Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities (15 page)

That – the nuts and bolts of the lunch as a purely practical undertaking – is the easiest part. But the stress-factor, incipient panic, the general hysteria that can colour this day – this is where the danger lies. I think we all have to make a conscious effort to keep this under control; and by under control, I don’t mean keep it to yourself, but rather ensure you don’t risk getting worked up into a state of explosive, put-upon martyrdom. No lunch is worth that. What is the use of fabulous food and blip-free efficiency if everyone is cowed into misery by the stress you give off? My mother’s hysteria is an enduring lesson to me. By Christmas Eve, every year, she’d be in tears, and her tension leaked throughout the house. Now, I want to enjoy Christmas.

To some extent, this means working out a way of making this feast your own. Friends of mine who get the nerviest are those who have mothers (or mothers-in-law) coming over and, haunted by the perfect Christmas these dames have apparently delivered effortlessly, they live in fear of the harsh judgement their own shameful simulacrum will surely elicit. You have a choice here: you either take charge of your Christmas and enjoy (as I do) the slightly less structured event you decide to let unfold; or you recognize that disapproval of your slapdash efforts bestows such a sense of superiority in those finding fault that you are in fact doing them a favour. Think how threatened they’d feel if you’d upstaged them.

But that brings us to a difficult area. What makes Christmas lunch so important is also what makes it so fraught; reader, I have one word to say to you, and it is Family. I love to have as many of mine around me as I can, but I have learnt they need to be leavened. Why not invite some friends, and not necessarily old friends, though it’s lovely to have them round the table, too? What you need is the stabilizing effect of the stranger factor: someone with whom your family doesn’t feel quite at home enough to behave badly. And I include myself here, too. We can all regress quite alarmingly with family, and we need to be inhibited out of this behaviour.

As I said, I want the lunch to have a certain relaxed informality, and if that seems at odds with the brisk, clipboard-and-pen style of my detailed preparations, well, it’s because only the military precision of the planning enables me to relax for the lunch.

And, for the meal itself, I want – as will become clear – the food to be plentiful but I want, too, the feel of a feast not a banquet. I have, in recent years, let my lunch become more of a help-yourself than a silver service affair. That’s to say (not least because I make so much food there’s too much of it to go on our table and still leave room for us) I put all the food on another table, and let everyone pile up their own plates as they go. Sometimes, I hover, adding spoonfuls or helping people if I feel the need, but, generally, I’m happy to carve or get someone else to, and make sure they all know exactly what everything is. Then we can all take ourselves to the main table to eat, returning for a refill at will. It’s not an elegant solution, but it feels cosy.

My other, more recent, accommodation was suggested by my sister. I was worried that I wouldn’t fit everyone around one table, and I didn’t want a sprawled out affair but something warm and compact. So, at my sister’s bidding, I put an oilcloth out on the floor underneath the Christmas tree and let the children have a Spruceside picnic lunch. They couldn’t have loved it more, munching under the baubles and the lights, and everyone was happy. So much energy can be wasted trying to make sure small children stay seated, that not having this to worry about aided the mellowness of proceedings.

Informality doesn’t preclude attention to detail. I want the table to look right, which, for me, means special cloths or napkins and bits and bobs of decoration, brought out once a year, with ceremony. It has to feel festive. I bring them out soon after the 15th December, and they are packed away again on Twelfth Night. I don’t insist on a tablecloth – I like the warm gleam of plain wood – but I must have tealights or candles, and proper napkins, and I’m not beyond the odd bauble or pine cone. My favourite china, seasonally stashed away, is the somewhat obsessively collected, mainly 1950s Crown Devon Stockholm (and see my proud display, left), but I can go a number of pleasurable ways.

So aside from this basic, number one Christmas Table, I love, too, the elemental Christmas Red – you can see from the pictures, how glorious it looks when tablecloth, napkins, crockery are all aglow with holly-berry brightness. But, although the season allows for vibrant display, it doesn’t depend on it. There is a part of me that longs, throughout Christmas, to evoke the wood cladding and rustic cosy calm of some alpine hut and this is the part that brought the table setting shown here and here into being. It’s hard to choose between my two other favourite tables, different as they are. One I think of as “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” mode; the other, my designer and art director, Caz Hildebrand, nicknames Barbie Goes to Bollywood (here). There is a brightness, airy calm and serenity about the white-on-white approach; and yet the other, with its preposterous pinkness and odd clashing touch of brazen orange, manages a spirit-lifting glamour despite its (or my) best efforts. But these are just my ways of playing with the Christmas table, and you, no doubt, will have yours. Of course, no one wants a new set of china each year, but it’s surprising how different you can make a setting look just by playing about with a cloth, some napkins and a tealight or two.

I try to be as permissive about the content of the lunch itself, and I am, I am, but I make no secret of the fact that my Christmas lunch is the one that opens this chapter: the lunch presided over by the turkey with all the traditional trimmings; the lunch I ate as a child, and the one I eat so much more joyfully now, and which, with occasional variations, I’ve written about before. But I am, I’d hope, a zealot rather than a bully and happy to include ideas for those of you who want something different for a change, or who cannot embrace or even meekly go along with my exuberant championing of the Christmas turkey. A Christmas goose is the most obvious alternative, and a fabulous one (especially with pear and cranberry stuffing), but once I’ve ventured beyond the traditional, I am ready to take a broadly inclusive approach. So that means a vast and gorgeous rib of beef with a seasonal port and Stilton gravy; or a slightly Italianate, rolled, stuffed loin of pork, both of which bring their own splendour and special-ness to the occasion. A glazed ham, if you wanted to bring this into the equation, and were not already following my Christmas Eve supper plans, would also do the trick. Within all these suggestions are provisions for vegetarians, but I’m happy, too, to include a full-on, meatless Christmas Feast, in the form of a beautiful, whole, stuffed pumpkin. Some of you may have teenage children and their tyrannical fads to accommodate, others may simply prefer, if in mixed carnivore and veggie company, to have just one meal for all, and this is one that everyone can relish.

And, although each of the menus makes any Christmas lunch feel like the Main Event it is, these are meals that can also lend themselves to any big-deal dinner throughout the season.

MY TRADITIONAL CHRISTMAS LUNCH

CHRISTMAS LUNCH MENU FOR 10–16

SPICED AND SUPERJUICY TURKEY WITH ALLSPICE GRAVY

ALLSPICE GRAVY

REDDER THAN RED CRANBERRY SAUCE

MY MOTHER’S BREAD SAUCE

GINGERBREAD STUFFING

,

PANETTONE AND ITALIAN SAUSAGE STUFFING OR

CHESTNUT STUFFING

BACON-WRAPPED CHIPOLATAS

PERFECT ROAST POTATOES

MAPLE-ROAST PARSNIPS

BRUSSELS SPROUTS WITH CHESTNUTS

BUTTERNUT ORZOTTO

RED CABBAGE WITH POMEGRANATE JUICE

ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS PUDDING WITH EGGNOG CREAM

CHOCOLATE PUDDING FOR CHRISTMAS PUDDING HATERS WITH CHOCOLATE SAUCE

SATSUMAS OR CLEMENTINES

LYCHEES

FRESH MIXED NUTS IN THEIR SHELLS

When I read the menu that follows, I feel exhausted, hungry, flabbergasted and proud. How could I have cooked so much? How could we all have eaten so much? But how I want to eat it now. I am warmed by recollection and anticipation.

For this is what I made last year, which is – give or take – what I make every year and will be making every year that – d.v. – follows. It used to be worse, I used to make two stuffings; now, I concede that one suffices. But then, in my two-stuffing days, I went without bacon-wrapped chipolatas, so a balance has been maintained.

In fairness, I should say that the menu is inflated, as two of the people (out of a total of nine adults and five children) round my table were vegetarians and I wanted to make sure they could feast as richly as the rest of us. In previous years I had only intermittently added the red cabbage and never the butternut orzotto, but both made sense and neither was any trouble since I prepared them in relative quiet the day before and simply reheated them as I cooked the rest. I had to do something for non-meat eaters as I knew I couldn’t forgo the goose fat on my roast potatoes (although I had decided to take pancetta out of the sprouts). I did think about the goose fat, and consulted my sister who was, after all, bringing the vegetarians. I gave her three options: cook the potatoes in vegetable oil; cook them in goose fat and don’t tell the vegetarians; cook them in goose fat, tell them and deprive them. She felt strongly that we’d already given up the pancetta, so enough was enough – they would have the orzotto, plus we hadn’t forced them to become vegetarians. At this time of year, one can get frenzied and beyond reason – so I was grateful for her coolly brutal logic.

I have printed a timetable for guidance, my own Christmas Lunch Countdown, but obviously there are variables. I hope, at least, it helps you to structure your own timetable. That much is crucial: if you don’t run the cooking like a military campaign, you won’t get lunch on the table in time. Having said that, I should admit one thing: I invited everyone for 2pm, with a thought that we would eat at 2.30pm, and got started in the kitchen at 10am, having not been released from rapacious present-opening by my children before then. By the time everyone arrived, I was unmade-up, shiny-faced with the exertions and still in my dressing gown. So I’m not pretending that any of this can be done with a mere snap of the fingers or wiggle of the nose. But the pleasures that are to be had from the slow build-up as you prepare a feast, as well as from quickly eating it, are not to be underestimated. For me, this lunch is the lynchpin of the year.

The menu above, in the quantities I cook, is what I’d do for 10, and it would certainly stretch to 16. This may sound odd, but caterers routinely downsize portions the greater the number of guests. The one thing you needn’t worry about is not having enough: there are so many elements to a proper Christmas feast, you’d be surprised just how little people take of each. And simply, the fewer the guests, the more leftovers you’ll have. That, too, is part of the rich, full point of the exercise.

AT-A-GLANCE CHRISTMAS LUNCH COUNTDOWN

There is no reason why you couldn’t do some of what follows in advance, but this is how I tackle it.

CHRISTMAS EVE (at the latest)

•

First thing, take the turkey out of the fridge. (Take the giblets out as soon as you get the bird home and stash them separately in the fridge, throwing away the liver, I’m afraid to say.) Put all the giblets into a saucepan (with lid) along with the other ingredients to make the stock for your

Allspice Gravy

, then put it all on the heat and get on with preparing the turkey while the stock comes to a boil.

•

Get out a very large pan (with lid) – one that will fit the turkey roomily – or a clean bucket or plastic bin and add all the ingredients you need for brining the

Spiced and Superjuicy Turkey

. Stir well and lower the turkey into the brine, adding more water if needed. Cover with the lid and put it somewhere cold. This now just sits, infusing, until Christmas morning.

•

Meanwhile, once the giblet-water has started boiling, cover with a lid, turn down the heat to very low and leave for 2 hours.

•

You could use this time to get on with everything else, so in whatever order you like – or you can man several pans at once, which is more efficient so long as it doesn’t stress you out:

–

Redder Than Red Cranberry Sauce

; or make this further ahead.

– your chosen

stuffing

, but don’t add the eggs yet.

•

The above are non-negotiable, I feel. You may want to add (or not) the following, and if so, start on these today:

–

Bacon-Wrapped Chipolatas

: wrap them ready for cooking.

–

Red Cabbage

; or this can be made further ahead.

–

Butternut Orzotto

, but only up to the point before the mascarpone is added.

•

When the above are either done or under control:

– Take the giblet-water, after its simmering time, off the heat, remove the lid and leave to get cold.

– Check you’ve got all the plates, cutlery and napkins you need for tomorrow and that there’s champagne, white wine, fizzy water (or any combination you want to serve) in the fridge, or in a small clean plastic bin stuffed with ice, to save fridge space.

– Count the Christmas crackers and, if this applies, put them beyond any child’s reach.

– Slice a good-quality white loaf, cut crusts off and leave on a rack to stale for the

Bread Sauce

tomorrow.

CHRISTMAS DAY

This is a brutal schedule, but better to go into battle properly prepared than enter the fray buoyed up with optimistic ignorance. You can draw up your own timetable, and it’s often wise to, as the act of scribbling things down on paper helps you to get a good measure of what’s involved, more than just reading can. I still scrawl down my own schedule. Plus, of course, you may have a different weight turkey, want to eat later or introduce any number of your own traditions and elements or have to fiddle and edit to accommodate your particular kitchen set-up.