Make ahead
The annual panic over Christmas dinner is largely a matter of timing – after all, it’s only a big roast. Get as much as possible done beforehand. Things such as mincemeat and Christmas puddings actually benefit from as much maturing as you can throw at them, while homemade cranberry sauce will keep for months in the fridge. Bread sauce can be frozen, or stored in the fridge for up to four days, while stuffing and pigs in blankets are perfectly happy frozen raw and defrosted before cooking, or prepared two to three days ahead.
On the vegetable front, spiced red cabbage definitely tastes better reheated, so it’s just as well it can be made up to a week in advance. Parboil potatoes and parsnips on Christmas Eve; blanch sprouts in boiling water for three to four minutes until al dente, then plunge into iced water to cool. Drain and dry all the veg with kitchen paper, then store in the fridge or some other chilly place, ready for roasting (spuds and parsnips) or sauteeing in a hot pan (sprouts) the next day.
Custard and brandy butter will both be fine in the fridge for a week, too – so long as you make it as far as pudding, what with having all this extra time to put away the sherry.
Easy Scandi seafood platter
Anyone who turns their nose up at smoked salmon probably has no place in your house at any time of year, but that said, it’s easy to turn this festive favourite into something a little more special to kick off a Christmas or New Year’s dinner.
This platter serves four, but is easy to multiply up. Start with a quick pickle. Cut half a cucumber into thin ribbons (use a vegetable peeler or mandoline) and discard the seedy core. Toss with a teaspoon of flaky salt in a colander, and leave to drain for about an hour. Whisk four tablespoons of white vinegar (wine or cider, say) with the same amount of water and 30g sugar, then put the cucumber in a small bowl and pour the liquid over the top. Leave for at least an hour, although, if you want to get ahead, it will be fine in the fridge for a couple of weeks.
A creamy prawn salad is also a must. Mix 250g small shelled cooked prawns with 100ml mayonnaise and four tablespoons of sour cream until well coated, then stir in a small bunch of finely chopped dill or chives and a dash of Tabasco. This can also be made a day or so ahead.
When you’re ready to eat, cut four very thin slices of rye bread into triangles and toast until crisp. To put the plate together, arrange 40g smoked salmon per person in folds. Drain the cucumber thoroughly and add to the plate with a good grinding of pepper. Spoon some prawn salad alongside, then dollop on a generous spoonful of salmon roe (or other roe of your choice). Arrange the toasts around the edge and finish with a few lemon wedges.
Mull your wine
Though wise men steer well clear of the travesty served on tap from 1 December, spiced booze is a fine medieval tradition. Given the whole point of mulled wine is to put you in a seasonally appropriately merry mood, it’s silly to burn off all the alcohol by simmering it for hours, so make this spiced syrup instead and keep it on hand, ready to stir into warm wine, cider, apple juice or even ale, as takes your fancy.
To make a batch, put 160g of light brown sugar in a pan with 250ml water, a cinnamon stick, three cloves, three lightly crushed cardamom pods and the peel (in thick strips) and juice of an unwaxed lemon and an orange. Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Leave to cool, then strain into a sterilised bottle and refrigerate.
Then, when the mood takes you over the next three weeks, add five or six tablespoons of the mix to every bottle of wine you “mull” (or three tablespoons per 500ml of cider or fruit juice), and warm gently in a pan until steaming. Garnish with slices of orange and lemon before serving.
Take one pack of sausagemeat…
Stuffing, in my family’s opinion anyway, is the very best bit of the Christmas feast; the turkey carving is always carefully supervised, lest any goes astray before it makes it to the table. And, for the record, Paxo does not count as stuffing: juicy sausagemeat is where it’s at. Get your hands on 450g of a decent variety (you can always rip open sausages, if necessary), then add 100g chopped semi-dried prunes soaked for at least an hour in two tablespoons of brandy, 25g flaked almonds and a quarter-teaspoon each of ground ginger and ground nutmeg, to give your stuffing a pleasingly Gascon booziness. If you’d prefer to honour Mr or Mrs Turkey with a nod to its American roots, combine your sausagemeat with 75g fresh cranberries, 40g toasted and roughly chopped pecans and a generous half-teaspoon of ground cinnamon. Or keep things classic with the finely-grated zest of two unwaxed lemons, a crushed garlic clove, 35g roughly chopped hazelnuts and the leaves from five thyme sprigs. Whichever flavour you go for, shape the stuffing into balls and freeze on a tray, then defrost and bake alongside the bird for about 40 minutes until crisp.
Spiced chestnut and squash filo pie with feta
This is one of those vegetarian main courses you should fully expect most meat eaters to dig into as well, “just to give it a try”. Sweet with spiced squash and choc-a-bloc full of festive fruit and nuts, this happily goes straight from freezer to oven, making it the ideal thing for the organised cook to stash in preparation for the big day. (Time-poor omnivores note: beef wellington, salmon en croute, and most pies and stews are also freezeable, though a decent roast turkey is, as yet, sadly not.) Serves six.
1 medium butternut squash (about 1kg)
2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil, plus extra for greasing
2 red onions, peeled and finely sliced
3 garlic cloves, peeled and finely chopped
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ras el hanout
50g currants
50g dried apricots, chopped
180g chestnuts, roughly chopped
300ml vegetable stock
2 eggs, beaten
1 small bunch flat-leaf parsley, leaves picked and chopped
100g crumbled feta
75g butter
7 sheets filo pastry
Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Peel the squash, then deseed and cut the flesh into chunky half-moons. Space out on a couple of lightly greased baking trays, brush with a little more oil, season and bake for 40 minutes, until soft.
Meanwhile, gently fry the onions in the remaining oil until soft (about 15 minutes), then stir in the garlic and spices. Fry, stirring, for another couple of minutes, then add the dried fruit, chestnuts and stock. Bring to a simmer, take off the heat and slowly beat in the eggs with a fork, to make a creamy sauce. Leave to cool, then stir in the parsley and feta, and season to taste.
Melt the butter. Take the filo out of its packet and cover with a damp cloth (this will stop it drying out). Brush a large pie dish with butter, then lay one sheet of filo lengthways across half the width of the dish, so it overhangs the sides. Brush all over with butter, then take another filo sheet, line the other half of the dish and brush with more butter. Lay a third sheet of filo down the length of the dish, and brush this, too, with butter.
Spoon in a layer of the fruit and chestnut mix, top with a layer of the pumpkin slices, and repeat until both are used up. Fold the overhanging pastry over the filling, then lay a fourth sheet of filo lengthways on top. Brush all over with butter, then lay another sheet of filo on top of this. Fold in any overhang and brush again with butter. Brush the final two sheets of filo with butter, scrunch them up a little and put on top of the pie. Cover with foil, being careful not to squash the pastry, and freeze.
Heat the oven to 160C/325F/gas mark 2½. Bake the pie from frozen, still covered in foil, for 45 minutes, then remove the foil, turn up the heat to 180C/350F/gas mark 4 and cook for another 45 minutes, until golden and heated through. (To cook straight after constructing the pie, cover with foil, bake for 40 minutes, remove the foil and bake for another 15 minutes, until the top is golden.)
How to do mince pies properly
Let’s face it, most of the mince pies you’ll eat this Christmas will be fairly rubbish. Pappy pastry, gloopy, sour mincemeat – at any other time of year, you’d never let them pass your lips, let alone eat three in quick succession in front of the Bake Off Christmas Special. And I think we both know how Mary would feel about that.
Making your own from scratch is obviously the ideal situation, but if you’re content to court Mary’s disapproval, the next best thing is to make your own mincemeat, which is simply a matter of stirring together 150g mixed dried fruit of your choice, 25g roughly chopped nuts, 200g soft dark brown sugar, half a teaspoon of mixed spice, three tablespoons of brandy, whisky or rum, two tablespoons of suet, the zest of an unwaxed lemon or orange, and a small cooking apple, peeled, cored and grated.
And if even that sounds like too much hard work, you can do wonders to a jar of bought mincemeat by adding a healthy slug of booze, some toasted nuts and grated citrus zest.
Whichever option you go for, there’s no shame in buying a pack of buttery shortcrust instead of making your own pastry; roll it out to 3mm thick and use to line two lightly-greased tartlet tins, then fill each three-quarters full of mincemeat. Top with more pastry, or – my preference, for both ease and beauty – a few nuts, glacé cherries or other candied or dried fruit, and bake at 190C/375F/gas mark 5 for 20 minutes, until golden.
If, however, bought-in pies are unavoidable, a dusting of icing sugar and orange zest, or even a little edible glitter, goes a long way to cheering them up. That and a very large glass of mulled wine, to disguise the taste, at least until the alcohol kicks in.
Buttered rum Christmas puddings
A festive take on the p*rnographically oozy desserts that launched a thousand MasterChef meltdowns, these fruity little numbers are filled with a boozy, buttery, caramel centre – Christmas pud and brandy butter in one, if you will. You can make them weeks ahead and pop them in the freezer ready for the big day. Makes four.
For the filling
75g light soft brown sugar
75g butter
100ml double cream
2 tbsp brandy (or rum)
For the pudding mix
150g softened butter, plus a little extra to grease the moulds
150g dark muscovado sugar
2 large eggs, lightly whisked
150g plain flour, plus a little extra to line the moulds
¾ tsp mixed spice
Salt
25g currants
25g sultanas
20g mixed peel
To make the filling, put the sugar and butter in a small pan and heat gently to melt. Stir in the cream and booze, then simmer for five minutes, until you have a thick sauce. Leave to cool, then line an ice-cube tray with lightly greased cling-film, divide the mixture between the holes and freeze until squidgily solid.
Heat the oven to 200C/390F/gas mark 6. Butter the insides of four small ramekins or pudding moulds, and dust with flour to coat, tipping out any excess.
In a bowl, beat the butter and muscovado until light and fluffy, then beat in the eggs a little at a time, followed by the flour, mixed spice, a pinch of salt and the fruit. Spoon into the prepared moulds, stopping just shy of the top. Push an ice-cube’s worth of toffee down into the centre of each, then cover and freeze, or bake straight away for 15 minutes (if you’re cooking the puddings from frozen, give them 25 minutes at the same temperature).
Run a thin spatula very carefully around the edge of each pudding, then invert them on to individual plates and turn out.
Pimp your snacks
As far as I’m concerned, party nibbles don’t get much better than a family pack of Wotsits, but not everyone feels the same. A quick supermarket sweep, however, can reap impressive results. A big bag of salted crisps, tortilla chips or popcorn, for example, will get a considerably more respectful reception when toasted in a 160C oven for five minutes, then gently tossed with a teaspoon of soft light brown sugar, two teaspoons of flaky salt and two tablespoons of smoked paprika until well coated. By the same token, an unpromising jar of mushy olives can be easily jazzed up simply by warming them slightly in a small saucepan, then adding a couple of thick strips of lemon zest, a few cubes of feta or goat’s cheese, a handful of finely chopped coriander or flat-leaf parsley, and a sprinkling of chilli flakes. Even that stalwart of the all-night garage, the salted peanut, can be given a facelift by being toasted in a dry pan, then tossed with warm extra-virgin olive oil, finely chopped rosemary or thyme leaves and the grated zest of half a lemon – leave cool and crisp up, then serve with all the pride of someone who has already hidden the KP wrapper at the bottom of the bin.
If in doubt, delegate
Personally, I’d rather serve a bag of crisps with my Christmas dinner than buy in roast potatoes, but there’s no shame in serving up someone else’s fresh bread sauce (though not the packet sort, which tastes like onion-flavoured Ready Brek); just pop in a fresh bay leaf and reheat gently, for that homemade touch.
Similarly, make bought cranberry sauce your own by decanting it into a bowl with a little grated orange zest, and feel free to leave trimmings such as sausagemeat stuffing, gravy (reheated in the roasting tin with a generous slug of port), plum pudding, brandy butter and custard to the local traiteur. Or, as I call it, the supermarket.
Order online, put your feet up and enjoy yourself instead. If Christmas feels more like a competition than a celebration, you’re definitely doing it wrong.
Spiced winter fruit trifle
With solid foundations in the form of fruit cake (which, let’s face it, you may well have in excess by the time Christmas rolls around) and dried fruit that just keeps getting plumper and more delicious the longer you leave it, plus a delicately sweet and nutty blancmange in place of the usual custard, this rich trifle will keep for up to five days in the fridge. Serves eight to 10.
For the compote
100g dried figs
100g dried prunes
100g dried apricots
Juice of 2 oranges
1 cinnamon stick
For the trifle
300g fruit cake, sliced fairly thinly
1 litre whole milk
Zest of 1 orange
125g caster sugar
100g ground almonds
1 nutmeg, to grate
120ml brandy, whisky or rum
8 gelatine leaves
300ml whipping cream
2 tbsp flaked almonds, toasted
Start with the compote. Put all the ingredients into a small pan, barely cover with cold water, then heat gently and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the fruit is plump and the liquid has become slightly syrupy. Set aside and leave to cool.
Line the base of a trifle dish with cake. Drain the fruit, retaining the liquid, and scatter over the cake with a couple of tablespoons of its cooking liquid and leave to soak in.
Put the milk in a pan with the orange zest, sugar, almonds and a good grating of nutmeg, and bring to a gentle simmer, stirring occasionally. Take the pan off the heat, leave to infuse for an hour, then pass through a sieve and heat back up to blood temperature. Soak the gelatine in cold water, then wring out and stir into the milk mix with the booze. Leave to cool to just warm, then pour through a sieve on top of the fruit layer. Cover and chill until set, or for up to five days.
Just before serving, whip the cream to soft peaks and dollop on top of the trifle, then scatter with the toasted almonds.
