New Year's Eve

So here it is - tonight's dinner. So it looks quite pleasant, but nothing to get excited about. It is, however a landmark meal. This, my dear readers is the last of the turkey, in a pie. I bought the smallest turkey crown I could find and that along with an equally small gammon that I roasted has seen us through the entire post Christmas period.
One of the joys of being on holiday for the last two weeks has been the fact that we could take lunch rather than grabbing it.
Many of those lunches have been built around cold cuts. This added to a chicken liver pate and the great joy that is cold, sliced stuffing has provided a wonderful middle of the day break from whatever we were doing.
My brother, "The Stockbroker" was here for lunch twice during the last week or so and I didn't have the heart to feed him with the same stuff twice so I looked to provide something different on his second visit.
With a collection of root vegetables which were not used on the day and a little inspiration from my new Abel and Cole calendar I came up with the recipe below.
Indian Root Cakes
Root vegetables ( I used a small swede, two parsnips, a little bit of celeriac and two carrots)
1 medium onion
2 garlic cloves
1tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1tsp ground ginger
1 egg
1 slug of milk
2 or 3 mugs of breadcrumbs
Salt and pepper
Flour
Oil for cooking

Peel and boil the root vegetables until they are all mashable. While these are boiling, finely chop the onion and fry it in a little oil until it is just starting to colour. Add the garlic and all the dried spices and cook for a couple of minutes. Allow this to cool. Take the roots off the heat, drain and allow to steam off in a colander for a good half hour. Mash the roots and add the onion and spice mix. Season and pop in the fridge for a few hours or overnight. Make an egg wash of the egg and milk and make the vegetable mix into tennis ball sized balls and flatten into disks so the resemble an old fashioned fishcake. Coat these in the flour and the the egg; follow this with the breadcrumbs. These can now be fried in a little more oil than you would normally use (it needs to come half way up the sides of the cakes). The key here is to make sure that the oil is hot enough to fry the coating to a seal fast. pop a little bit of bread in first to give you an idea of how hot it is. Fry the cakes until they are golden brown and crispy, then pop in the oven to enable you to fry the others.

I served these with some griddled broccoli with chilli and garlic (a recipe I adapted from the wonderful Ottolenghi cook book) Blanched broccoli was mixed with a little oil and then griddles on a cast iron griddle. This was added to some garlic and sliced chilli which had been fried off to release its flavours. A dash of soy sauce added a little salt. A lunch which deserves to be sat down and sat up to.

Happy new year!