Cooking with chef Ronny   Christmas countdown! |15 November 2021

Chef Ronny

‘Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness’ – Auguste Escoffier.

I am always excited during this time of the year. We will soon enter the festive month of Christmas and New Year and as a chef I have always been busy during this time.

But what I have also noticed in recent years, the number of friends (and sometimes strangers) who call asking for advice about how to prepare a sumptuous meal for Christmas. Who doesn’t love a slow roasted suckling pig with baked potatoes with a millionaire’s salad?

Or a good old fashioned chicken curry with coconut milk, spiced with cinnamon leaves and scotch bonnet, accompanied with a cucumber salad and basmati rice? 

I love the gathering of friends and family to make our more traditional meals, crackling and blood sausage cooked on open fire. Over the years however, our traditional Christmas has seen its fair share of influence from other cultures. Turkey and Gammon are now on the menu…So food is not just a meal that we enjoy, food is about how we live and how we evolve as a society. Good food is the foundation of genuine happiness. So as we prepare for Christmas I will bring in the traditional but also introduce you to new interesting items that you can add to your list.

So, for now let’s prepare for Christmas. And yes, let’s start with zesting up your Christmas breakfast.

Panettone

Panettone is a rich Italian bread popular around Christmastime. It has become my favourite breakfast every Christmas. You can use it instead of traditional bread, as it will add a wonderful Christmas feel to the very first meal on Christmas day.

Ingredients

Milk room temperature a small cup

Butter room temperature 250/300g

Eggs 4

Vanilla extract 2 tbsp

Orange zest, Orange peel chopped

500g flour sieved

Small bowl of mixture of raisins, sultanas, candied fruits chopped

Caster sugar

Yeast 10g

Rum preferably dark

Icing sugar for dusting

Salt

Preparation

Soak your currants and raisins in a bowl with dark rum. This can be done a few days in advance. Just ensure that your rum covers all your dry ingredients.

Add egg yolks, eggs, vanilla, milk, sugar and whisk. This is your wet mixture.

Sieve your flour, add to mixture bowl along with yeast and few pinches of salt. Add wet mixture and allow the ingredients to mix in electric mixture. Add butter and allow it to mix further. Knead dough until it is stretchy and soft. Once done, place the dough in a bowl, and let it rise (in a warm place). This may take a few hours. Allowing it to rise is an important process.

Once done, fold the dry rum-soaked ingredients into the dough, along with lemon zest, orange peel, candied fruits, into mixture until it is evenly spread out. Panettone is a bread. So grease mold, place dough into a mold and set aside for the dough to take the form of the mold. This is how you get the Panettone shape. Any oblong-shaped cake mold will do the trick.

Preheat oven to 180 degrees C. Bake Panettone until fully cooked. Use a wooden stick to check if middle of bread has been cooked properly. (Tip: The Wooden stick test – if the stick comes our sticky, your bread is not fully cooked).

Once done remove Panettone and allow to rest. Dust with icing sugar.

You can add this to your breakfast buffet to add a nice Christmas feel. This can also be served alone, add a bit of marmalade and fruits. You can also use if for afternoon tea or anytime you feel like a delicious slice of bread. Enjoy!

Contributed