The Final Lunch for this blog!

Hello everyone. Well, the time has finally come. Today is the last day of my project!

THE SUNDAY LUNCH

Now, I'm sure that many people out there have negative memories associated with the ritual of "The Sunday Lunch". I've read Toast, I've seen Eat Drink Man Woman, and I've read lots of articles in culinary and trashy magazines on this subject. However, I think the negative connotations surrounding the Sunday Lunch are more about familial pressures and obligations, rather than the food itself. (Although having read Nigel Slater's wonderful descriptions of not-so-wonderful food in Toast, this is not always the case). And thankfully, I was not brought up with the idea that it was a Good Thing to have the family sitting around the table at a regular time every week, regardless of inclination or hunger. I admit that I am extremely lucky in that, more often than not, eating day-to-day meals together with my family was a natural, enjoyable, and desirable experience. It was especially great that we could have the entire family (Dad, Mum, Daniel and myself) home today to eat this special lunch.

393. The Roast Beef
394. The Gravy
395. The Yorkshire Pudding

I served it with roast potatoes (they don't count as a recipe, as I've made them heaps of times before), and baby beans (from a freezer packet).

In the book, Nigella writes out a Sunday Lunch timetable - for a meal like this, with so many elements that require precision timing, you really have to plan everything out like a "military operation". However, by this stage in the project, I've made over 350 recipes, dozens of dinner parties and lots of lunches. It may be immodest of me to say, but I was confident that I could just wing it, and everything would be fine.

This is our beef, check it out. It's an aged piece of rib-eye, about 2.45 kg. Mum bought it at Rendinas (where else!), and the butcher assured her it was a lovely, lovely piece of meat.

I cooked it at 210C for 90 minutes in total. Whilst it was in the oven, I boiled the potatoes, and made our dessert. I've actually already made all the desserts in How to Eat, so I decided to revisit one of my favourites, the rhubarb meringue pie. As I've made it before, I won't tell you how it was made. (Click on the above link if you're interested, as you should be - it's an amazing pie). One thing I do want to show you though, is Nigella's amazing pastry. Her freezer-processor method is a very valuable tip that I've learnt from this book, which almost always results in a fabulously easy to roll pastry.

This the the excess pastry - just look how elastic and pliable it is!

I cooked the rhubarb meringue pie in our microwave convection oven in the pantry, to leave the big oven free for all the hardcore meat and potatoes cooking.

Next was the gravy. You start off by cooking a thinly sliced onion until soft, then adding sugar and Marsala, and letting it cook slowly until caramelized and very, very soft. (Note: I'd recommend using a large onion, and doubling, or perhaps even tripling quantities. Gravy is good.) Then you add some flour, and then beef stock, stirring it well, and letting it simmer for about 20 minutes. At this point, you can push it through a sieve or put it in a processor, and then leave it on the stove until it's time to eat.

Once the beef was cooked, I took it out of the oven, and let it rest, covered in foil, on Mum's big carving board. Then, I put the potatoes in the oven, made the yorkshire pudding (same method as the sweet yorkshire pudding, but with added salt and pepper), and added it to the oven for the last 20 minutes of cooking time. Whilst they were cooking, I boiled my beans and added the pan juices to the gravy.

And then it was time to eat!!!

Check out that lunch! I'd describe all the dishes, but I think the photos speak for themselves. Mmm... everything was delicious. Nigella's gravy recipe is fantastic, as is her roast potato one.

We sat around the table talking, laughing and eating. We only got through about half of that food, but considering that I'm in study mode and not going to be cooking for a while, this is a good thing.

While Mum, Dad and Daniel were cleaning up the kitchen, I finished off the pie.

Here's what it looks like baked. I really, really wanted to decorate it with some words, so as it was cooling, I melted a bar of dark chocolate, scraped it into a zip-lock glad bag, snipped off the corner and piped out some free-form words onto parchment paper (not very neatly, I'm afraid). I let them set in the fridge, and then arranged them haphazardly on top of the cooled pie to form a kinda Louis Vuitton graffiti pie. (Yes, I'm sticking to the "Louis Vuitton graffiti" description, and not, for instance, "a hyperactive 2-year old's art project").

Again, I don't really need to describe the pie. Y'all know I love pie, and the rhubarb meringue pie is my favourite pie out of the whole book. I'm sure you can deduce that I loved eating it. I should just add that rhubarb and dark chocolate is a winning combination.

But even more exciting than pie (and it's not often you'll hear me saying that), I finally opened that big brown mysterious envelope I received last month! And guess what it was! A signed photo of Nigella!!!!!!!!! Omg omg omg Yay yay yay!!!!! It is totally like the most awesomest thing ever!!

And just in case you were wondering what I wrote on top of the pie...


















Thank-you everyone!

Pig’s bum and tuna

For lunch today, we had a lovely low-fat griddled tuna dish. Followed by a steamed pudding with lashings of custard. Ooh yeah.

364. Tataki of Tuna (Low Fat)
365. Quick Foolproof Custard (Basics etc)

I chose to reprise the pig's bum because I needed a pudding to go with the second custard recipe in the Basics etc. chapter, and I seem to have already completed all the other puddings and crumbles. The pig's bum is without a doubt my favourite pudding from the whole book.

Just in case you forgot…

The mixture for this steamed sponge is equal parts butter, sugar and flour, with 2 eggs, some baking powder, vanilla extract and milk (so just a normal sponge-cake mixture), with a rhubarb puree mixed through. And apart from the cooking of the rhubarb (which takes a scant 5 minutes), it’s all done in the processor.


pig's bum mixture


pudding in basin


Steamer

You have to put the lid on the pudding basin, and let it steam for 2.5 hours. And in the meantime, I made the custard.

The quick foolproof custard is good for the custard-o-phobes among us (aah.. I remember when I used to be one of them!) because it dispenses with that whole nerve-wracking “stirring over low heat” stage. What you do is whisk some egg yolks, sugar and cornflour in a bowl. In a pan, you heat cream with a vanilla pod, and “allow the cream to rise in the pan”, before pouring it over the eggs, and whisking for a good 10 minutes until thick. I had no idea what allowing “the cream to rise in the pan” meant, so I just let it bubble a teensy weensy bit before adding it to the eggs. The custard took about 10 minutes with a KitchenAid mixer on medium heat.

Upon reflection, I don’t know why I didn’t try this custard back in the days when I couldn’t make custard, as it would have saved a lot of bother. But in the end, I guess it’s good that I forced myself to learn how to make custard with old fashioned stirring. Because even though this custard tasted fab, it did have a lot of tiny little air bubbles in it from the whisking, so it didn’t have that lovely voluptuous gloop of real custard.

Nigella says to have cold custard with the pudding, so I set the custard aside while I made the main.

Tataki of tuna is ideally, a long round tail piece of tuna, seared on all sides, and sliced thinly. I had to substitute tuna steaks, as they were all I could find, but the result was still good. I dusted the sides with wasabi powder, and cooked them briefly on a high heat in a cast-iron frypan.

Nigella says to serve with thin slivers of spring onions and a sprinkling of coriander, as well as a side salad of cucumber slices. As for sauces, she suggests a paste made of wasabi powder mixed with soy, or a mixture of soy, sugar and lime juice. I made both, just to try each one.

I also served it with cold soba noodles, dressed with a mixture of all the Japanesey sauces from my pantry – mirin, soy, rice vinegar, and honey.


tuna and cucumber salad


Table


wasabi powder mixed with soy


one bowl

It was a fabulous lunch. The noodles, the tuna, the cucumber, the sauces – all lovely. After plowing through so much of the rich, meat-and-potato heavy food that Nigella favours, this was a refreshing contrast. Goodness, how I love soba noodles! It was so healthy and delicious, and not in that resignedly virtuous way – it actually tasted good, irrespective of its being low-fat.

Mmm… now check out the dessert. I think words are superfluous in this instance; just check out the photos…


Pudding


Custard


one delicious plate

Pig’s bum is totally the best.

Late-Summer Roast Beef and Yorkshire Pudding for 8

This menu is, obviously, intended for entertaining. The main event is a cold roasted beef fillet (AKA eye fillet). Nigella suggests up to 2.5 kilos of beef for 8 people. Eye fillet is $40 a kilo. Ahem. Now, you know that I do love to entertain, but I am also a poor student. There are very few people who I love enough to spend that much money on. There are also very few people who I can count on to appreciate this food. Luckily, I know some very special people who fall into both these categories. And 3 of these very special people live right under this roof.

I halved the quantities of this extravagant lunch, and made it a special one, just for the family.

LATE-SUMMER ROAST BEEF AND YORKSHIRE PUDDING FOR 4

294. Rosemary-Infused Oil
295. Cold Roast Fillet of Beef
296. Rosemary and Anchovy Mayonnaise
297. Warm Cannellini or Borlotti Beans with Garlic and Sage
298. Tomato Salad
299. Yorkshire Pudding with Syrup and Cream

This menu is pretty simple to put together. The first thing I did was soak the cannellini beans overnight in water. Then in the morning, I drained them and boiled them in water for 1.5 hours with an onion, a carrot and some sage leaves.

While they were boiling, I made the rosemary oil, which both anoints the beef, and goes into the mayo. All you need to do to make this is sizzle some rosemary needles in olive oil…


rosemary oil

…and then strain out the rosemary needles.


rosemary oil

You could either rub the rosemary oil onto the beef by itself, or add some mashed anchovies to the oil before rubbing it on. I adore anchovies, so there was no question about my taking this option.


This is a $40 piece of meat.

After being rubbed, it goes into a 210C oven for 10 minutes per 500g plus 10 minutes.

Then I made the mayo. This mayo has pounded anchovies added to the egg and garlic mixture at the start, and also includes a potion of rosemary infused oil.


start of mayo

As you probably know, making mayonnaise is a really annoying process. You need to slowly and patiently whisk the oil, drop by painstaking drop, into the egg mixture, taking care not to get too enthusiastic with the pouring, lest it curdle. I have to admit that I only bothered with about half the quantity of oil before I gave up on the idea, and left the mayo-sauce as it was. With only half the required quantity of oil added, the “mayo” was rather thin and runny, but still tasted good.

And here is what the beef looked like when it came out of the oven.


cooked beef

While it was resting, I made the batter for the sweet Yorkshire pudding. It has three ingredients – eggs, milk and flour. First you whisk the eggs and milk together, and let it sit for 15 minutes before adding the flour. The pudding has to be cooked at the last minute, so I left the completed batter to the side until we finished eating.


batter

After this, I finished off the beans by draining them, removing the vegetables, and stirring it over a low heat with olive oil, garlic and sage. I then made the tomato salad, (sliced tomatoes sprinkled with salt, oil and vinegar) and sliced the beef.


sliced beef


"if you weren't looking I'd be licking the board"

All the components of the lunch were thus completed, and it was time to serve.


lunch


tomato salad


close up of beans

That beef is awesome! It was rare and gorgeous and meltingly soft. The flavour of the anchovies really complements the beef well, and the sharply salty mayo was an addictive accompaniment. The tomatoes were ripe and full of summery tomato goodness. As for the beans, the sage-garlic flavour was very nice, but I didn’t cook them very well and they were still quite tough. Overall, I thought the menu was lovely as it was, but my dad said he would have liked some lettuce or green salad to go with.

The logistics of the pudding requires a bit of precision timing. You see, the pudding needs 20 minutes in the oven, and has to be eaten as soon as it comes out. Furthermore, both the oven and the baking dish need to be very hot when you pour the batter in. I did it like this: as we were eating, I turned the oven up to very hot and put in the oiled baking dish to get very hot. When we finished eating, I poured the Yorkshire pudding batter into the sizzlingly hot dish, and let it bake for 20 minutes as we cleared up the kitchen.

Despite the total simplicity of this pudding (3 ingredients, a bit of light whisking, a very hot oven), it smells divine and looks totally impressive. I couldn’t believe how much it rose! It’s so cool; you can actually see it rising, millimetre by millimetre, in the oven. I was really happy with the way it turned out – it looked just like the drool-inducing one that I saw Nigella make on the Nigella Bites program a while back.

I set out all the possible accompaniments on the table – honey, golden syrup, maple syrup and vanilla ice-cream.


yorkshire pudding

On that program, Nigella described the pudding as, “a cross between donut and pancake… which is my idea of heaven”. She was right!

Check it out! Did someone say, FOOD PORN?


sweet yorkshire pudding

The crunchy sides are the best part of the pudding. As for accompaniments, I do think that cold vanilla ice-cream is definitely the way forward. I personally like maple syrup the best, but my mum preferred the thick gooiness of the golden.

Sarah, The Queen of Puddings

272. Christmas Queen of Puddings (Basics etc.)

Quite a random thing to make for a Monday afternoon, but I had all the ingredients, so why not?

We used to serve Queen of Puddings at the restaurant at which I used to work as a cook. I never quite figured out what it was though; our hot-food chef heated it up, someone else chucked it in the bain marie, and I only saw it once it had been ravaged by the hordes of customers in the buffet line, and all that remained were bits of meringue on the edges of the empty dish, and custardy crap stuck on the bottom.

Nigella says that this pudding is Christmassy because she includes pandoro instead of normal breadcrumbs, and marmalade instead of jam. To bump up its inherent Christmassy-ness, (yes, I know it’s already February, live with it), I used the Seville Orange Marmalade that I made last year.

I also used pannetone instead of pandoro, because only pannetone came in appropriately sized portions. You need 150 grams of crumbs for the recipe, and pandoro only seems to come in 1 kg mega-loaves.

The first step is to rip up your crumbs, and add to them castor sugar, orange flower water and orange zest. I love the way that the 3 orange elements complement each other and intensify their inherent orangey-ness. Then you heat up milk and butter, pour it over and let it all infuse.


Crumbs

Then you pour it into a buttered dish (having run out of butter, I substituted margarine here... may the culinary gods have mercy on my soul), and bake until set.


Custard

The next layer is a mixture of marmalade and golden syrup.


with syrup

Then you whisk up egg whites and sugar to form a meringue, and dollop it on top.


Meringue

From here, you have to bake it for 20 minutes until crispy and brownish.


What a queen.

Here's what it looks like on the inside. It was a bit more liquid than expected, but still tasted great. The dense, fragrant, rich custard below and the airy, airy meringue combine to form a wonderfully comforting pudding.


halved

Daniel: Wow, the meringue is so fluffy!

Nigella says the recipe serves 4-6. I halved the quantities, and 3 of us managed to get about halfway through the pudding. I know I keep going on about Nigella's enormous portions, but I am consistently amazed by them.

Comfort Food with Presence

I've always assumed that semolina is similar to rice pudding - one of those stodgily traditional British desserts, to which English people have an extraordinary attachment, but everyone else finds just a little bit odd.

263. Baked Semolina

This recipe directly follows bread and milk in the "Comfort Food" section of the One & Two chapter, but is much, much better. According to the instructions on the packet, making ordinary sweet semolina porridge necessitates stirring it over heat for 2 hours!! Nigella's recipe for baked semolina, thankfully, requires no such feats of endurance, and "is just a snip above" the stirred variety.

You start by whisking semolina into hot milk, and then stirring it over heat for about 10 minutes until thickened. Then let it cool, and fold in egg yolk, vanilla sugar and a whisked egg white, before baking it in a buttered dish for about 40 minutes.

The recipe serves 2 and is supposed to be baked in a 500ml capacity dish, but as I was only making it for myself, I halved all quantities and baked it in a 250ml ramekin. (I didn't halve the "1 egg yolk", because I forgot to, and impatiently mixed the whole thing into my semolina. It didn't seem to have any disastarous effect.

Fabulously, upon baking, the little homey-sounding pudding rose up into an impressive soufflé-type thing.


Semolina

How good does that look? I reckon I could easily sell these at a trendy eatery for nostalgically minded, rich yet culinarily-challenged customers at $12 a pop, just like they do with mac & cheese in New York City.

And it tasted good too. I tried the pudding with honey, and with strawberry jam. Both are nice, but neither is strictly necessary. The pudding is lovely as it is.

Warning: Eating a piping hot, honey-drenched semolina pudding balanced precariously on one knee, with a cup of coffee in the opposite hand, sitting at the computer, watching a hysterical episode of I'm Alan Partridge, is not a good idea.

Gooey Chocolate Puddings

At work tonight, we were (to use my brother’s charming turn of phrase) absolutely butt-raped. Our films (Munich & Walk the Line) were very busy, and it was a mad rush cleaning the cinemas from the previous sessions, getting the next round of customers in, taking their orders and seating them in the cinema. And to top it off, they all ordered HEAPS. I was in kitchen, and I was going nuts trying to make all food the orders, and get them delivered, hopefully timed to go with the bar’s drink orders. Basically we were all running around like mad chooks, orders were running late, customers were getting narky, and it was generally extremely stressful and sweaty work. I finished work half-an-hour late, and got home around 11:30, wanting nothing more than to scoff a bar of Lindt and go to bed.

However, the members of my family arrived home shortly after me, also having just finished work, and they all seemed energetic and up for a bit of sugar-therapy.

262. Gooey Chocolate Puddings (Fast Food)

This recipe only requires marginally more energy than opening a Lindt wrapper and has infinitely better payoff. Plus, all the ingredients were in my pantry, meaning I could knock off a recipe quite easily. I made this casually, while my family (plus my brother’s friend Eva) was sitting around the kitchen and all chatting.

Here’s an excerpt of a conversation we were having as we prepared the puddings.

Eva: Sarah, do you bake often?
Me: Well, I guess I try to cook a dessert whenever we’re all eating together.
Mum: Eva, do you like cooking?
Eva: Yeah, but I can’t make cakes… every time I make them they turn out flat!
Dad: Sarah can teach you to bake!
Daniel: Yes! She makes this AWESOME cherry pie.
Eva: Does that have cream cheese in it?
Daniel: Nah, it’s just cherries and pastry.
Mum: Oh yes, but what pastry! It’s the pastry that makes the pie, so flaky and good!

You know, I had no idea that my cherry pie had made such an impression. And it may sound like I’m tooting my own horn, but I think it’s ok, as the positive reaction to my pie is testament to Nigella’s fab recipes, especially her brilliant pastry-technique.

But back to the puddings. Unlike some of the recipes in the Fast Food chapter, which end up taking me much longer than the maximum 30 minutes Nigella says, this one actually only takes 20 minutes to make.

First off, melt butter and chocolate (Lindt 70% cocoa, blates), in a double boiler. In a separate bowl, lazily whisk together eggs, sugar and flour.


egg mix, choc mix

Then add the chocolate mixture to the egg mixture. (I got my brother to stir as I poured… teamwork!)


dan stirring

Once it’s all mixed up, you pour the mixture into buttered and floured ramekins, and bake at 200C for 10-12 minutes. The recipe is supposed to feed 4, but as there were 5 of us eating, I just divided the mixture more scantily into 5 ramekins.



raw mix

They looked a bit shallow in the raw, but rose up satisfactorily during baking.


cooked mix

We didn’t have any cream, so we ate the puddings with crème fraîche. This was the perfect accompaniment, the crème fraîche’s tang undercutting the rich gooey chocolate deliciously.


gooey choc pudding

This went down extremely well. The edges and top of the puddings are firm and slightly crusty, which conceal an decadent liquid centre. Normally we’re not fans of the super-rich, chocolatey-to-the-max style of puddings and cakes, but this really, really hit the spot.

I can’t believe I baked individual chocolate puddings at 12:30 in the morning.

Merry Christmas

This is going to be a long post. Perhaps the longest post I’ve done so far. However, I make no apologies for this, as it was a very long day. I hope you’ve all had wonderful Christmasses, and enjoy reading!

Before I start, I have to say that this is the first Christmas that we’ve spent at home in ages. For the past 8 years, we’ve spent Christmas and New Years in Malaysia at a beach resort, so the only Christmas “traditions” that we’ve developed have been lying on the beach all day, sipping cocktails, and then eating the supposedly traditional Christmas roasts at the buffet dinner.

This year, however, was different. My dad’s working in Melbourne for Christmas this year, so we’re at home, and it was time for us to establish some family Christmas traditions. In the Christmasses prior to our annual trips to Malaysia, we always used to host the Christmas lunch for extended family at our house. I remember the plastic Christmas tree, the smell of the tinsel, the bought roast chickens, and most importantly, the stress that my mother felt at being obliged to accommodate everyone, and the stress that my dad felt watching her run around like a headless chook for not very much appreciation. I wanted this Christmas to be different. I wanted the food to be fabulous, I wanted it to be a relaxed day and I wanted it to be fun! I knew it could be done, especially with Nigella’s Christmas section from How to Eat to guide me through the culinary part.

And here’s what I did.

Our big Christmas dinner was planned for the evening of the 25th. I know that a Christmas Eve dinner, or Christmas day lunch is more traditional, but my dad and my brother were working at both those times. I also decided to limit the numbers, for the sake of my sanity. So, it was just the four of us, plus my good friend An.

I went out with work friends on Christmas Eve. I never realized that Christmas Eve is a big night for going out. Logically this would be true; the next day is a public holiday, so of course people would go out partying the night before. We had a huge night, and after all the drinking, dancing, and other associated shenanigans, I didn’t get home until 6am. Whoops. I thought I’d be able to sleep in until I had to start cooking, but no… my dad woke me up at 10am for PRESENTS!

I had no idea we were even doing gifts. But from my parents I got a set of Living Kitchen serving platters, a set of mixing bowls, and Jamie Oliver’s new book, Jamie’s Italy. Woohoo!


Mixing bowls – they’re SO cute!

My dad left at 11am for work, and my mum went with him. Dan and I then watched a DVD of Only Fools and Horses, which I’d never seen before. It was awesome! That is SO becoming a Christmas day tradition!

So anyway, after lunch (truffle oil pasta), I started the cooking.

215. Lidgate’s Cranberry and Orange Stuffing
216. Turkey
217. Gravy
218. Roast Potatoes
219. Brussels Sprouts and Chestnuts
220. Bread Sauce
221. Cranberry Sauce
222. Brandy Butter
223. Iced Rum Sauce

I started off by setting up the kitchen – bringing out the boards and knives, setting up the food processor and filling the sink with water and detergent. I’m not usually this efficient, but I felt that if I were to make a Christmas dinner all by myself, and without a clipboard, that I would need my kitchen to be clean and well set up.


mise en place

The first recipe I made was the cranberry and orange stuffing, which is very simple. You simmer some cranberries (I used tinned because I couldn’t find any fresh or frozen, anywhere!) with some orange juice and zest, then stir in butter off the heat followed by breadcrumbs.

Daniel: Hey, what’s happening in the kitchen? It smells like cat!

Thanks Daniel. Well, with both stuffings made (I’d made the chestnut stuffing ages ago and frozen it), I had a bit of free time, so Dan took me out for pancakes. Ok, the “buying pancakes for Sarah” thing definitely needs to become a Christmas tradition!

After we came home, I made the sauces for the puddings, and got to break in my new mixing bowls!

The iced rum sauce “is a sort of rum-sodden and syrupy egg-nog with cream that’s kept in the freezer until about an hour before eating. You put it on the searing hot pudding and it melts on impact”, apparently. To make it, you mix some golden syrup, egg yolks and rum (I used Bundaberg Rum, go Aussie!), and then fold it into whipped double cream. I'll admit here that at this point in time, alcohol was the last thing I wanted to be around, and that the smell was totally turning me off. But, I persevered through this, through the brandy butter, and through the gravy, and by the time dinner came around I was fine.


egg in egg


rum sauce

You put it in the freezer and can forget about it until dinner. After this, I made the brandy butter (although prefer the term “hard sauce”), which is just butter beaten with icing sugar, ground almonds and brandy. I stored this one in the fridge.

It was 3:30 now, so time to deal with the turkey. Nigella says to stuff the neck end with the chestnut stuffing, and the other end with the cranberry one. I bought my turkey, a 5 kilo beauty, about a month ago, from Prahran Market at the same time as the goose, and froze it. I suppose the more conventional thing to do would have been to order one in advance, and pick up a fresh one closer to the day, but that seemed like way too much work. It's always a mission to go down to Prahran Market. And I was already there, so why not? I remember the butcher saying to me that he'd been freshly slaughtered that morning, and would keep in the fridge for a whole week, or in the freezer for month. He looked gorgeous and plump (the turkey that is, not the butcher), and I was extremely excited. I named my turkey Gordon.

I transferred Gordon from the freezer to the fridge 2 days before Christmas, and took him out shortly after waking up so that he could get to room temperature.


Defrosted turkey – look at our new roasting tray! We finally got around to buying a proper roasting tray that can go from oven to hob!



I then, as per Nigella’s advice, stuffed Gordon, then rubbed his breasts with goosefat, flipped him over and placed him in the oven.


Stuffed turkey, ready to be flipped over


Goosefat, which I rendered from last week's roast goose.

As a 5.5kg bird (including stuffing), it would take 2.5 hours in total, 200C for the first 30 minutes and 180C for the rest of the time.

There was a bit of cranberry stuffing left over (I halved quantities), and quite a lot of chestnut stuffing left over so I put them in buttered dishes, ready to bake.


cran stuffing

I then infused the milk with a clove-studded onion and some bay leaves for the bread sauce, and made the giblet stock for the gravy. I only realized at this point that you’re supposed to let the stock simmer for 2 hours, whoops. It was too late to do anything about it, so I just let it boil until I was ready to make the gravy. The giblet stock is water, turkey neck, heart and gizzard, an onion, some peppercorns, carrot and celery, boiled. Then I boiled the potatoes for the roast potatoes, shook them in the pan and sprinkled them with semolina.

You have to flip the bird over for the last half hour, to bronze the breast. This was a two-woman job. I held the pan still, and mum did the heavy-duty lifting.

An arrived at about 7pm, when Gordon was ready to come out of the oven.


Turkey

We covered him in foil, I turned up the heat in the oven, and I put the potatoes in for their hour of cooking. (In goosefat).

An: Are they going to take an hour to cook?
Me: Yup.
An: looking hopeful... You know, when we cook potatoes at home, they only take like 20 minutes.
Mum: Yeah, did you parboil the potatoes?
Me: Yup.
Mum: Then they’ll probably take less than an hour to cook.
Me: LOOK, people. Nigella SAYS an hour, they’re taking an hour!

Besides, the time when the potatoes are in the oven is the perfect amount of time to organize everything else.

I added the breadcrumbs to the infused milk for the bread sauce, and did the gravy.


juices

I put the roasting dish, sans-turkey, straight onto the hob, whisked in some 00 flour, and let it thicken up, with An on stirring duty, before adding the giblet stock and marsala, and letting it boil some more.

An

Then I cooked up the Brussels sprouts (they were frozen, sorry. You just can’t get Brussels sprouts here in Summer), drained them and tossed them through some chestnuts which I’d turned in butter in the meantime.

And I had to fry livers for the gravy, chop them up, and add them to the dish (with An still stirring, phew!) After cooking them for a couple of minutes, I whizzed them up in the blender, and it was ready.

And then I fried some chipolatas in a frying pan. I wasn’t intending to serve them, but I had them in the freezer, (bought last month in a fit of efficiency), and I know An loves his sausages.

Me: Oh my God, all these Christmas recipes are so bloody fiddly. This is so much work! There’s always something else to be thinking about.

And finally, the oven dinged, we took the potatoes out, and Mum started carving. While she was carving, I put our pudding in the steamer, and transferred the rum sauce from freezer to fridge.


A Fortnum and Mason's pudding, baby! It was $44.95 at David Jones. EEEEEK.


Sliced turkey, cranberry sauce, baked stuffing, gravy in blue jug


Brussels sprouts and chestnuts - new Living Kitchen serving plate!


Cranberry sauce


family shot


From left to right, bread sauce, Brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, chipolatas


chipolatas


Potatoes

Daniel: Sarah, these potatoes look superb.

And they were, indeed, superb. Here's a quote from the same roast potato recipe from Feast (Nigella's latest book), which perfectly describes this moment.

Boastfulness and vainglory are not attractive nor would I want to encourage them in you (or myself), but when you've cooked these and see them in all their golden glory on the table, I think you're allowed a quiet moment of silent pride.

my plate


An’s second helping. You want some meat with that gravy?

Everything was so perfect! And by that I mean that all the recipes turned out really well, with no duds (except maybe the cranberry stuffing). Go Nigella! As you can see, I'm not really the type to be faffing about with fancy table settings or centrepieces. For me, good food should be the focus of the meal.

The turkey wasn't too dry at all, and it went perfectly with the cranberry sauce, bread sauce and gravy. I'd never had bread sauce before, and it is absolutely awesome! Bread sauce, where have you been all my life!? The Brussels sprouts and chestnuts had a great contrast of flavour and colour, and were fine even though I'd made them from frozen. Chipolatas were a welcome addition. The cranberry stuffing that was cooked inside the turkey tasted nice, but I wouldn't bother trying the stuff I baked separately because it looks really dry. But the chestnut stuffing! The chestnut stuffing! It's so soft and mealy and fantastic. You can probably see that I was very careful about limiting portions of the non-turkey elements of the meal, which I think worked very well, because we weren't too stuffed afterwards.

I had a go at flambéeing the pudding, using vodka because Nigella says it burns for longer. Nigella says that Fanny (whoever that is,) boasts of keeping her pudding alight for 11 minutes at her spectacular at the Royal Albert Hall, but mine only went for about 30 seconds. And I was too chicken to carry it still alight over to the table, so I just waited until the fire subsided. By the way, my brother actually took a video of the flames. If anyone wants to see that, let me know and I'll hook you up.


pudding


sauces - brandy butter on the left, iced rum sauce on the right

The iced rum sauce didn't quite "melt on impact", but perhaps that's because the pudding wasn't searing hot. We preferred the iced rum sauce to the brandy butter, but both were good. That Fortnum and Mason's pudding was totally amazing; even An, who's not into Christmas pudding, liked it.


pudding


pudding and sauces

After this, we had coffee and tea, and kinda spread out on the couch whilst my parents very kindly did the washing up. I collapsed in bed at about 1:30. What a fabulous day!

Merry Christmas everybody!