Happy New Year. Today you find me making Champagne Jellies, a good palette cleanser
and an excellent dish for a celebratory dinner. For this recipe you will need...
Champagne
Sugar
and gelatine
This
is a simple but effective recipe. The trick is keeping the Champagne bubbles
in your jelly and that means keeping your Champagne cold.
This bottle has been in ice and salt for nearly two hours. If it was water it would be frozen.
I'm now going to melt my sugar in a little bit of the Champagne
and
then after
melt in my gelatine.
Now that my sugar is melted I will add the gelatine.
Packet gelatine has made making jellies and blancmanges so much easier.
When I first started I had to make calves' foot jelly. That means boiling them, then letting
them cool then straining and then clarifying and then reducing before you could add the flavours.
As this only has sugar and Champagne this would have been impossible.
Packet gelatine has been about for ten years or so. But I still insist that the girls learn
how to make calves' foot jelly. It is one of the modern conveniences that I allow in my kitchen.
I'm now going to get Sylvia to strain this and then we'll let it cool.
I'm now going to put the rest of my Champagne in with my gelatine mix.
If you wanted to set fruit in the jelly then you would need to let
it set a little thicker so the fruit didn't drop to the bottom.
But I'm only using small moulds so I'm going to pour it straight away.
Champagne is expensive and comes from France.
Mr Strutt loves it. He was telling me that in the 18th century the French really tried
hard to make wine without any fizz. They thought that the bubbles were a mistake.
But the British really liked it. Since then the French winemakers have decided
sparkling wine isn't a mistake and have also worked out how to make more robust bottles.
These now need to set so I'm going to put them in the refrigerator, the ice cave.
Now the jellies are ready to be turned out. As these are in copper moulds and now ceramic
they should turn out with a quick dip in hot water or being wrapped around with a hot cloth.
These will look quite elegant on this plate and will sparkle
in the candlelight of the dessert table.
Some houses have gaslight and I believe Hatfield House has electricity.
But here we have oil and candles.
I try to put on the table things that will work with the candles
like this plate with its gilt edge,
these jellies of course, along with the silverware that the family and friends will be using.
It'll be as if they're having their own little fireworks display at their table.
Now these are just small jellies. I've also made a larger one.
As this is a big meal I'm going to repeat the dish along the table.
There we are. Champagne Jelly.