Get stuffed!

Dear Tom

I hope you are looking forward to cooking the Christmas dinner?

I expect your cupboards are fully stocked and your fridge is groaning under the weight of all the yummy things you are filling it with?

Hopefully you are feeling positive about the whole cooking event?

Anyway, enough chat, on with the lessons...

You really can't have a big roast meal without stuffing, veggie, sausagemeat, fruity, nutty or simply just sage and onion, it is a fab addition and has to be included

Lets start with a simple sage and onion...

Ingredients

3 slices of slightly stale bread
small handful of fresh sage, or 2 tsps of dried
1 medium onion
1 egg, beaten
Salt and pepper

Method

* Oven temperature gas 5 / 200'c
* Finely dice your onion, pop into a frying pan and add a couple of tablespoons of water. Heat until the onion softens, but don't let it brown
* Pop your bread and sage leaves and salt and pepper into a food processor and whizz until it is bread crumbs, a few lumpy bits here and there are fine, it adds texture
* Add bread mix to the softened onions, mix well, then add beaten egg. The mixture should start to stick together, if not add a table spoon or two of water, you don't want a sloppy heap however so this is a check and see moment really
* Put the mixture into a baking dish and put in the oven for 20minutes until golden and crunchy on top.

Simple :)

Sausagemeat stuffing

Ingredients

Almost as above!

2 slices of bread made into breadcrumbs (as above with herbs)
2 red onions or 1 medium normal onion
Small handful of fresh sage or 2 tsps dried
Small handful of fresh thyme or 2 tsps dried
900g or thereabouts of pork sausagemeat

optional extras -

Lemon zest
chopped apricots
chopped chesttnuts
handful of cranberries
chopped garlic clove

Method

* Cook onion until soft not browned
* Whizz bread and herbs into bread crumbs
* Add onion, bread herb mix and sausage meat togther in a bowl and using hands mix well, also this is the time to add any extra ingredients
* It can be wrapped in cling film and put in the fridge at this point making it a good Christmas eve job
* You can either bake it in a dish or roll it into golf ball sized portions and bake

Enjoy

Yours,

Ruth