Christmas Dinner: Part 4, Christmas Veg

A vegetarian's annual palm-off. And a meat eater's annual over-eating relief.

1)As these take longest to cook, start with them. Peel and chop 2 small butternut squash and place them in a roasting tin with some unpeeled garlic cloves (they roast and go sweet and soft, so you can crush them as you eat) and oil to coat.

2)Peel and chop some parsnips into long strips, and de-stalk them if they're really woody. Put them in a tin with some goose fat, just to make it harder to be vege in my family, and peel and chop up about 2 bramley apples per kg of parsnips for extra tanginess, as parsnips can often be too sweet and cloying. Drizzle with 2 tbsp runny honey and sprinkle with salt. I would even maybe add some lemon juice to serve in hindsight.

3)Roast them both for about 45 minutes at 180 ish  (it can just roast with everything else so don't fret about the temperature) turning them a few times.

4)For the much underrated sprout,  ensure you don't overcook them as that's what makes them have a vile texture and a farty taste. Steam them for about 4 minutes, testing them as you go. In the meantime,  toast about 100g walnuts and the same of cooked, peeled chestnuts until toasty and fragrant, then toss the sprouts in. Cook the sprouts until they go crispy too, then loosen everything with a generous drizzle of extra virgin olive oil.

P.S: I have no prejudice against vegetarians, I love the creativity of their meals and quite often cook vege food.

Christmas Dinner: Part 3, Roast Potatoes and Mash

Double carbohydrates are good. I don't care what y'all healthy-eaterists have to yak about it.
If you don't want to do potatoes both ways, you don't have to, but obviously the roasts are a bit of a must for a roast dinner.
I read up on all sorts of revolutionary ways to roast potatoes, but for me, this one, the way my whole family make it, is simple and very effective.
1)Boil some chunked, peeled spuds (boil them by having them in cold water, and bringing them up to boiling) until you can get a knife through it, but they shouldn't be soft. About 10 minutes.
2)In the meantime, put a few tablespoons of goose fat (or vegetable oil if you can't find goose fat, but it really does add goldenness and extra flavour) in a roasting tin and let it melt in the hot oven.
3)Drain the potatoes, return half to the pan and give the other half a brief shake, so the edges just start crumbling. This gives extra surface area for the salt and fat to cling to. Salt and fat. Salt and fat! SALT AND FAT! YOU WILL DIE MWUHAHAHAHAHA
4)Tumble the spuds into the goose fat, season generously with salt and pepper and dried thyme. I felt thyme was a loved herb that's been a little underused this Christmas so I included it here. Any Provencal herb like rosemary would do just fine. Spoon the goose fat over and roast until golden and crisp, about 45 minutes.
5)With the remaining potatoes, boil them for about another 10 minutes until very soft, then give them a good mash with some milk, pepper, salt and a fat such as olive oil, but you know you want butter. Salt and fat. Salt and- no just joking. Mash well, whilst also giving it a good fold and lift the potatoes up and down a lot to whip some air into them. Put them in a serving dish and a lovely touch then is to perk it up in peaks with a fork, purely for aesthetic value. It's obviously not essential and not very wise either as it makes it go cold faster, but doing this makes it look so Christmassy somehow.

Christmas Dinner: Part 2, Gravy, Bread Sauce and Cranberry Sauce

This is obviously the 'sauce' section of the meal, and something extremely important, I think in bringing every element of the dinner together.
I won't put a recipe for the cranberry sauce, as all I did was mix a bought jar of it with the zest of an orange, but, to be honest,  it doesn't really need it.
1)For the stock which will later become the gravy, place the giblets from the turkey to a large saucepan, add a celery stick, a quartered, peeled onion, a halved carrot , a cinnamon stick, about 4 cloves, a star anuse,  a good handful of peppercorns and cover everything in about 2 litres of water. Cover, and simmer very gently while you do everything else. Do this just after you put the turkey in the oven. If your turkey had no giblets, just use the same amount of chicken stock.
2)Leave the juices from the turkey in the pan, and put some heat under it from the stove. Whisk in 3 tbsp plain flour until as smooth as you can get it, then gradually incorporate the stock and porcini mushrooms soaking liquid until it's as thick as you want it. I strained mine, but you don'the have to.
3)To make the bread sauce,  stud a peeled onion with a handful of cloves, then place it in 1 pint of milk and a bay leaf. Bring it to a very gentle boil,  then switch it off and allow everything to infuse for a while.
4)Bring it back up to the heat, then gradually stir in about 175g breadcrumbs. Whenever I have stale bread, I blitz it and freeze the crumbs in bags, they don't have to thaw before use. When it's a bit thicker than it should be, season with salt and pepper and some freshly ground nutmeg and loosen it with a few tablespoons of cream.

Christmas Dinner: Part 1, Turkey, Stuffing and Pigs in Blankets

This is the first of what will be a long series on what I cooked (with help obviously ) for Christmas Dinner. It was my first and biggest meal I've headed on my own, so it didn't go smoothly, but in the end, I was very pleased with the final result as was everyone else.
In terms of the food itself, the meal took a decidedly  Italian edge, with plenty of English traditions mixed in. This section is what I think of as the 'meat' section, although it is not the only non-vegetarian stage. In my opinion, the turkey was hardest to do, but it came out really nice; I was afraid I'd cooked it to death but it was very juicy and quite orange scented and fragrant from it's fillings. Pretty darn good.
1)Take your turkey out of the fridge about an hour before you cook it so it can come to room temperature and preheat the oven to 170 degrees. As the rest of the country is preheating their ovens too, you have to give plenty of time for the oven to come to temperature.
2)Remove the giblets from your turkey and keep them for the stick.
3)Very gently ease the skin from the breast of the turkey and, using your hand, spread butter all underneath the skin. Add a few leaves of sage and rosemary under the skin too. In the cavity, fill it with a quartered lemon and half a large orange, plus a quartered peeled onion, two bay leaves and a broken cinnamon stick.
4)Prepare the stuffing. Soak 25g of dried porcini mushrooms in some warm water. Keep In the meantime, gently heat 100g dried cranberries in 3tbsp of Marsala until it's all soaked up. Saute an onion and 5 cloves of minced garlic until nice and soft, then tumble in 200g chopped chestnut mushrooms and cook that until soft and reduced. Put it in the food processor with 200g pre cooked and peeled chestnuts and blitz until finely chopped, but not a really fine paste. Mix it with your cranberries, and 450g sausage meat and plenty of salt and pepper. Mix it until fully combined but don't over mix as it can go tough. Add an egg if it's very crumbly, but you shouldn't have to.
5)With about 1/3 of the stuffing, turn the bird on it's legs and stuff the bird in the skin of the neck end very loosely. It may explode in the oven and escape, but that's not a problem.  Secure the skin with two skewers.
6)Cover the turkey with bacon, and place in the oven for 2 hours 45 minutes, then remove excess liquid from the cavity, take off the bacon, and bake it for another 45 minutes, basting regularly.
7)To check if it's done, pierce the thickest part of the meat and the juices should run clear. Shake off any excess liquid, and rest it upside down so the juices can drip through and moisten the breast meat.
8)To make the pigs in blankets, chop some good chipolata sausages in half, and wrap them in strips of pancetta or just smoked bacon and bake at 170-80 degrees until crisp. About 20 minutes should do.

Christmas Day Breakfast- Smoked Salmon and Scrambled Eggs

You gotta have a good breakfast any Christmas. Most families go for a full English, but for us, this fancy salmon and scrambled eggs is perfect.
1)Whisk in a bowl, 3 eggs per person with a splash of milk and a little butter. Season well with salt and pepper.
2)Transfer to a frying pan with butter in it and cook, stirring constantly until clumps of egg start to form. When it's just a tiny bit less gooey than you want, take it off the heat and transfer to your serving bowl. It will keep cooking in it's own heat. Add 100g smoked salmon, roughly torn per person and gently toss in the eggs.
3)Serve piping hot, with some toasted home-made bread, salt and pepper and chopped chives or dill.

Basic Iced Vanilla Biscuits

There's always a time for simplicity, and it's all the time.

I thought about initially, having a complex piped coloured icing, but I don't really like garish colours and frustratingly delicate piping, so I simply spoon on the icing and sprinkle on silver edible ball bearings in a reassuringly juvenile fashion.

1)In a large bowl beat 125g soft unsalted butter with 100g caster sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in one egg (it's useful to crack the egg in a bowl first so you can remove any shell easily) with 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Bean paste is great as you can see the little black dots. Fold in 200g of plain flour with half a teaspoon of baking powder and a pinch of salt. Mix it to form a soft crumble, then use your hands to very gently press it to a ball of dough. Do not overwork, as that makes it tough. Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge for a good half an hour to firm up.

2)Roll the dough out to a 1/2 cm thickness, (do not have any kind of ruler within reach- we're talking very roughly speaking) dust the cutters of your choice in flour and boldly gouge out a shape then place it on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Part of the ritual of this is getting as many shapes as possible out of this lump of sun tan dough- avoid handling it too much between go's and don't knead in any extra flour. Eventually you will hit, what bakers like to call the trawl, where you have such a tiny sheet of dough left you won't be able to protract another shape; to solve this I pick little nuggets of biscuit and scatter them on the sheet which of course become the crunchiest, darkest and best biscuits of the batch. This dough makes an average-sized batch of biscuits of about 16, but obviously this depends on the cutter used.

3)Bake at 180 degrees, for about 10-15 minutes, but start checking at about 8 minutes, as they can overcook very suddenly. When golden all over, take them off the sheet with a palette knife and let them cool on a wire rack.

4)Prepare the glace icing- In a bowl, combine 300g icing sugar with water- go a tablespoon at a time until you have a thick but malleable icing. If you want to go in for food colouring, which I certainly don't sneer at, I would highly recommend going for the thick gooey paste which comes in tubs or squeezy tubes which will last you a lifetime because you need only use a tiny dab to dye the icing resplendently.
5)Using a teaspoon to dollop on the icing and the back of it to smooth the top. Return it to the wire rack with a board underneath it to catch any drips and sprinkle with whatever you like, but I just went with silver ball bearings. I have to admit, having not bothered with sieving icing sugar recently, I have noticed that the difference it makes is minimal if completely inconspicuous- perhaps it's time to give that sieve an early retirement?

Christmas Eve Sausage and Broccoli Pasta

This is adapted from my Great Uncle's recipe, and he's an amazing Italian based cook. The dish is extremely simple, like all Italian pasta sauces, it contains few ingredients that still really add fresh, fast flavour. The sauce also doesn't drench the pasta, Italians always keep the flavour of the pasta standing out. As a pre-Christmas dinner, it works by being very decadent but still quite light, so something like this- a light pasta dinner really works.
1)Stir-fry some broccoli chopped into thin florets, in really good extra virgin olive oil for about 8 minutes, until they're green and softened, but a little brown on the edges. You could boil them with the pasta, but stir-frying them imparts more texture and a subtle nuttiness.
2)Cook the pasta. I only had fusilli, but a long flat pasta like tagliatelle would have been a much better shape. Salt the water very well, an old Italian saying is to have the water as salty as the sea, then boil for about 10 minutes, until soft but not mushy- al dente. Reserve a few tablespoons of the water you cooked it in.
2)Remove the broccoli from the pan and cook some sausages. Don't just chunk them up, get your hands dirty (no innuendo intended) and really squash out the sausage meat, so you get better flavour and texture. You don't need to oil the pan as the meat has enough fat.  Cook until completely done then briefly fry 4 cloves of minced garlic until they lose their raw fire but don't burn as they can do so easily. Once the garlic's done, turn off the heat and pour in 125ml of double cream. Warm it through with the heat of the meat, until the cream starts to be absorbed and goes a rich yellow colour. Grate in some fresh nutmeg to taste. You could use pre-ground but the taste isn't as good. Season well with salt and pepper.
3)Toss the sauce into your drained pasta and broccoli, with some of the pasta cooking water. The starch in the water helps the sauce cling to each bit of pasta and thicken. You must do this for any pasta sauce, even if you're just dressing the pasta with virgin olive oil. Let it stand for a few minutes so the pasta can soak up any more flavour and serve.