Lovely things to make and give

Call me old fashioned or plain old bonkers, but I’d take a bottle of good olive oil over a scented candle any day. When feeling down and out, I am the most grateful recipient of chicken noodle soup – the Jewish penicillin that I top up with lots of garlic and ginger to help ward off evil spirits (and practically all human contact). And although flowers are exceptionally pretty to receive and gaze at, I am a sucker for something to munch on.

My very good pal and nutritional cook, Susan Jane White, was my go-to food fairy all summer long, dropping potions and condiments on my doorstep to help me back on my feet. The generosity and care it takes to make someone a gift is seriously undervalued and I used to weep with gratitude every time I saw her dashing off, post-food parcel delivery.

So, what about edible gifts you might fancy having a crack at yourself? Edible gifts are a winner, because if you know that someone likes food, then your gift will definitely be appreciated and used. Now don’t get me wrong. I said I like receiving these kinds of gifts, not making them. Are you mad?

And boy, there's certainly plenty of inspiration out there. Seaweed might not strike you at first as an obvious choice for gifts, but Irish writer Sally McKenna's wonderful book Extreme Greens offers brilliant tips for dishes using seaweed and, if you're so inclined, for homemade cosmetics too. And Sunday Telegraph columnist Diana Henry has written a book Salt Sugar Smoke that is practically guaranteed to get you making jam and pickling vegetables like some crazed Victorian kitchen maid.

But the idea does put some people off, mainly because they imagine it’s time-consuming – and rightly so. It is time consuming, which is why they mean so much. So, this year I was determined to come up with some recipes that take hardly any time at all to put together, but can still quietly impress.

In the end I settled for a homemade mustard (almost farcically simple), a super fast green sauce and a tangy, pretty tangerine granita. Both the mustard and the sauce are the perfect companions to leftover ham and turkey, but you could also try the sauce with cold lamb and the mustard with hot, bubbling cheese on toast. Served in champagne flutes with a froth of Prosecco on top, the granita feels very Lauren Bacall altogether: cool, classy and just that little bit different.

dkemp@irishtimes.com
Food cooked and styled by Domini Kemp and Gillian Fallon