beater or stand mixer, beat together the soft butter, caster sugar, eggs, almonds, flour and extract until smooth.
Take the pastry out of the fridge and spread jam over the bottom leaving a centimetre gap all around the inside edge. Spoon or pipe the mixture first around the edges and then the centre (this stops the jam from rising up the sides of the pastry lining), levelling off with a spatula.
Sprinkle with the slivered almonds and slide the tart onto the hot baking sheet and bake for 40 minutes, turning the heat down to 160°C if the top gets too brown. Cool on a rack, and remove from the tin when just warm.
[1] You will find that there is excess pastry – make some nice jam tarts or turnovers.
Happy New Year everyone! I do hope you have said cheerio to 2024 good and proper and that you are braced for what promises to be a rather colourful 2025. For a change I’m not in England to see in the New Year, but New Zealand! It’s a very beautiful place, but it seemed very odd wearing shorts for Christmas dinner. Alas, my usual New Year’s Eve pudding did not happen, but I absolutely promise that I will cook one up as soon as I get back.
My year has had its ups and downs from a personal point of view, but it has certainly been my best from the point of view of my writing: I wrote more pieces for Country Life (you can read them on my Media page), an article for BBC Countryfile magazine and even a piece for the Daily Express. my second book Before Mrs Beeton – a biography of food innovator and entrepreneur Elizabeth Raffald – won the Best Food Book Award at the Guild of Food Writer’s Awards 2024. I was not expecting to win, but I was very pleased about it as I’m sure you can imagine. But the biggest achievement was publishing two books in the same year! Knead to Know: A History of Baking and The Philosophy of Puddings have gone down well (thus far) and I am very pleased about that too! It may not surprise you to hear that I will have a bit of time off from writing books for the time being.
Not only that, but I started a second podcast with fellow food historians Sam Bilton and Alessandra Pino called A is for Apple: An Encyclopaedia of Food & Drink. We’re tackling it letter-by-letter so season one was really season A. We’ve already started recording season B so keep an eye out for that this January.
Working on two books at the same time meant that the blog didn’t receive as many posts as in previous years, but it has been by far the most successful from the point of view of hits: 45% more than the previous year. Absolute craziness. According to Spotify, my listenership for The British Food History Podcast has increased by 88%. I think it’s fair to say that things are very much going in the right direction.
I wouldn’t have been able to do all of this without you supporting me by reading and listening, it really does spur me on to keep on producing more content, so thank you all very, very much.
A very special shout out to everyone who supported the blogs and podcast financially by treating me to a virtual coffee or pint, or by becoming a £3 monthly subscriber. It’s becoming increasingly expensive just to have podcasts and blogs these days, so I really appreciate it.
If you like the blogs and podcast I produce and would to start a £3 monthly subscription, or would like to treat me to virtual coffee or pint: follow this link for more information.Thank you.
The blog was very much focused on baking and puddings (surprise, surprise) and I posted recipes that I have wanted to add to the blog for years, but never got around to. The books prompted me, I suppose. There were things like Chelsea buns, puff pastry, Bakewell pudding and Eccles cakes. There was some attention paid to the much underappreciated Madeira cake, the rather forgotten Northumberland griddlecakes known as singin’ hinnies, and a post about the risks of exploding flour in mills and bakeries.
This Christmas I also provided recipes for a complete Christmas dinner (something else I’ve been meaning to do for years as well) with recipes for roast turkey and giblet gravy, fool proof roast potatoes and Brussels sprouts(with bacon and prunes). As per usual there was a boozy recipe for Christmas and this year it was for Irish coffee.
There were 21 podcast episodes of The British Food History Podcast were published this year – a record I believe – and there were some great ones, but the highlight for me was my trilogy of episodes celebrating 50 years of English Food by Jane Grigson – especially the episode when I spoke to Jane’s daughter Sophie Grigson all about her mum and the writing of the book. A real highlight of my career – not just my year!
My trilogy of episodes celebrating 50 years of English Food by Jane Grigson.
The most popular episode with listeners was Medieval Meals & Manners with Danièle Cybulskie. Other popular episodes included Spices with Ian Anderson, The History of Food Waste & Preservation with Eleanor Barnett, Historical Cookery with Jay Reifel and Crisps with Natalie Whittle.
So that’s my look back at the year gone by and it is time to look forward to the new year: I will be working on my new book ideas, I will be finishing off season 8 of the podcast, recording the more A is for Apple and providing more recipes – if you have any suggestions for blog posts or podcast episodes do let me know.
Remember to continue to celebrate Christmas! It’s not over until the 5th of January, so please continue to feast away.
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I told my social media followers that my Christmas recipe this year was going to be roast turkey and I said that I would also provide the recipes for two sides. I provided four options: roast potatoes, Brussels sprouts, bread sauce and cranberry sauce/jelly. Roast potatoes received the most votes so here we go.[1]
I believe that the roast potatoes are almost as important as the roast meat, perhaps more important. Whether it’s the Christmas dinner or the weekly Sunday roast, if you mess up the roasties, everyone will be sad, and there’s a good chance you’ll be forever shunned by friends and family.
So I provide you with my method. It’s tried and tested and I reckon foolproof! Don’t worry about precise weights/volumes of ingredients or sizes of roasting trays; this recipe is most adaptable so use what you have. What is important, however, is the type of potato used and the fat or oil in which they are cooked.
The potatoes must be of the floury type: Maris Piper, King Edward and Albert Bartlett varieties are easy to find in the supermarkets, but for me the supreme variety of spud when it comes to roasting is the Alouette. It’s technically a waxy potato, but when roasted the centre is like the creamiest mashed potato. It’s not widely available in supermarkets, but keep a look out at greengrocers and farmers’ markets; you will not be sorry should you happen upon some and buy a kilo or two. I bought mine from Unicorn in Manchester.
Next, we need good fat or oil. I used approximately equal amounts of lard and rapeseed oil. All solid animal fats are good: beef dripping, goose fat and duck fat are great alternatives – they all have high smoking points and make for a crisp potato. As for plant-based oils, you must avoid olive oils completely and go for high smoke point ones like rapeseed, groundnut or sunflower. Avoid the solid, white vegan fats, they are bad for you and the environment. You don’t have to go half and half either, you can use all oil or all animal fat: I vary it depending on what oils and fats I have in the store cupboard/fridge.
Anyway, let’s get to it.
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Recipe
Make sure to use a deep roasting tin and that it is big enough to fit all of the potatoes in a single layer. Notice too there are no herbs thrown in, but if you want to add some be my guest.
If making roasties for the Christmas dinner, you can slide the tray of oil or fat into the oven as soon as the turkey comes out.
Good, floury potatoes, peeled
Salt
Plant-based oils and/or solid animal fats
Preheat your oven to 190°C (if you followed my turkey recipe, the oven will already be at this temperature). Add enough oil or fat to the tin so that it comes to a depth of between 0.5 to 0.75 centimetres. Slide it into the oven to get nice and hot.
Angular cuts make for crispier roasties
Cut your potatoes into good-sized pieces[2] making cuts at angles so that there are sharp, angular pieces: the pointier, the crispier; the crispier the better.
Get a large pot of water that had been liberally dosed with salt boiling and add the potatoes. Cover and bring back to a boil, and once boiling again, set a timer for 6 minutes.
When the time is up, strain the cooking water and allow the potatoes to steam dry for a few minutes, then place them back in the pan, cover the lid and give them a good shake to fluff up the edges (wear oven gloves, don’t get a steam burn). Leave the lid off the spuds again so that they can steam a little longer. You can do this stage well in advance if you like – even the previous day.
Fluffed and ready for the oven!
Gingerly remove the roasting tin and place the potatoes in the oil, spacing them out in a single layer. Use a pair of tongs to help. Slide the roasting tin back into the oven. After 15 minutes turn them over, and keep turning them every 15 minutes or so until crisp on the outside and cooked through the centre. It will take around an hour.
Using tongs, place in a warmed serving dish or bowl and serve.
Notes
[1] Sprouts came second – recipe coming very soon.
[2] I’m not going to dictate to you what a good size is; it’s all down to personal preference, but as a guide, medium potatoes get cut into quarters or sixths, and larger ones into eighths.
In the episode, we discussed the best way to roast turkey and we concluded that as long as you baste the bird and calculate the cooking time properly, it will be delicious. Tom even says that there’s no need to cover the turkey with bacon. While I agree with him, I do like the crispy bacon and the delicious, perfectly seasoned juices that come from the roasting turkey. My way of roasting turkey is very similar to how I cook a chicken.
What we didn’t discuss is the giblets! Please don’t waste them, they can be turned into lovely rich gravy when combined with the roasting juices. It’s important to get the giblet stock on about 45 minutes before the turkey goes in the oven (or you could prepare it in advance).
If you want to stuff the turkey, I suggest you stuff the neck only because an empty cavity means quicker cooking and a more succulent turkey.
Right, let’s get to it.
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To Roast a Turkey
You don’t have to use bacon if you don’t want to, but butter is essential. It adds richness, helps the bird keep moist and gives the skin a lovely deep brown colour.
1 free-range turkey
250 g salted butter, softened
Freshly ground black pepper
Around 14 rashers of dry-cured streaky bacon (optional)
Stuffing (optional)
Halved or quartered carrots and parsnips (optional; see recipe)
As soon as you get up on Christmas morning, take the turkey out of the fridge, untruss it, and when it’s time to cook the turkey, preheat your oven to 190°C.
Sit the turkey on a board, legs facing towards you, then make a tear in the skin where the breast starts and lift the skin away from the breast. Don’t rush – you don’t want to tear the skin. Put half the butter between the skin and breast and massage it as far back as possible. If you are using stuffing, add this under the skin too and tuck the flap of neck skin underneath. If there’s not much neck skin, don’t worry, it can be secured with a skewer.
Smear the rest of the butter over the outside of the turkey and season with plenty of black pepper, then lay the bacon over, overlapping each rasher only slightly.
Weigh the prepared turkey and calculate the cooking time: 30 minutes per kilo. A 4.5 kilo turkey will take 2 ½ hours. If cooking for more than 3 hours, cover the legs with foil.
Sit the turkey in its roasting tin, place it in the oven, and leave it for a good 45 minutes before doing anything at all. At the 45-minute mark baste the turkey with any juices; make sure to tip any juices in the cavity into the roasting tin.
Baste every 20 minutes or so. When the bacon is very crispy, remove it and set aside.
If you like you can add some carrots and parsnips, peeled and halved or quartered to braise in the juices. It’s best to do this when there are 90 minutes to go – don’t forget to turn the veg over each time you braise.
90 minutes to go, the bacon has been removed and the vegetables added to braise
When the time is up, you can test with a digital probe: 68°C is the temperature you are looking for. Take the turkey, place it on a carving board and cover with foil. It will happily rest for one to two hours.
When it’s time to carve, remove the legs and separate them into thighs and drumsticks. For the breast, I find the easiest way is to remove one side completely and then slice it thickly. These can be arranged on a warm serving plate, surrounded by the crisp bacon. Only cut into the second breast if the first one goes (it keeps better that way for leftover feasts).
I massaged the stuffing quite far into the turkey’s breast skin, protecting the meat and keeping it juicy
To Make Giblet Gravy
Don’t waste or fear the giblets! The giblets are the heart, neck, gizzard and liver.[1] Use your vegetable trimmings from the veg to make the stock: though avoid brassicas like sprouts.
For the stock:
Heart, gizzard and neck
A knob of butter
Leek greens, carrot peelings, and some celery trimmings, or 2 outer stems of celery
2 cloves of garlic, lightly crushed
Herbs: bay leaves, parsley stalks, rosemary or thyme sprig tied with string
175 ml white wine
Cold water
For the gravy
Giblet stock
Pan of turkey juices
1 tbs cornflour
To make the stock, first cut up the giblets into quarters.
In a saucepan, heat the butter until foaming, add the giblets and fry over a medium-high heat until brown – about 5 minutes. Now add the vegetable trimmings, garlic and herbs and wilt them. Cook until they have picked up a tinge of brown, then add the wine. Stir and scrape any nice burnt bits from the bottom. Add water to just cover the contents, put a lid on and bring to a simmer and cook for around 3 hours, then strain through a sieve into a clean pan (or into a tub if you’re making it in advance).
When it’s time to make the gravy, get the stock nice and hot. When the turkey is cooked and is resting on its board, pour the hot stock into the roasting tin and scrape off all the nice treacly burnt bits, then tip the whole thing back into your saucepan. Skim away most of the buttery juices.[2] Bring to a simmer and then add the cornflour which has been first slaked in a little cold water. Stir and simmer unlidded for 10 minutes.
Check the seasoning, though usually I find that the bacon and the salted butter from roasting the turkey have done it for me. Pour the gravy into a jug. You can pass it through a sieve, but I never do. Easy!
[1] Use the liver for the stuffing, or fry it and eat it on toast. You could devil it – recipe for devilling livers can be found here.
[2] But don’t throw the fat away, it can be used for frying vegetables for sauces or soup.
British Food: A History 