Winter

At the Farm Shop we don’t treat cooking as a precise science, nor are we trying to give a comprehensive list of recipes. These are some of our favourite dishes and we hope you’ll give some of them a try. They’ve worked for us on countless occasions but that doesn’t mean, with a bit of imagination and a few tweaks, they can’t be improved. Good luck.
WinterCategories
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Ham With MarmaladeBy Ben WatsonOne of our most successful creations of the last few years has been our 'Ham with no name'. Originally nameless as a bit of a joke, it's stayed that way and sells as well as, if not better, than either the straightforward, smoked or unsmoked, hams. As with so many things, it came about because we had an excess of our apple juice with ginger to get rid of but now, we're making the juice for the ham.
Nut Roast GaletteBy Ben WatsonThe ubiquitous BFS nut roast is available all year, but it does come into its own at Christmas. Indulgently packed with stilton, nuts and parsnips, then wrapped in blanched cabbage leaves, it certainly earns its place at a Christmas table. There’s also a vegan version without the stilton and eggs. Here’s how you can deconstruct our nut roast and make it into stunning centrepiece this Christmas...
Pale Farm’s Leftover Turkey PieBy Ben WatsonVicky Chamings of Pale Farm, our new free-range turkey supplier, shares her crowd-pleasing and delightfully easy recipe for leftover turkey pie. This sumptuous pie is the perfect way to use up your leftover turkey, ham and cream from Christmas Day. Using ready rolled puff pastry to save time in the kitchen, you can't really go wrong. For extra flavour, add leeks and mushrooms. 
Sausage & borlotti bean risottoBy Ben WatsonA robust and hearty meal ideal for the winter months, this risotto is pure comfort food and is a super simple mid-week dinner. Simply pop all of the ingredients into one pot and let the risotto, butter and beans work their magic.
Mayo-Roasted (a month after) Thanksgiving Turkey with GravyBy Ben WatsonTime: about 2 hours, plus overnight dry-brining Some recipes for mayo-roasted turkey promise extra-juicy results with minimal effort. This one does no such thing. The mayonnaise won’t help the turkey stay juicy; only salting and resting (a light curing process known colloquially as dry-brining) and carefully monitoring its internal temperature as it roasts will. The mayonnaise will, however, produce a turkey with glistening, burnished, golden-brown skin evenly flavoured with herbs, no basting required. The mayo’s viscosity helps it stay in place as it roasts, while the extra protein from egg aids in browning. This recipe will make a little more mayonnaise than you’ll need. Use the excess for leftovers sandwiches, or toss it with roughly chopped vegetables (carrots, broccoli, brussels sprouts, courgette or squash) before roasting at high heat for 10 to 15 minutes.
Panissa alla VercelleseBy Ben WatsonA classic nose to tail Piedmontese risotto. Harry and I cooked this in preparation for our Piedmont wine evening at the bar, and I thought it was absolutely delicious. Unctuously moreish would be an understatement with lardo, pork rind and bone broth all adding to the ‘cucina rustica’ party.
Ultimate ChilliBy JasminThe best Chilli con Carne There are few things as welcome and comforting as a bowl of chilli.  A big pot just gets better and better as you go through the rice, baked potatoes, wraps stages and if there’s any left, or you just can’t face it on the fourth night, the filling makes a great a empanadilla that can be baked from frozen when unexpected visitors turn up at short notice. Minced beef is the norm but diced chuck, or even shin has more flavour and provides a little texture, even after prolonged cooking. I’ve only visited Mexico once, very briefly, many years ago and I had a lot of mushy beans, vegetable and rice burrito type things, all fairly spicy but not containing a lot of meat.  Chilli-con-carne is very much a Tex-Mex thing and in typical fashion, they replaced most of the vegetables and beans with beef. In fact, just north of the border, they took out the beans altogether and called it, simply, ‘red’, probably because of the heat. Apparently, as you travel further north the beans make a reappearance but, for me, there are never enough - nor anywhere near enough vegetables. Onions, tomatoes and carrots are a gimme but there’s plenty of room for red peppers and butternut squash which make it a little more Mexican. The preferred heat level is obviously subjective but a good starting point is frying the onions and carrots in some of our nduja and adding chilli as it cooks. You can always add more but you can’t take it out.
Rainbow Goodwill PieBy Ben WatsonLoosely based on a combination of Anna Jones’s Christmas Goodwill Pie and Dan Lepard’s amazing rough puff pastry with a bit of our nut roast mix thrown in for good measure. OK; as I’m really coming clean, the inspiration for our nut roast  comes from Felicity Cloake in the Guardian. Wherever it comes from, the stuffing adds a few Christmas flavours to the mix and makes it a bit more celebratory.
Apple, Squash and Tamarind ChutneyBy Ben Watson

If you ordered from us at Christmas a few years ago, hopefully you will have already enjoyed our 'Happy Christmas Chutney' . Born out of an abundance of butternut squash from the veg farm, we thought it was pretty good. So good in fact, that it can be enjoyed year-round. Tamarind offers a lot of ‘bangs for bucks’ so don’t worry if you don’t have the ingredients for the full spice bag. In fact, because most of the spices are dry, so absorb liquid, I’m never that sure how much flavour actually gets out of the bag and into the chutney. So I started grinding the toasted spices and adding to the onions, garlic etc at the frying stage.

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