Auntie L’s birthday curry and home made Christmas liqueur
My sister in law, the lovely Auntie L, has her birthday ridiculously close to Christmas, so on Saturday we decided to throw her a little birthday party. It also just happens that the lovely chaps at Cobra Beer had contacted me a while ago and said ‘guess what, we know you like curry so we’re going to send you some beer to go with it’.
No way. ’What, like no strings? You’re just going to send me beer?
‘Yup’.
‘And you don’t want anything in return?’
‘Nope’
‘What, like not even a mention?’
‘No, we’re cool’
Wow.
I love blogging.
Curry it is, then.
And yup, they did. Sent us a whole box of Cobras to go with our curry. And the links to a load of curry recipes on their website. Anyhoo, digressing. So I made a beef dhansak and their recipe for marinated spicy chicken (and no, not just ‘cos they sent me free beer, honest), along with some yoghurt/cucumber/mint raita (raitha? I’m never sure), some onion salad with coriander, and a rice pilaff from Nigella’s ‘Feast’ book.
For pud, I set Turtle, my adorable niece, a secret mission to find out Auntie L’s favourite cake. It turned out to be coffee and walnut. Frankly, the less said about this the better. I made the walnut cake, but my attempt at coffee frosting was a total shambles. Hell, we poured it over, stuck a few candles in it and ate it anyway. It didn’t set, but it didn’t seem to matter. Not my finest moment, but hey, it tasted okay.
Finally, I served frozen shot glasses of my special Chrimbo liqueur: a shudderingly, toe-curlingly whizzy little mouthful of Christmas. Try it, you won’t be disappointed:
First, then, assemble your ingredients:
1 litre vodka (or Eau de Vie or Bacardi – whatever really)
50g soft brown sugar
1 clementine or tangerine, peel and juice
1 lime, peel and juice
1 tsp mixed spice
A handful of dried cranberries
2 cinnamon sticks (make sure they’re slim enough to fit in the vodka bottle)
4 cloves
1 star anise (likewise, pick ones that fit in the bottle)
2 bay leaves
So first, bung the brown sugar in a pan and add in the juice of the clementine and the lime.
You don’t really need to stir it, just swirl it around and allow it to come up to the boil so it’s all bubbly and kind of syrupy:
…and when it’s bubbling, turn it down and add in your other ingredients:
Stir them around so they’re all coated in the caramel, then take it off the heat and carefully add the vodka (watch out, it’ll spit). Now, pour the whole lot back into the vodka bottle (you’ll need to poke some of the ingredients in with a knife or something). And that’s it. Just leave it somewhere to fester for a couple of days (not too long or you’ll just have cough medicine), sieve it and serve in teeny, cold shots.
Wehay!
15 Responses to “Auntie L’s birthday curry and home made Christmas liqueur”
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Can’t beat a good curry, must take a look at the cobra website, cos I’ll be sick of christmas food pretty soon! YUM!
There’s a nice Anjum Anand recipe on there I’ll be trying soon too x
Will make this for a party over christmas methinks, nothing like the festive throat burn!
It’s not got any alcohol in it, honest. It’s completely medicinal.
*cough*