Christmas 2007

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas.

Merry Christmas!

I'm sitting here watching The Snowman with a cup of tea before the day properly begins and I wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas. I hope you have a wonderful day!

The Biggest Gig of the Year

So it’s almost upon us guys; the big one, the Christmas Lunch. For us foodies who love to cook this is it, the most important meal of the year. Are you ready? Are you nervous? Do you have a plan? You most certainly don’t need military precision but a little bit of advance planning will take away the stress and make things so much easier for you on the day.

I’ve heard it said that Christmas lunch is just a roast dinner and although that’s true to an extent it’s also the once-a-year family feast that creates months of anticipation and much expectation. And what's more, it usually involves what is probably the trickiest bird to cook well - the turkey. So quite understandably it often causes much worry and stress for the cook. But having said all that, with good guidelines and good planning it really doesn't have to be difficult.

In order to avoid all the stress, which I too have experienced, and to make sure my Christmas lunch is a feast to remember, for the right reasons, I’ve taken note of tips and guidelines from different sources over the years: Jamie; Delia; family; the internet, and have also drawn on my own experience to come up with a plan that I’m fairly confident with. So I thought I’d post some tips in order to maybe help someone out there (I always have a turkey on Christmas day, so these tips are based around that). But really the best advice I can give you, other than to plan in advance, is to relax, pour yourself a glass of wine or champers, and most importantly enjoy – it’s Christmas after all!

Timings

As with any roast dinner, timing is everything. You want your meat to be resting while you make your gravy and the vegetables to be all cooked and ready to serve along with everything else at the same time. In the midst of the buzzing activity on Christmas day: relatives arriving; glasses to be topped up; excited children running around, and generally being pulled in every direction, it’s more important than ever to know what needs to be done when and to keep on top of everything. Here’s where a timetable comes in. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it just needs to be clear and understandable to you.

The first thing to do is calculate your cooking time based on the weight of your turkey. I use Delia’s timings and they’ve not let me down yet. Once you have this decide when you want to serve lunch and work backwards from there in order to find out when the turkey needs to go into the oven. Remember to add on the resting time (for the bird, not you I’m afraid!); about 45 minutes. Resting is very important as it allows the meat to relax and the juices to go back into it, leaving it nice and succulent. So, if you want to serve lunch at 3pm and your turkey needs a total of 4 hours cooking time it needs to go into the oven at 10:15am (to give 4 hours cooking plus 45 minutes resting time). So you've worked out when the turkey needs to go in, now write that down!

You can now start working out when your vegetables and accompaniments need to go on, again working backwards. So how long will they take to cook? Ok, now work backwards from your serving time to give you the time they need to go on. Write it down. Now you’re building up your timetable.

Preparing the Turkey

On the advice of the experts I now buy a Norfolk Bronze turkey, which is as good as it's promise; succulent and full of flavour. When you collect your turkey ask the butcher to remove the wishbone, as this will make it easier to carve, and make sure he gives you the giblets for the all important giblet stock to make the gravy with. If the giblets are in a bag inside the turkey remove them and refrigerate them separately.

To make things quicker and easier on the day, prepare the turkey the night before. The way I do this is to season a whole packet of butter and put most of it under the skin, which I separate from the breast with my hands, carefully to avoid tearing the skin. I put the rest of the butter over the legs, which can become dry. Next I put a halved lemon and lots of herbs (such as rosemary, thyme, bay leaves) in the cavity and finally I lay streaky bacon over the breast. It’s really important that the turkey is at room temperature when you cook it, otherwise the timings will be all off and you risk undercooking it. I therefore follow Delia’s advice and take the turkey out of the fridge before I go to bed on Christmas Eve.

Cooking the Turkey

As I said earlier, I use Delia’s timings. The turkey gets a hot blast of heat at the beginning, and is then cooked more gently, with a final blast at the end to brown it up. I cover the turkey with foil and remove it during the final blast of heat. I also remove the bacon from the breast at this stage, so that the breast can brown up evenly.

It's very important to remember that all ovens vary and the cooking times are only a guide. With a turkey it's more important than ever to check that it's properly cooked and to give it longer if it needs it, no matter what anyone's timings say. The way to check that it's cooked is to make sure the juices run clear. You can do this by piercing a fat part of the turkey near the legs with a skewer and pressing down on the skin until the juices run. You can also lift the turkey up and let the juices run out to check them. Alternatively cut into the join between the leg and the breast and look in the space in between, where juices gather. Other ways of checking that the turkey is cooked is to pull on the leg and see if it has give in it - it should be easy to pull away from the breast, or to put a metal skewer right into the breast and check it comes out hot.

The Roast Potatoes

My mouth is watering just thinking about these, the gems of the roast dinner. Here’s my guide for good roast potatoes, and for Christmas day nothing but goose fat will do. I’ll peel the potatoes on Christmas Eve (or rather, I’ll ask Rob to!) and keep them covered in cold water so there’s one less job to do on the big day.

The Gravy

My guide for making gravy is here. For Christmas day I throw 2 or 3 each of carrots, celery stalks and halved onions into the roasting tray with the turkey, which gives a wonderful base for the gravy. The stock I use is giblet stock, which I make on Christmas Eve, using Delia's recipe.

Serving

Now, in the days leading up to the big day, is the time to check that you have enough serving plates, glasses, a big enough roasting tray, etc. Think about what equipment and serving dishes you'll need and make sure they're easily accessible.

One of the biggest mistakes I made one year was not to heat the plates. For one reason or another we were late sitting down to lunch and by the time the turkey and vegetables were passed around the table and put onto the cold plates dinner was warm, not hot. I always make a point now of heating the plates. Some plates can go into the oven to heat through, but your best china can’t. In this case simply fill the sink with hot water 10 minutes or so before lunch and put them in. They’ll heat through beautifully. Another thing you can do to keep the food hot is to cover it with foil once you’ve put it in serving dishes, and remove the foil just before you take the food to the table. The turkey will retain its heat well, but to be sure cover it foil and then a tea towel while it’s resting.

Useful resources

FSA guidelines

Delia Smith’s advice

It's Starting to Look a lot like Christmas

The Christmas magic is really in the air now, you can feel it. The shops are bustling with people buying final gifts and food for the holiday. There’s excitement on the forums and Rudolfs and elfs are being flung around on Facebook. No you didn’t misread that. I’ve laid marzipan over my abomination of a Christmas cake and I’ve bought brandy butter, and a slab of pancetta from the butcher. The preparations are well underway.

Tonight’s dinner was roast leg of pork, mouth-wateringly succulent and flavoursome, washed down with a fruity, full-bodied red wine. Let the feasting begin!

December Newsletter

Just a note to let you know I've just sent the December newsletter out. If you haven't already signed-up to the newsletter and would like a copy you can sign up by entering your email address in the box on the left-hand menu, and I'll send a copy out to you.

A Piece of Cake?

How are you getting on with your Christmas preparations? I’m feeling fairly relaxed, but then I have the luxury of having this week and next off work, so I can potter about at my own pace getting things ready. I’ll be stocking up on goodies, wrapping final presents, cleaning and tidying, baking and generally enjoying the Christmas magic.

I’ll also be icing the cake which I’ve been lovingly feeding with brandy over the past weeks, but to be honest I’m not sure what it’s going to taste like. Here’s where I come clean and tell you I overcooked it (sob!). This was the first Christmas cake I’ve ever made and I have to say I was a little anxious about the length of cooking time and the instruction not to open the oven door until after four hours. Maybe I should have trusted my instincts and checked on it towards the end, but then would it have sunk?

I must confess I didn’t wrap the tin in brown paper as the recipe said, as I had none. Would that have made a difference? I’m not sure. To be honest I think the real culprit was my oven and the fact that I had it on fan assistance but didn’t compensate by turning the temperature down a little. The dial can be a little tricky on my oven so I may have even had the temperature a little too high. And herein lies the problem. A recipe can specify a temperature and length of cooking time, but every oven is different so the results will vary. This just highlights the fact that there is so much more to cooking than following a recipe. It isn’t really about following instructions to the letter; it's so much more instinctive than that.

Oh well, never mind, maybe when I cover the cake with icing no one will notice, or maybe by that point they will have had too much of the Christmas cheer to notice! There’s certainly enough in the cake!

A Quick Update on the Forums

Just a quick note to let you know that you can now view the 'A Slice of Cherry Pie' discussion forums without having to log in, making them even easier to browse.

The forums have got off to a great start. We have 65 registered users and between us we've posted 508 messages since the forums opened on 11th November! We now have a Resources section containing forums on Cookbooks & Television shows, Websites and Tools & Techniques, as well as forums on eating out in London, the UK and the rest of the world, British Food & Seasons, World Cuisine and Beverages. We even have our own Wine Bar for discussions about anything and everything else.

Pop in now for a chat!

O’ Sweet Partridge

I’ve found a good source of game birds from this small Kentish farm shop and I’m very much enjoying trying different ones. I picked up two partridges on my last visit which I stuffed with butter, garlic and shallots, wrapped them in bacon and roasted them in a hot oven. And oh my, they were good. Don’t let the small size fool you; these tiny little birds are big on flavour. If you haven’t tried partridge before you really must; and you’re in for a real treat.

Roast Partridge

Ingredients
2 partridges (1 per person)
2 peeled shallots
2 peeled garlic cloves
2 rashes of bacon
A couple of knobs of butter

1. Remove any internal organs from the birds.

2. Put a knob of butter, a garlic clove and a shallot into the cavity of each bird, and then wrap a rasher of bacon over each one.

3. Roast at 230c for 30 minutes, or until the juices run clear, turning them over half way through cooking.

Serves 2

My Little Gingerbread Men

OK so they may not be the prettiest gingerbread men in the world, but they certainly taste good. I used this recipe from waitrose.com and I was very pleased with the result. One word of warning though: the dough is tricky to use as it breaks up easily so you need to treat it with care.

The 2007 Food Blog Awards

Is it really that time again? It would seem so! Time to nominate your favourite food blogs in the annual Food Blog Awards. This year's categories are:

1. Best Food Blog – Chef

2. Best Food Blog – City

3. Best Drink Blog Covering Drinks (Alcohol/Non-Alcohol)

4. Best Food Blog - Family/Kids

5. Best Food Blog – Group

6. Best Food Blog – Humor

7. Best Food Blog - Industry

8. Best Food Blog – Photography

9. Best Food Blog – Post

10. Best Food Blog – Theme

11. Best Food Blog – Rural

12. Best Food Blog – Writing

13. Best New Food Blog

14. Food Blog of the Year

Nominations close on Wednesday, December 5th at 11:59 p.m. EST, so wander over to the Well Fed Network now to nominate your favorite food blogs.

In the Bag: Cooking the Month of November - the Round-up

We had a deliciously sweet bag in November, containing Chocolate, Chestnuts and Sugar. I've been so looking forward to this round-up, and here it is!

This delicious Chestnut and hazelnut cake was baked by Myriam from My Kitchen Diaries.



Priya from Food and Laughter made this fantastically named Chocolate Chestnut Bomb.



This drool-worthy Chestnut and Chocolate Ice cream was dreamed up by Kevin from Closet Cooking.



Pixie of You say Tomato I say Tomato really got into the baking and made not one, but two delights, these scrumptious Chocolate Chestnut Truffles and Pixie's Really Good Chestnut Cookies.





Elizabeth of Mera Pyaar...My Love cooked us these fantastic Chocolate Crepes with Sauteed Apples.



Cherry from Cherry's English Kitchen threw away the chocolate and sugar and made this beautiful Chestnut and Chicken Supper.



And I made Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Chocolate and Chestnut Truffle Cake.




Thank you all for your wonderful entries, I hope you enjoyed the event as much as I did.