Halloween and Bonfire Night on your AGA

We're having a big family party this year to celebrate my twin brothers' birthday as well as Halloween and Bonfire Night. There will be thirteen of us in all! We've been planning out the evening and the food – which just works so well on our AGA Signature Induction that I wanted to share it.

While we're hanging cobwebs and carving pumpkins, the chilli will be slow cooking in the simmering oven. By the time the sparklers come out, supper will be ready and waiting for us in the warming oven.

Midday: a pot of chilli

We’ll begin with the chilli con carne, which goes on at around noon. Rather than mince, for a celebration like this I use whole pieces of brisket and pork shoulder. After an afternoon in the simmering oven the meat is rich and meltingly tender, and falls apart at the touch of a spoon.

Take your largest cast iron casserole and set it on the boiling plate with a little oil. Brown the meat, taking your time and letting it sit undisturbed until it has a dark crust, then set aside. In the same pot, soften a couple of chopped onions and a few cloves of garlic. Add plenty of diced peppers, some ground cumin and smoked paprika, a touch of cinnamon and chilli to taste. Then return the meat to the casserole and tip in your tomatoes – we use a mix of fresh and tinned.

Bring it all up to the boil, scraping the sticky bits from the bottom of the pot as it comes up. The simmering oven is a continuation oven, so the pot needs to be bubbling before it goes in. Then put the lid on, slide it onto the shelf of the simmering oven, and leave it alone. Six hours is about right, and an hour more won't hurt. As with any slow cooking on the AGA, you need less liquid than you might expect, because so little evaporates.

An hour or so before serving, stir in a few tins of drained black beans and pull the meat apart with two forks, right there in the pot. With children at the table, I keep the chilli itself fairly mild and put out some soured cream, along with a bowl of thinly sliced fresh chillies for the grown-ups.

Afternoon: ghosts and a spooky tiffin

With the chilli ticking away, the afternoon is free for decorating the house and making sweet treats. This is the part of the day the children love most.

We've been experimenting with marshmallow ghosts, which we spotted online – so much fun. You warm a marshmallow very quickly on a dry, hot surface, then lift it away so it pulls up into a wispy little ghost. We've been trying it on Bake-O-Glide on the simmering plate, and the results so far have been gloriously wonky. Two dots of icing for eyes, and they look wonderful on top of homemade or shop-bought cakes and biscuits. Of course, melted marshmallow gets very hot, so this is one to supervise closely!

The other sweet treat we're planning is tiffin, and again this is one the boys love to help with. Begin by crushing 300g of digestive biscuits. Then, in a pan on the simmering plate, gently melt 180g of butter with 2 tablespoons of light brown sugar and 2 tablespoons of golden syrup, and stir in the biscuits along with about 60g of cocoa powder. Add about 150g of sultanas and chopped glacé cherries, or whatever you fancy. Popcorn, chopped nuts and tiny marshmallows all work well. Press the mixture into a half-size roasting tin lined with baking paper, and leave it in the fridge for a few hours to set.

Whilst it's in the fridge firming up, melt 300g of milk chocolate in a heatproof bowl on the back of the AGA, and then pour it over the top. Melt 100g of white chocolate the same way and spoon it into a small food bag. Snip off a corner and pipe rings over the milk chocolate, from the middle outwards. Then take a cocktail stick and drag it from the outside in, all the way around. The rings pull into a spider's web. Back into the fridge for a few more hours, then cut it into squares and put a shop-bought edible spider on each one.

Late afternoon: a roasting oven full of potatoes

AGA jacket potatoes are legendary among AGA owners, and with good reason. The cast iron gives them a crisp skin that cracks when you cut into it, and the inside is beautifully light and fluffy. You don't need to do anything to them, except make sure they're scrubbed and completely dry before they go in. For a real treat, rub a little olive oil and Maldon salt into the skins before you pop them into the oven.

On our AGA Signature Induction (eR7i), I turn the roasting oven up to R9 and fill it with potatoes: one for each of the thirteen of us, plus a few spare for the especially hungry. They take about ninety minutes, give or take. Once they're done, they can move to the warming oven and sit there happily for a couple of hours, so the timing doesn't need to be exact.

Split open and filled with a knob of butter, a spoonful of chilli and a dollop of soured cream or a handful of grated cheese, they make about as good a Bonfire Night supper as I can imagine.

Evening: out to the bonfire

Once it gets dark, the coats and wellies will go on and we'll all head out to the bonfire, and watch as the children write their names in the air with sparklers. When it's time to eat, we'll pile back into a toasty kitchen filled with the delicious smell of chilli and take the pot straight to the table, alongside a big pile of hot potatoes. And later, of course, a birthday cake – with two names on it and a truly alarming number of candles.

That’s what I love most about cooking on the AGA for a night like this. All the work is done early, so when the evening comes, no one has to miss out on a thing. 

__

If you'd like to talk through how an AGA range cooker might work for your family, we're here to help. Give us a ring, send us an email, or come and visit one of our showrooms. Three generations of our family have cooked on and lived around these cookers, and we'll help you find the one that's right for you.

For more articles like this, do sign up to our newsletter using the form below. We'll be in touch every three weeks or so, with seasonal recipes, AGA tips and the occasional family story.