richard The plan is to try out as many festive toddies as we can in the run up to Christmas so that you, dear reader(s), will have a selection of Yuletide tipples to choose from come the big day. With only 12 drinking days to Christmas we realise we have set ourselves a daunting task, but hey, that’s the sort of selfless devotion to duty you’ve come to expect from us here at Yumblog. Bottoms up!
Preparation time: 1 minute
Cooking time: 5 minutes plus 15 minutes infusion time
Skill level: If you can manage to open a bottle of wine, you can make glogg
Ingredients
- 1 bottle of sub £5.00 red plonk – 750ml
- 6 cloves
- fresh ginger – sliced – 70g
- 10 cardamon pods – halved
- caster sugar – 85g
- dried apple slices* – handful
- 2 cinnamon sticks (very much optional at Yumblog Cottage)
- brandy – 40ml
- plus some flaked almonds and raisins to serve
Pour the wine into a saucepan and add all the other ingredients (apart from the brandy).
Heat and simmer gently for 5 minutes.
Turn off the heat, cover and allow to infuse for 15 minutes.
Add the brandy and serve with a few flaked almonds and raisins in the glass
Verdict: An excellent (and more potent) alternative to mulled wine. Ours didn’t taste much of cardamon, but that could have been because our pods were bought sometime in the last millennium.
Food: We had ours as a precursor to Raclette.
Entertainment: An accidental second viewing of ‘Surrogates’ on DVD. We spent the first hour trying to decide whether it’s familiarity was due to a previous viewing or the cliché-ridden storyline. Turned out to be both.
* Completely optional – we happened to have recently bought an unexpectedly expensive packet of the stuff at a Berlin Christmas market and wanted to use some before it got as old and stale as the cardamon pods. That said, once re-hydrated in booze, these apple slices made a very agreeable nibble.
