I did not take this photo
This is a really great thing to make if you are contributing to a Christmas lunch or dinner, as bread sauce is a hassle and how many people make it alongside everything else? (Don’t answer that). This is delicious and, if it’s the only thing you’re making, not too much of a bother to do.
Aromatic brown bread sauce
This amount will do for about 10 people
1 large onion
150g wholemeal bread, crusts on
6 cloves
4 cardamom pods
some nutmeg
salt and pepper
75g butter
900ml milk – whole or semi
300ml double cream
Preheat your oven to 130C.
1 Chop your onion up really small.
2 Tear the bread into small pieces – about the size of a 50p coin and put in an ovenproof dish with the onion
3 Put the cloves and the cardamom into a small piece of muslin or cotton, tie with string and chuck into the dish. You could just put these free into the sauce if you don’t have a piece of muslin or any kind of substitute but you need to make sure you get them all out again, otherwise you might find yourself biting into a clove or a cardamom pod, which isn’t nice.
4 Grate over a generous sprinkling of nutmeg, salt and pepper and dot with butter. Mix the milk and the cream together and pour over the bread and onion. Cover tightly with foil or a lid and then cook for 2 hours(!). Stir once or twice during cooking.
Good idea. Cranberry sauce is even easier to make and everyone is always impressed that you’ve bothered.
God, yes it’s SO easy. And you can avoid it being too sweet as well. My grandmother, who cooked appallingly, always ‘nobly’ did cranberry sauce at Christmas and I was always impressed that she produced something edible. Only recently did I discover that even Granny would have been hard-pressed to cock it up. Bread sauce she would have burnt, though, for sure.
I quite like cloves, or maybe a clove, but I’ll remove the cardamoms, and will definitely be using this method. Thank you.