I'd be lying if I said I didn't get disproportionately excited about christmas and christmas food. I've been hosting xmas at my house for 3 years and cooking the food for several years prior to that, having inherited the duty due to my enthusiasm for the task. I haven't had any disasters but I don't think anyone would disagree if I said that each year I'm getting a bit better at it.
The ideal is to get the entire meal to the table, hot, before 3pm and without a single frustrated outburst or stress-induced teary argument. Difficult, but not impossible.
This post is to tie together all the other ones, each relating to an element of xmas dinner or xmas in general. You might think there are a few things missing, each family has their own traditional accompaniments, but partly that's because we had a small scale xmas this year so I didn't bother with stuffing or redcurrant sauce. I bought the pigs-in-blankets ready made too.
Spicy Glazed Ham
Roast Goose
Rich Gravy
Perfect Roast Potatoes
Bread Sauce
Vegetables
Trifle
Bubble and Squeak
I've got my inspiration from various cookbooks, from my family, friends and just from doing it year on year. Below is a list of the books I've turned to time and again in recent Christmasses:
Nigella Christmas ~ Nigella Lawson
The Good Housekeeping Cookbook (1998)
Sunday Lunch ~ Gordon Ramsay
Christmas dinner isn't complete without a full array of delicious, seasonal vegetables. These are really easy, hardly a recipe at all, but I know I'm often interested in what other families cook for their dinner so I thought I would include them.
I also know there is interest from people new to the UK, who would like to create a British style christmas dinner for the first time but aren't entirely sure what it involves - so I thought I'd be comprehensive in my xmas posts!
Seasonally speaking, root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips, beetroot and swede, plus brassicas like brussel sprouts, as well as broccoli are all at their lovely best right now. I'm particularly fond of parsnips myself, my Mum loves beetroot, my Dad loves carrots and my husband is a broccoli fiend, so each and every one has to make it onto the christmas table.
Unlike a lot of other families, I haven't messed around with our veg too much. Partly this is because my Mum absolutely hates sweet flavours in savoury food, so the traditional honey or maple glazes are right out, and she's frankly not fond of nuts like almonds, pine nuts or chestnuts either, so souped up brussels wouldn't be popular.
I also don't want the veg to outshine the goose or the gravy, they are supporting actors and showering them in gifts of honey / cumin / sesame seeds / balsamic vinegar or any of the other common props won't help the stars of the show to shine!
I think the most important bit is the cutting - trying to make the parsnips and carrots fairly uniform in thickness before roasting them, to avoid burned tips or undercooked tops.
The beetroot needs to be pre-boiled in a large saucepan of water for a good hour until tender, before skinning and slicing into wedges.
Roast the beetroot in a separate tin if you can, to avoid the colour bleeding into the parsnips and carrots, which can go in together. Season with salt and pepper and coat in olive oil, mixing with your hands to ensure good coverage.
These root veg all take about 45 minutes to an hour until they're ready, but keep an eye on the beetroot; remove it and cover in foil if it looks like it's going to burn.
Swede needs to be peeled and chopped into inch square cubes, then boiled until soft and mashed with plenty of butter, salt and pepper.
Sprouts and broccoli only need the lightest of steaming or boiling with a small amount of water, keep the crunch - it's lovely.
Go to the Christmas Dinner (2011) post
The weather recently has put me off fresh, lettucy salads so when I finalised my A&C order for this week, I opted to skip the little gem lettuces - alas the substitute was broccoli.
There are some vegetables I find easier to cook with than others, I simply have more ideas for what to do with them. The ones I feel I'm limited in inspiration for include broccoli, or more accurately calabrese. I don't hate it, not at all, I just find it hard to incorporate into my daily made-up recipes. Maybe that's because it has quite a strong flavour, can be easy to over or undercook and the texture doesn't always marry well with other ingredients.
I did have an idea this time though, as I'd ordered a lovely chicken to be roasted on Sunday. Remember my butternut yorkshire? No, probably not, but the point is that I made a little mental leap, from toad in the hole, to butternut squash in the hole, to a giant yorkshire pudding filled with broccoli. Tastes better than it sounds, trust me.
Ok, so first raise your chicken. I meant to write roast just then but, actually, raising the chicken is a really good point so that's a freudian slip worth expanding on. Crappily treated chicken should make people feel bad, not just as they buy it (thus fueling the horrific cut-price poultry industry) but also as they eat it: dry, bland, chewy and stuffed full of unneccessary additives.
Once you have a chicken which led a life that you aren't ashamed of, then you can roast it. I don't remember where I picked up this tip, but stuffing the chicken's cavity with a lightly microwaved peirced onion or lemon helps to keep it beautifully moist.
I do know where I picked up my other tricks though: my Mum. She taught me to separate the skin and stuff the space in between with garlic, herbs and butter. She also taught me to cook the chicken upside down for all but the last thirty minutes of cooking, ensuring that you get wonderful, juicy meat and a nice crispy skin as well.
So, prepare your chicken and pop it in to roast upside down. If you got giblets with the bird, pop them in a saucepan with a couple of bay leaves, peppercorns, carrot, onion and celery with a litre of water, turn the heat on and leave it to simmer away into a nice gravy base.
Make up your batter: a teacup of flour, a teacup of milk, a pinch of salt and one or two eggs depending on your tastes. Make a paste with the egg, a little milk and the flour first, then make it into a batter by adding the rest of the milk slowly. Leave it be for a while, as resting makes better batter!
After the chicken is about half done, pop two companion trays in with it. One with oil in - to heat it up so that the yorkshire will sizzle - and the other one lined with greaseproof paper, for the roasties.
I usually cut my potatoes into thirds if they are quite large potatoes, or on the diagonal if they are small ones. I left the skins on because I like them. This method came to me from the lovely Chef Darius: drop them into vigorously boiling, salted water for literally just 2 minutes then drain. I usually shake them in the pan to scuff them up a bit too.
When there's only about half an hour left, heat up some oil in a frying pan until really hot. Add the potatoes to the hot oil and turn them over in it until utterly coated. Then turn your chicken right side up and salt the skin. Add the potatoes and oil to the greaseproof paper tin, mix small broccoli florets to the batter and pop your yorkshire into the other one. Thanks Darius!
I also had some sweetcorn this week, so I put them into a foil parcel with butter, salt and pepper and shoved them in the oven too.
At this point, it's worth going for a nice sit down in the living room for half an hour. Preferably get someone else to lay the table and turn the spuds after fifteen minutes, if not you'll have to do it and that's no way to relax.
After the last half an hour, take the chicken out and let it rest on the side for 10-15 minutes while you make up the gravy. Leave the yorkshire and sweetcorn in the oven, but turn it off so it's just kept warm, not cooking. Put the spuds on kitchen towel to drain off some of the oil.
Gravy is easy, add some of the stock you made earlier (or just boiling water) to the chicken tray, sat over a low hob. Stir and scrape vigorously to get all of the residue off the pan, the water should turn a beautiful gravy colour. At this point, if you can be bothered, you can add pre-fried onions and garlic or cornflour for thickening. None of that is necessary though, I didn't and it tasted wonderful anyway.
Serve up with great aplomb and gorge yourself silly, safe in the knowlege that at least the broccoli is good for you.
Spicy Glazed Ham 
