If food be the music of love, eat up!!

I had the boy up over for some of the festive, his pop-up at the Sun & 13 Cantons having finished, and some pretty damn fine food we all enjoyed, but, no pressure, I somehow felt I should at least make some offering in return. Very much a one-pot potentate, I hereby offer you 3 courses for idiots, or, at least, by an idiot.

1. The Retro Christmas Paste:
Ingredients: 2  packs of chicken livers, slab of butter, mushrooms to taste, peppercorns, tarragon and a glug of noilly prat.
I commend the fresh rather than frozen livers, as they do not then need a frantic micro to soften ahead of their molten butter bath, add shrooms and scissor cut tarragon, finally sloshing in the vermouth. Transfer to a deeper pan and whizz with a hand held blender. (This avoids the murder in a petshop splatters up the wall, that still mock me for that foolishness)
Into a bowl and pour over some more melted butter, for, largely, effect.
My best yet this year, the tarragon and vermouth being a big improvement on either port or brandy, against all odds.

2. Ham in Guinness:
Ham, Guinness, onions, carrots, celery, mustard, cranberry sauce.
A first for me, incited by all these trends for boiling up your meat in coke, Dr Peppers, 7-up and lord knows what else. Interweb was down so I couldn't see if anyone had perfected or patented this one before, or indeed, find a generic template to follow. O, well, so ham,  a gammon actually, straight out of the plastic into a big pan and in go 4 tins of of Liffey juice, nearly enough to cover, needing me to liberate 2 bottles of stout from my Bath Ales stash and add them to the brew. The veg went in for ballast and a good 4 hour simmer ensued, steaming up windows, glasses and tempers.
Oven smacked on to 150 and I liberated the unravelling ham onto a rack, before coating with wholegrain and english in equal measure, with some leftover cranberry sauce for either concealment or congealment. An hour at this heat and then cooling down overnight remarkably gave a stonkingly fibrous and kosher looking ham. (Kosher ham?)
Duly  torn apart by all and sundry with relish. Or, actually, without relish, as there was more than enough on the outside. Deffo one for next year.

3. Talisker custard:
Custard, Talisker.
A reprise from Skye several autums ago, with little to explain. The custard can be from a carton, the waitrose one being especially good, and the Talisker needn't even be Talisker, but seems and sounds so much better if it is. Heat and mix, in any order.
Jobs a good'un.