Tisn't the season.

We're sufficiently far into 2017 now that if anyone wishes you a "Happy New Year" it feels a bit weird. It seems like forever since the Christmas decorations came down, let alone since the big day itself. The stinker of a year that was 2016 finally came to an end, but enough has already happened in 2017 to suggest this year isn't going to be much better. So while the year may no longer be new, I hope it's not too late to hark back and tell you about some of the things I got up to over Christmas. Well, it is too late, but I'm going to anyway.

Umm...maybe not.

Those of you who have followed this blog for a while may recall that two years ago I prepared a Christmas dinner sourced almost entirely from tinned foods, from the turkey down to the cranberry sauce, with even the sprouts being dredged up from the murky waters of their own metal tomb (can you tell I wasn't a fan of those?) One thing I couldn't find in a tin, however, was parsnips, so regrettably I had to make do without those. If Christmas dinner was a party, they perhaps wouldn't be the life and soul of it, but I rather missed their company nonetheless.

Some time later, I did come across a tin that described itself as a "Three Bird Festive Feast with all the trimmings" - turkey, goose, duck, parsnips, carrots, cranberries and all manner of interesting sounding herbs. It sounded pretty good - but sadly, it was a tin of rather posh dog food. I read an article recently that said all dog food is, technically, fit for human consumption, but I think there are enough other tins in the world to try before I go down that route.



Thankfully I did eventually find a more suitable tin: Baxter's Spicy Parsnip soup, which both pleased and intrigued me, as it's not a flavour of soup you often see in tins. The humble parsnip just doesn't have the popularity of tomato or other vegetable soups. But while parsnip soup still wouldn't find its place on my Christmas dinner table, seeing the tin did remind me of a recipe I'd seen some time back in an article by chef Shaun Hill, seeking to give vegetables more of a share of the limelight over the traditional turkey and trimmings - a parsnip pudding. Not a pudding in the sense of a dessert, but in the broader, more historical, savoury sense - a term that can lend itself to anything from steak and kidney pudding to Yorkshire pudding to black pudding, all very different beasts.

 The recipe for the parsnip pudding essentially involved boiling parsnips until soft, pureeing them with some cream, beating in eggs and then baking it in individual dishes in a bain marie in the oven. It suggested a few additional roasted root vegetables alongside, as a somewhat cheffy accompaniment. The tin of parsnip already had some cream in it, which made made me wonder: if I used that as the parsnip puree base, and then carried on with the recipe from there, would that give me a parsnip pudding that could have been served up with my tinned Christmas dinner?

It was worth a shot. The soup itself was yellower than I expected, which must have been down to the turmeric, which along with coriander, cumin, black pepper, fenugreek, ginger, pimento and red chilli pepper, made up the spicy element of the soup. Not that there was anything here to frighten those who shy away from a bit of heat; this was a mildly spiced affair, adding a nice back note with no single flavour dominating or covering up the parsnips' natural sweetness and woodiness. The dash of cream gave another flavour again, lending a slightly lactic tang to the mix. I had half of the tin just as Audrey Baxter had intended - a bowl of soup - and very nice it was too.

I calculated from the quantities in the parsnip pudding recipe that half a tin of soup would probably need just one egg added. Roughly, anyway - a bit of guesswork in the kitchen is always fun. The mixture fitted quite nicely into my old Fray Bentos steak and kidney pudding tin (lined with cling film) which went into a baking tin of hot water and into the oven at 180 degrees for 25 minutes, until set.

After that time it still seemed very liquidy though, so I gave it another 10 minutes....and it still didn't seem much different after that. Maybe smaller ramekins would have been better than my tin for cooking it in, or maybe it would have benefitted from another egg after all? After another 10 minutes there was more of a wobble as I gently shook the tin, suggesting it was starting to solidify. I gave it another 15 mins, at which point I reckoned we might be good to go.

Taking the tin out of the tray of water with a tea towel, I quickly flipped it over and onto my waiting plate....oh.

Hmmm...it hadn't been as solid as I'd thought, and hence had flobbed out all over the plate rather sitting proud and plump like the pudding I'd hoped for. I definitely should have added another egg. A bit of guesswork in the kitchen is a bit of a risk, it seems.

So, it looked a complete mess, but it did actually taste vageuly decent - a sort of savoury, parsnippy egg custard (ok, I'm not really selling that very well, but I quite liked it). It was very nice with the cubes of other roasted veg (carrot, celeriac and swede), and also some parsnip crisps that I had made at the same time. Or at least the ones that hadn't burned, as I'd left them in the oven for too long. So, a tasty dish, but perhaps for the best that I hadn't included it in my tinned Christmas dinner previously. That said, it still would have looked and tasted better than the tinned brussels.

I think it was some time after last Christmas that I spotted my next tin knocked down in price in Tesco, and the moment I saw it I knew I had to have it.When I had been thinking about what I might write a blog about, over three years ago now, I briefly considered making it about the various "limited edition" versions of foods that manufacturers produce from time to time. You know the sort of thing - your standard chocolate bar with a different flavour or type of chocolate used; cakes with red, white and blue icing rather than their usual colour to celebrate some event of national importance; Christmas tree-shaped crumpets etc. The sort of thing you see in the supermarket, think "Oooh, that looks exciting!", give it a try and then wonder why you bothered, as you didn't much like the original product either. Or you find one that you do really like, and tell yourself you'll try it again, but being limited edition, before you know it they've been discontinued. Anyway, it seemed there were plenty of others out there in the blogosphere writing about that kind of thing already, so I opted for tins instead.

Imagine my excitement then when I spotted this tin - Princes Limited Edition Spiced Apple and Cranberry Fruit Filling. Yes, a LIMITED EDITION TIN. Princes produce a range of ready-made sweetened fruit fillings to use in cakes, pies or whatever you like really - apple, black cherry and so on - but this one had been specially produced just for the Christmas period, presumably never to be seen again thereafter. Or at least after the supermarkets had got rid of all their excess stock of it in about mid-April.

Indeed, by the time I got round to using it this Christmas, it had been discontinued by Princes, no longer appearing on the list of products on their website. It crossed my mind that this might have increased the value of my tin by a good few pence, but I thought "to hell with that!" and cracked it open.

There, quite clearly, were pieces of apple, whole cranberries and the raisins listed in the ingredients, suspended within a sort of reddish gloop. I suppose that's what I really should have been expecting from a manufactured "fruit filling" with 'modified maize starch' in the ingredients, but it certainly wasn't the rich and fruity stewed compote that you'd hope to see in a homemade pie. Still, I was pleased to note that it was far less sweet than I had feared it might be, not overpowering the natural bitterness of the cranberries, and with just a whiff of Christmas spice in the background. The quills of cinnamon on the photo on the label made me nervous that they might have added too much of this particular spice, which can end up making desserts smell more like a scented candle, but in fact they had been wisely parsimonious with it. If indeed they had used any at all, that is - the ingredients didn't even list "spices" as a generic cover-all term for whatever they'd put into it, instead going for "flavourings", which I always think sounds a little bit ominous.

Anyway, I had my filling, but what to fill? The illustration on the label showed the product in mini tart or pie cases, with a pastry star on top, like an alternative to a mince pie. Nice idea. I happened to have some mini star-topped mince pies, so attempted a filling transplant, removing the star, scooping out the mincemeat with a spoon, adding a small quantity of the apple and cranberry filling, and then replacing the star. Voila!

Like a mince pie, I thought it might be nice briefly warmed through, which I did in the microwave. Sadly my transplant operation had not been as delicate as it could have been, and had caused some cracks to appear in the pastry. This damaged the structural integrity of the pie, and so on heating, the whole thing completely collapsed. Shame. The jammy, pastry-strewn remains weren't bad, but to be honest the best bit was the spoonful of mincemeat I'd scooped out earlier.

Perhaps I would have more luck with a different kind of pastry. I'd had some ready-made puff pastry in the freezer for a while, so defrosted a block, rolled it out and spread it with some of the filling. I then rolled it all up and sliced it into sections, to make mini Danish-style pastries. They went into a hot oven for 10 minutes or so...

 ...and came out not really looking like squashed red snails - not really anything that would win many patisserie awards any time soon. The filling had rather spewed out of the rolls of pastry, going a bit hard on top and baking itself on to the tray beneath, which took a bit of work with a fish slice to dislodge. Regrettably, only a few of the pastries survived this process.

I had sufficient filling remaining for one final job, and decided to move away from pastry and instead fill a doughnut. Some of you may be fans of the heavily-iced and decorated specimens made by Krispy Kreme,  Dunkin' Donuts or other companies with alliterative names, but I find them to be oversweet, overrated, and overpriced. I'd take a good old-fashioned jam doughnut over one of those any day of the week, even the ones dressed up in Christmas outfits for the occasion like these ones:

£1.90 for a doughnut? I do-nut think so...

One of the perils of my favoured old-fashioned jam doughnuts though is the filling squirting out as you bite into it, going all over your hands or down your shirt. I realised though that on this occasion, that could play to my advantage - if I were to squeeze a doughnut to disgorge it of its jam, I could then refill it with the apple and cranberry filling. Perfect!

Unfortunately I had mistakenly bought Tesco's custard doughnuts rather than jam, and the consistency of the filling of those is rather thicker and less susceptible to errupting out of the side. So instead I had to do another operation, making an incision in the doughnut, scooping out the vanilla custard and then packing in some apple and cranberry before replacing the 'lid'.

It then occurred to me that one of the cranberries wouldn't look unlike a red nose...Add a couple of pieces of apple and raisins for eyes, and some of my remaining Christmas chocolate coins as antlers and a mouth, and I might just be able to decorate my doughnut in a way that would rival Krispy Kreme's festive offerings...

...or in a way that might give children bad dreams. Admittedly I hadn't exactly been trying very hard, but the end result was more Krampus than Rudolf. I put it out of its misery as quickly as possible.

So there we are. A catalogue of rather sorry-looking Christmas culinary creations. But in each case, they didn't taste anywhere near as bad as they looked. Could that be a metaphor for the year ahead - it won't be as terrible as at first it may seem? We can but hope...