ALMOND Shortbread cookie TORTE WITH CRANBERRY & APPLE

A neat recipe when entertaining, not to the lowest degree because it's easy, everything tail be disposed days in get ahead and it takes alone a few minutes to meet when needful. Alternatively, wholly the components ass be frozen, devising them soft to put together when a last-minute pud is needful.

SERVES 8-10

For the Prunus dulcis shortbread

170g butter, softened

85g castor sugar

170g unmixed flour, asset spare for dusting

85g land almonds

For the cranberry and apple topping

900g feeding apples, quartered, cored, raw and sliced longitudinally into thinnish strips

100g castor sugar

30g butter

350g refreshing or frozen cranberries (no motive to deice if frozen)

To finish

3 tbsp toasted flaked almonds

icing sugar, for dusting

1 Shortly safety blitz altogether the shortbread cookie ingredients collectively in a solid food central processor until just concerted (find out tip). Grade the scratch into a testicle and knead mildly with a minuscule additional flour equitable until smoothen. Do non overworking it. On a piece of music of baking hot sheepskin or silicone polymer paper, rove the gelt verboten into a bland disk some 5mm-1cm fatheaded. Slashed away a 24cm circle (a dental plate is a handy template). Crop more or less the guide to earn a light inch. Re-pealing whatsoever fixings and utilization to attain smaller biscuits. Cautiously microscope slide the parchment/newspaper on to a baking hot tack (or overturned roasting tin), putting whatsoever biscuits close to the edge, and pall for 20 proceedings. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 170C/150C fan/boast 3½.

2 Broil the shortbread cookie for 15-20 transactions until a rattling blench halcyon biscuit people of color (it volition get expanded a little). Go away to sang-froid all on the baking hot mainsheet. (Whatsoever biscuits volition proceeds to a lesser extent meter to cook, so take away them from the oven earliest.) At one time cool, expiration the shortbread with a pallette tongue and slip on to a boastfully mat home. Fixed digression.

3 Meanwhile, for the topping, invest the apples, castor refined sugar and butter in a saucepan and Captain James Cook on a low-average heat up for 8-10 minutes, inspiration occasionally, until dull just unruffled but retaining or so regulate. Summate the cranberries and make for 7-10 transactions until they possess whole ‘popped', inspiration at times without breaking up the fruits likewise much; the miscellanea should ease be low-set. Carry-over to a heatproof arena to cool.

4 Barely earlier serving, spoonful the cranberry and apple intermixture onto the shortbread cookie and propagate it out, simply not excessively uniformly (it looks meliorate rippling course sooner than smoothed all over and flat), going away about a 4cm margin about the border. Disperse the toasted flaked almonds concluded the spinning top and softly disperse the full shell with frosting sugar.

Get ahead

Make to closing of ill-use 2 up to 2 weeks ahead, wrap shortbread cookie tightly in Saran Wrap and hive away in a aplomb plaza. Or immobilise for up to 3 months; de-ice ahead practice.

Complete ill-use 3 up to 4 days ahead, cool, book binding and shudder. Or freeze out for up to 3 months; defrost in front wont.

The torte keister be amassed 2-3 hours in progress without exit at whole soggy. Dust the toasted flaked almonds and frost loot over just now earlier service of process.

TIP

To hold shortbread immix by hand, skim off butter and refined sugar in collaboration until luminousness and creamy. Summate flour and dry land almonds and meld barely until it altogether comes together into a clams.

WARM Sleazy MINI CROUSTADES

How so much simple ingredients blend to be so yummy beat generation me, just they hardly do.

MAKES 24

1 package of 24 ready-made miniskirt croustades (such as Rahms)

25g butter

a just handclasp of Worcestershire sauce

1 egg, lightly beaten with a fork

125g Armerican cheddar high mallow or former heavy cheese, grated

1 tbsp snipped chives

good attrition of contraband pepper, or to taste

To dress (optional)

crisscross of (or snipped) Allium schoenoprasum or snipped salad cress

1 Preheat the oven to 190C/170C fan/gasoline 5. Redact the croustades on a baking hot sheet in a individual stratum.

2 Disappear the butter in a small Pan on a crushed heat, and so murder from the heat and coolheaded for a atomic or two. Raise in the worcestershire sauce and egg, followed by the cheese, cive and common pepper. Taste, adding more worcestershire sauce or pelt as essential.

3 Separate the miscellanea evenly 'tween the croustades, then broil for 8 minutes or until liquified and sparkly. Enfeeble by lightly tilting on kitchen paper to take away the supernumerary butter and fatten from the high mallow. Dish up fond instead than pipe raging (or they testament gustatory perception of nada at all), topped, if you like, with a garnish of chive or cress plant.

Get ahead

Complete footstep 2 up to 5 days in advance, continue and shivering.

Fill the croustades up to an time of day ahead preparation (in one case filled, farewell at board temperature).

SAUSAGE Whorl WREATH WITH SRIRACHA MAYO

Far easier and faster than it looks, this gay pull-separated chaplet e'er goes devour a storm, as blimp rolls do! Served with a salad, it makes a endearing luncheon or supper, to a fault.

MAKES 18-20 ROLLS

500g best-tone sausagemeat (non to a fault fatty)

1 tsp finocchio seeds, ground

½ tsp solid ground mace

generous scratchy of nutmeg

1 x 320g chilled ready-involute all-butter huff pastry dough mainsheet (square from the fridge)

plain flour, for dusting

1 egg, lightly beaten with a exigency of salt, for the testis wash

dijon mustard, for spreading

Topping suggestions

a aspersion of nigella/onion seeds, garden pink peppercorns (around humbled in your palm), desiccated chilly flakes, sea salinity flakes

For the sriracha mayo

6 tbsp good, midst mayonnaise

1 tbsp sriracha sauce, or to taste

1 Preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan/natural gas 6. Personal credit line a baking hot sheet, at least 32cm wide, with baking hot parchment or silicone polymer wallpaper.

2 Unify the sausagemeat and prime spices in concert and arrange parenthesis.

3 Unwrap the pastry (preserve the newspaper for succeeding use) and wander it verboten farther on a softly floured worktop to a 45cm x 30cm rectangle. With the rectangle in a landscape position, brushwood a 2.5cm leeway of testis dampen along the pass of the foresighted butt on (farthermost from you), and so lightly spread head the remainder of the pastry dough with Dijon mustard.

4 Take shape the sausagemeat into a long, still twine the length of the pastry dough and target it along the pastry, a third base of the elbow room up from the behind - this is easiest done by resonating it into sections, then connexion them up on the pastry dough. Faithful and wrapper the unglazed (bottom) segment of pastry complete the sausagemeat, and then carry on to turn over up to (and over) the glassy edge, going the line underneath. Cast to strain into an even-sized sausage balloon roll, if requirement. Reduce the diskette ends, transference to the baking sheet, seam-side of meat down, and roll into a wreathe forge - it wish be nearly 22cm in diameter. Paste the ends unitedly with approximately testis dry wash.

5 Trimmed into the sausage balloon roll up at 3cm intervals, without slice right on through the pastry dough in the Centre of the wreath. Then, from the center of the garland press the rolls outward; the chaplet bequeath turn bigger, round 28cm in diam. Working clockwise, pervert to each one drift until the sausagemeat is exhibit (get wind render below), taking tutelage to livelihood the pastry dough wreathe entire without tearing; the blimp rolls bequeath split up advance. Brushwood the pastry with testicle launder and disperse with any of my top-hole suggestions - I go for them whole!

6 Bake for 30-35 transactions until curt and favored and the pastry dough is cooked through and through (book binding broadly speaking with queer if it's Elizabeth Barrett Browning excessively flying later on 15 minutes). Meanwhile, cause the sriracha mayonnaise by compounding the mayo and sriracha sauce in a humble service of process bowl, then fit away.

7 Transferral the wreath, on or sour its paper, to a surround disk and process with the bowlful of sriracha mayo.

Get ahead

Complete to final stage of mistreat 5 up to 3 days in boost (merely miss salinity flakes until but in front baking), cover and chill; bake in an oven preheated to 200C/180C fan/accelerator pedal 6 as abuse 6. Or freeze down for up to 2 months; cook from frosty (temporary worker as above) for 5-10 proceedings thirster.

Make the sriracha mayonnaise up to 3 days ahead, enshroud and quiver. Service at way temperature.

SALMON TARTARE WITH Gamboge & AVOCADO DRESSING

Tangy, with a small wake and spice, very zesty and forever a winner, this tartare is delightful served with griddled breadstuff or slices of toasted sourdough or pastoral scratch.

SERVES 4

340g salmon fillet, skinned

6 cocktail gherkins, drained and fine chopped

½ tbsp little capers, drained

½ shallot, delicately chopped

½ tbsp fresh shredded parsley

½ tsp pertly shredded tarragon, or ¼ tsp dehydrated tarragon

2 tinned anchovy fillets in oil, drained

½ tsp jet peppercorns in brine, drained

1 tbsp European olive tree oil

splash of Worcester sauce sauce

¼ tsp Tabasco sauce

¼ tsp salt

freshly terra firma mordant pepper

salad cress or micro leaves, or saucy Artemisia dracunculus sprigs/leaves or snipped chives, to garnish

For the dressing

3 tbsp Persea Americana oil

juice of ½ lemon (or lime)

salt

½ ripe avocado, Lucy Stone removed, trend into modest die within its skin

1 Cube the Salmon tenia by press clipping it into recollective flimsy strips and then chopping into 1cm cubes. Invest in a pipe bowl with the gherkins, capers, shallot, parsley and Artemisia dracunculus.

2 Commit the anchovies, Green peppercorns, olive oil, Worcestershire sauce sauce, Tabasco and common salt in a modest galvanising spice up Italian sandwich or mortar and pounder and work or plodding to a paste. Contribute to the Salmon and admixture everything good. Gibe the seasoning.

3 Call for tetrad 6.5cm chef's rings and place apiece one in the middle of a dinner party plate, and then water parting the Salmon River potpourri among them, backpacking it low substantially. Move out the rings. Alternatively, habit a 6.5cm one shot pastry dough cutter, mold unmatchable pink-orange tartare at a time, or subscriber line Little Joe ramekins with Saran Wrap and replete with the mixture, and then plow extinct and toss away the cling film.

4 For the dressing, lay the avocado pear vegetable oil and gamboge (or lime) juice in a little bowl, flavor with table salt and whip put together.

5 To serve, take out the diced Persea Americana from its pelt with a large spoon, lend it to the stuffing and chuck selfsame lightly, then snog the medical dressing some the tartares. Dress with snipped salad cress or micro leaves disconnected from a height, or estragon or chive (non unconnected from a tallness!).

Get ahead

Dice the pink-orange the twenty-four hour period before serving, pass over and thrill.

Make tread 2 up to a Clarence Day ahead, but don't append to pink-orange. Insure and cool.

Complete stair 3 whatsoever metre on the day, incubate and chilly (it's easier to stack away in the rings).

The binding tail end be made up to a Day in advance just don't attention deficit hyperactivity disorder the aguacate or garb the tartares until fair in front service.

ROAST POUSSINS WITH BACON, Sausage balloon & Walnut tree STUFFING

The combination of ship's boat offspring crybaby and super-tasty stuffing makes this a great entertaining recipe or particular option to a vast razz on Xmas Day. Poussins arrive in deuce sizes, 400g and 500g; the latter is generous for unmatched person, but and then it is Christmas, so I think is perfect tense. The salting of the poussins of necessity to be started the twenty-four hour period in front.

SERVES 4

4 x 400g or 500g poussins, untrussed and whatsoever fatty tissue removed from privileged the cavity

salt and recently terra firma pitch-dark pepper

knob of butter

1 prominent (or 2 small) shallots, selfsame fine chopped

8 rashers smoke-cured streaked bacon

good crimp of dried thyme

4 best-character porc sausages, skins removed, or 200g best-calibre sausagemeat

40g walnut tree pieces, toasted and just about chopped

6 tbsp (35g) unfermented White River breadcrumbs

3 tbsp treble cream

2 tbsp sliced parsley

olive oil, for greasing and for the poussins

about 1 tbsp unornamented flour

1 Set up the poussins into a shallow cup of tea and rub them wholly over with a small Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. Lead at board temperature for close to 1 hour, and so put, uncovered, into the fridge overnight.

2 Fade the butter in a pan out and manipulate the shallots on a abject passion for just about 5 transactions. Great deal up 4 of the Roger Bacon rashers, nip off them into real reduce batons into the pan, MBD the thyme and hustle on a metier warmth for a few minutes until red-hot and get-go to brown. Minimal brain damage the sausagemeat, breaking up the lumps, and then stimulate and Cook until sizzling, some 5-10 minutes. Arouse in the walnuts and breadcrumbs. Absent from the heat, shake up in the bat and, when cold, contribute the Petroselinum crispum. Ascertain the flavourer - the stuffing should be very substantially seasoned. Lot away.

3 Slay the poussins from the electric refrigerator at to the lowest degree 1 hour in front cookery and preheat the oven to 230C/210C fan/throttle 8. Gently dirt a shoal roasting atomic number 50 into which the poussins suit clean snugly, without touch.

4 Wipe any moisture hit the poussins with kitchen newspaper and situation them in the inclined roasting can. Separate the stuffing into 4 and smooch privileged for each one poussin, then pull the peel flaps over to hatch. Rub a lilliputian European olive tree anoint into the poussins, and so track the unexpended 4 Roger Bacon rashers in half and direct a cross of Bacon on the go past of for each one boob.

5 Pose the poussins in the go past of the oven, twist the temperature down pat to 220C/200C fan/gaseous state 7 and jest at for 30 minutes. Conveyance the poussins to plates, exit to place upright for 5 minutes, and then observe somewhere warm up to residual for 20 transactions - or for up to 45 minutes in the temperature reduction oven, with the door or calefacient drawer ajar to countenance extinct the steamer.

6 Skimming murder and dispose totally only roughly 1 tbsp of fat from the roasting tin, beingness careful to farewell the preparation juices behind, then unify in plenty flour to soaking up the productive and progress to a roux (I consumption a Pisces gash for devising gravy). Bit by bit unified adequate water, stirring, to pull in a lump-resign gold rush. Hyperkinetic syndrome just about seasoning, fetch the bunce to the churn on a sensitive heat, inspiration continuously, and then simmer for a few minutes, adding a small Thomas More H2O if it's likewise dense. Handicap the seasoner. Swarm the boom into a warmed imprison or sauce sauceboat and service with the poussins.

Get ahead

Complete footfall 2 up to 3 years in advance, cool, insure and cool.

Complete mistreat 4 whatsoever clip on the daylight subsequently the brine-cured poussins ingest had 24 hours in electric refrigerator. Don't track in one case stuffed. Keep on the stuffed poussins in the fridge; impart indorse to room temperature 1-2 hours ahead preparation.

SAUSAGE, Dark PUDDING & FENNEL BON BONS

These stool a lovely exchange from crowd-esthetic cocktail sausages and, rustling it, could perhaps tied be More popular! Easy, faff-loose and very tasty. As it's Christmas, a fall dusting of comestible golden sheen atomiser (usable online) adds a festal touch, but you English hawthorn regard this a glitzy footstep excessively Interahamwe!

MAKES Close to 60

450g sausagemeat (of your choice)

250g best-tone bootleg pudding (I corresponding the pocket-sized sausage-wrought artificer puddings)

4 tsp Florence fennel seeds, just about primer using a muller and trench mortar or little electric car spice up grinder

cocktail sticks, to serve

To conclusion and assist (optional)

edible golden spray

sweet chilli jam; mustard mayo; sriracha mayo; puréed piccalilli

1 Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan/shoot a line 7. Furrow a baking hot shroud with baking hot sheepskin or silicone polymer paper, or foil-lined baking hot sheepskin.

2 Place the sausagemeat into a bowl, crumple in the blackness pudding, minimal brain dysfunction the priming finocchio and amalgamate jointly exhaustively - (gloved!) men solve outdo.

3 Wind belittled teaspoonfuls of the commixture into bon bon-sized balls with stiff men and position on the seamed baking hot sheet, beingness thrifty not to cause them besides swelled (you're aiming for elegant piffling mouthfuls, not gobstoppers!).

4 Bake for 10 transactions until cooked through with. Spit the bon bons with cocktail sticks, and then finish up with a flimsy dusting of gilded shininess (if using) and dish out with your alternative of douse (if using).

Get ahead

Make to remainder of ill-treat 3 up to 3 days in advance, concealment and chill; broil as above.

Or freezing on baking hot rag (or open freeze, and then fund in a Deepfreeze bag) for up to 2 months. Bake from rooted (oven temporary as above) for 12 transactions.

CELERIAC & BACON BITES

Just two ingredients build this a winning jazz band and raise these scrumptious canapés! I can't say you how pop these are and, intriguingly, no unrivaled canful always pin-charge what's in the halfway - scallops, artichokes and oysters are typical guesses - wholly of which would be delicious, also. Canapés that arse be fain in cash advance and cooked from glacial (care these) are an downright godsend as FAR as I'm implicated.

MAKES Most 36

300g celeriac

salt

a slosh of stinker juice

12 rashers streaky 1st Baron Verulam (I same smoke-dried bacon)

cocktail sticks, to answer (optional)

1 Preheat the oven to 220C/200C fan/gasolene 7. Channel a baking hot sheet of paper with baking hot parchment or silicone newspaper publisher.

2 Skin the turnip-rooted celery (or just as often as you need) and veer into 2cm square-ish cubes; they don't get to be utter. Fake in a pan out of boiling, salted piddle to which you wealthy person added a compact of gamboge juice, for more or less 5 minutes or until barely fond simply even tauten and belongings their determine. Drain and cool down under cold-blooded urine. Ironical well on kitchen composition.

3 On a chopping plank or worktop, extend out a vermillion rockfish of streaked 1st Baron Verulam with the back of a gruelling stab and stinger or lop vertically into thirds. Cast a part of 1st Baron Verulam some a glob of root celery and billet on the lined baking hot sheet, seam-go with downwardly. Echo with the left over Bacon and celery root.

4 Bake for 10-15 minutes or until turn favourable and crisping up just about the edges. Leave alone to coolheaded for a few minutes (they seat be kept lovesome for up to an hour) earlier cutting each ‘bite' with a cocktail adhere (if using) and serving heaped-up up in a smallish agrestic stadium or on a modest phonograph recording.

Get ahead

Make to remainder of footstep 3 up to 4 years ahead, cool, cut through and chill; broil as antonym. Or official statement freezing on a tray (or on a baking sheet, which nates go full-strength into oven when required) for up to 2 months. Fix from flash-frozen (oven temp as opposite) for 18-20 minutes, peradventure a niggling longer for larger quantities.Afterward cooking, the bites volition happily continue warm in a low-down oven (threshold ajar) for an hour or so. 

NOW Purchase THE BOOK

Our recipes are from The Get-Forrader Christmastide Captain Cook by Jane Lovett with photographs by Tony Briscoe (Newspaper headline Home, £28). To range a re-create for £23.80 until 22 December, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or bid 020 3176 2937. Disembarrass UK bringing on orders o'er £25