As my loyal reader will recall, we had roast belly pork for New Year’s Eve dinner; it must have a hulking great porker, because not even our well known for trenchering friends could finish it off, and I put the remainder in the freezer.

I pulled it out of the freezer this morning, together with a tub of red cabbage.  I warmed it slowly in a shallow Le Creuset casserole with a lid, and we ate it and the cabbage accompanied by roast potatoes, and a gravy made from chopped shallots and sage, apple juice and veg stock.

I made three gallons of rhubarb wine before Christmas, from a *huge* tin of rhubarb from Makro.  The last of the rhubarb went in the freezer, so I dragged that out too this morning to make a crumble.

And as I looked in the fridge for the butter for the crumble topping, I spotted the last of the brandy butter I’d made for the festive season, of which, as usual, we’d used very little.  Liberated, possibly, by tasting the rhubarb wine before I racked it today, and indeed the apricot wine before I bottled it, I decided to use it up in the crumble topping; “how hard can it be?” I asked myself.

I  couldn’t tell you how much of other ingredients I used – I bunged it in the Magimix with brown sugar and flour and some porridge oats until it looked about right.  Put the rhubarb in a pyrex dish, sprinkled it with ground ginger and bunged the topping on top.  The brandy was barely discernable, but you could tell *something* was there.  I’m not saying I’d do it again, but at least the brandy butter is gone!