This Christmas I have mostly been eating. And drinking. And eating more. I’ve probably eaten more over the past couple of weeks than I did for the whole of the rest of the year… ok maybe that’s a bit silly, but it was definitely a lot. Very nice it has been too, lovely people, lovely food and lots of fun.

The feasting started a few weeks ago with the first of 3 Christmas meals we somehow volunteered to make for people. For the main course I’d made a Mushroom Wellington, which was so nice we decided to make the same thing for the other two Christmas meals.

(Image nicked from Yum Blog – hope you don’t mind! )

Mushroom Wellington

• 500g Puff Pastry
• 60ml sunflower oil
• 675g onions, chopped
• 4 garlic clove, crushed
• 450g chestnut mushrooms, left whole
• 2 tbsp chopped tarragon
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• salt and fresh ground black pepper
• 320g broken cashew pieces
• 175g fine breadcrumbs, freshly made, white or wholemeal
• 320g ground almonds
• 1 egg, beaten

1. Roll out the puff pastry into two rectangles, each 30 x 23 cm, and set aside in the fridge to rest.
2. Meanwhile, make the filling. Heat the oil in a large, heavy-based frying pan. Fry the onion and 2 crushed garlic cloves over a low heat for 20 minutes, stirring now and then. Set the fried onion mixture aside.
3. Add the chestnut mushrooms, remaining garlic and half the tarragon to the frying pan and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the mushrooms have softened, about 10 minutes.
4. After 5 minutes of frying add in the soy sauce or tamari and Marsala or sherry is using. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper. Strain the mushrooms and set aside, reserving the mushroom juices.
5. In a food processor, blend the cashews and the reserved liquor to a smooth paste, adding a little water if necessary.
6. Add the fried onions and mushrooms into the food processor and blend until smooth.
7. In a large mixing bowl mix together the cashew paste, onion and mushroom mixture, breadcrumbs, ground almonds and remaining tarragon.
8. Preheat the oven to 220°C/ Gas 7 and remove the pastry from the fridge.
9. Place half the filling mixture onto the middle of one of the rectangles and shape into a sausage with your hands.
10. With a sharp knife, cut the pastry either side of the filling, into strips. Start in the left hand corner and work at a forty-five degree angle towards the filling. Then repeat on the right hand side.
11. Fold in the pastry ends first and then cross over the pastry strips from alternate sides.
12. When the mixture is well-wrapped within the pastry, glaze the pastry parcel with the beaten egg.
13. Repeat the process with the remaining pastry rectangle and filling.
14. Place the parcels on a floured baking sheet and bake for 35-45 minutes until golden brown.

This recipe makes absolutely loads, but it makes two separate wellingtons, so you can either invite lots of people round, drink lots of wine, dance on your chairs and eat both (like we did) or one can be frozen after the pastry wrapping stage, then you can just defrost, glaze and cook another time (very sensible). Yum. 9 out of 10. Although now I’ve eaten this meal 3 times in as many weeks I don’t think I’ll be eating it again until next Christmas. I probably won’t be hungry until then anyway.

Croma in Chorlton was our treat for the holiday. Had a lovely meal, I’d been once before and it was really good, this time it was maybe even better. Garlic bread with tomato to start, which was amazing, really simple, but perfectly cooked, will probably have a go at recreating it at some point. Then for mains we both had pizzas, Andy had Florentina, and I had the Asparagus and Goats Cheese. Very very tasty. Tis a lovely little restaurant- great atmosphere, nice decor etc just round the corner from our house, and pretty cheap. Perfect.

New Years Eve/ Karen’s 30th birthday was more food. In fact probably the most food I’ve ever seen/eaten in one day. Her Mum tends to go a bit crazy when entertaining and the combination of the two events sent her into overdrive. There was a huge table full of sandwiches, dips, salads, then pots of chilli, goulash, bombay potatoes, trifle, cheesecakes, carrot cake,chocolate cake, tiramisu, about 15 different types of cheese and more. I couldn’t move by the time we’d finished.

Should be back to normal now, I hope so anyway, its been very nice doing little apart from sleeping and eating, but if it carried on for much longer I’d soon be the size of a house. Eek.