Baked chicken with mushrooms and cream, and a juicy toffee apple pudding will fill your kitchen with delicious aromas, writes DOMINI KEMP

I DON’T THINK anyone went too nuts with eating and drinking before Christmas, as people just stayed in due to all the bad weather. Restaurants (which normally use December to pay for the very lean January and February months) had a dreadful run, so many are hoping people will do some belated celebrating in January and put off the good behaviour of dieting and no-booze until February.

With that in mind, here are my final few flings with fancy food before I get into steamed fish and raw vegetables next month. This very quick two-times hummus recipe, which can be dished into a bowl within about two minutes of starting to make it, saved my bacon a couple of times last month. Just drain and rinse two tins of chick-peas and blend in a food-processor with two crushed cloves of garlic, the juice of two lemons, two good glugs of olive oil (about four seconds worth of a pour), two teaspoons of tahini, some salt and pepper, and about six shakes of Tabasco sauce. Whizz until smooth, adding a bit more olive oil if it’s too thick.

This goes particularly well with the rosemary flatbreads mentioned above, and was good when kids and grown-ups needed a snack and were starting to feel guilty about reaching for crisps, biscuits, cheese or chocolate. I even managed to cut up a few carrots to dunk into it, which were just about tolerated by certain nippers. The Tabasco gives it a bit of a kick, without killer heat, but if in doubt, leave it out and you can stir it in to taste after the children have had first dibs.

For now, though, relax into the last few weeks of eating comforting food with this rich, chicken casserole and butterscotch apple pudding.

Chicken with dried mushrooms

Serves 4-6

I used dried morels for this recipe

60g dried mushrooms

Big knob butter

Splash olive oil

8 chicken thighs/drumsticks

Salt and pepper

1 onion, peeled and very finely diced

1 glass white wine

Few sprigs thyme

200ml chicken stock

300ml cream

Heat an oven to 170 degrees/gas mark three. Soak the mushrooms in warm water for 30 minutes, then drain and roughly chop them. (You don’t need to keep the mushroom water, although you could use it as the stock if you can strain it through some muslin, as the soaking liquid tends to be a bit gritty.)

In a heavy-based frying pan, heat the olive oil and butter and fry the chicken on all sides over a high heat until it is golden brown. Unless you have a very big pan, you can do this in batches. Season it very well. When it’s well browned and well seasoned, transfer to a casserole dish. Discard the excess fat from the frying pan and then sauté the onion until soft.

Deglaze the pan with the white wine, then add the thyme, stock, cream and mushrooms and simmer gently for 10 minutes. Taste and season well. Pour or spoon the hot creamy mixture over the chicken and bake for about 40 minutes. You may need to cover it with tin foil, but at 170 degrees, it’s unlikely to burn. Serve with rice or boiled spuds or even some crusty bread. Some sautéed or roast potatoes would eat really well with it.

Butterscotch apple pudding

Serves six

This is taken from an Annie Bell recipe with some tweaks to quantities and the methodology. I didn’t hold out too much hope for this one as it looks unimpressive before you put it in the oven. But the sauce did get soaked up by the pudding part and overall it made a very pleasant winter pudding. It is beyond easy to make, which is always a plus.

3 good-sized cooking apples

2 tsp Demerara sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

150g self-raising flour

80g caster sugar

80g butter

1 egg

100 ml milk

1 tsp vanilla essence

Zest of 1 lemon

50g currants

Butterscotch sauce

80g light muscavado sugar

30g butter

100ml water

Juice of 1 lemon

Preheat an oven to 180 degrees/gas mark four. Butter a gratin dish. To make the butterscotch sauce, heat all the sauce ingredients together in a small saucepan, bring to the boil and then set aside.

Peel, quarter and slice the apples. Arrange them in the gratin dish and sprinkle with the Demerara sugar and cinnamon.

In a food processor, whizz the flour, sugar and butter together – on pulse mode – until it resembles breadcrumbs. Break the butter into chunks before putting it in the food processor. Add the egg, milk, vanilla essence and lemon zest. It should be like a sloppy (but not wet) sponge mix. Stir the currants through and then pour the mix on to the apples, leaving a rim around the edge of the dish. Pour the butterscotch sauce over the pudding and it will dribble down into this outer ring. Bake for about 35-40 minutes. Serve while still warm with some vanilla ice cream.

See also www.itsa.ie