Come Christmas season, and all we want to do is soak in the holiday spirit with good food and good company! Here is a classic Christmas recipe from Jamie Oliver for Mulled Wine, a warm drink of spiced wine to keep you company through the cold evenings. It is a personal favorite of mine! Enriched with warming spices like cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg, mulled wine is a surefire crowd pleaser.
Wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas! May this festive season bring love and light into your lives.
INGREDIENTS:
- 2 fresh oranges
- 1 lemon
- 1 lime
- 1 apple, sliced
- 200 g caster sugar
- 6 whole cloves
- 1 cinnamon stick
- 1 whole nutmeg, for grating
- 1 vanilla pod
- 2 bottles red wine
- 2 star anise
PROCEDURE:
- Peel large sections of peel from the oranges, lemon and lime using a speed-peeler.
- Put the sugar in a large saucepan over a medium heat, add the sliced apple and pieces of peel and squeeze in the orange juice.
- Add the cloves, cinnamon stick and about 10 to 12 gratings of nutmeg.
- Halve the vanilla pod length-ways and add to the pan, then stir in just enough red wine to cover the sugar.
- Let this simmer until the sugar has completely dissolved into the red wine, then bring to the boil.
- Keep on a rolling boil for about 4 to 5 minutes, or until you get a beautiful thick syrup. The reason for this step is to create a wonderful flavor base by really getting the sugar and spices to infuse and blend well with the wine. It is important to make a syrup base first because it needs to be quite hot, and if you do this with both bottles of wine in there you’ll burn off the alcohol.
- When your syrup is ready, turn the heat down to low and add your star anise and the rest of the wine.
- Gently heat the wine and after around 5 minutes, when it is warm and delicious, ladle it into heatproof glasses and serve.
