Christmas 2009 - Menu

Breakfast:

American style pancakes with maple syrup and caramelised bananas
Grapefruit
Fresh coffee
Orange juice


Lunch

Starter:
Prawn and avocado cocktail with salad garnish

Main:
Roast turkey with pork and chestnut stuffing
Crispy roast potatoes and parsnips
Braised red cabbage and apples with spices
Brussel sprouts with garlic and crispy bacon
Steamed carrots with sage butter
Rice (Nick insisted! Usually I am the rice lover and have to have it with most things, whereas Nick much prefers potatoes and can take or leave rice. But he insisted on having rice - against my rigid menu planning!)
Gravy

Dessert:
Eton mess (with my first ever homemade meringue - which turned out perfectly I might add!)
Christmas pudding - only the MIL will eat this!

Pork and chestnut stuffing

I LOVE stuffing. I don't make it very often, but when I do, I like to make a real effort. This year I decided not to stuff the turkey, but rather cook the stuffing seperate. My main oven doesn't seem to get too hot so I don't want to risk undercooked turkey and stuffing, so it's going in a tin of its own. Here's my recipe. Other than for the sausagemeat, there are no amounts, I just do it by sight.

Ingredients:

• Breadcrumbs (I use day old bread, whizzed in the blender)
• 400g package of high pork content sausage meat (min 80%)
• Most of a 200g pack of ready roasted chestnuts, chopped
• 1 medium red onion
• 1 stick celery
• fresh sage leaves
• fresh thyme
• fresh rosemary
• turkey liver (this is optional - I didn't want it to go to waste from the turkey so I added it
• fresh ground pepper
• salt
• 2 cloves garlic

Method:

1. finely chop all herbs, the garlic and the onion

2. Heat some olive oil in a pan and sautee the onion, garlic and herb mix until softened

3. Put sausage meat into a large bowl and add the breadcrumbs, the chestnuts and the onion, garlic and herb mix

4. chop up the liver and add to sausage meat


5. Using your hands, squidge everything together and then season with a little salt and pepper

6. Line a loaf tin with baking paper or foil and press mixture into tin

I pressed a few bay leaves into the top - decoration and flavour

7. Bake in the oven at approx 180 degrees for approx 40 mins, or until cooked

Serve with your Roasted turkey or chicken!

Christmas Eve

Dinner is served - buffet style! (All homemade, except where stated otherwise)

Vegetable soup - using homemade stock
Ham - Nick's domain. I don't intrude - ever
Caramelised red onion chutney - Sainsbury's!
Chicken liver and fig pate - I'll be using port instead of brandy, will omit the orange zest and use some chopped figs for sweetnes instead
Bread rolls - using the MIL's bread machine to save me some effort!
Selection of crisps and dips - store bought (!)
Mixed Salad
Sausage rolls - MIL is making these
Cheese board - store bought of course!

Baileys
Lemon Shortbread
Toffee pecan brownies - recipe is on this blog
Mulled Wine

Christmas 2009 - prep

Although I have been thinking about my Christmas menu for a while now, I have yet to start on the actual prep work. I had grand designs of spending the weekends baking and freezing so that come Christmas Day, I could actually relax and enjoy the day, rather than spend it in a steaming kitchen. The plan has yet to be followed. This weekend we are away so I'm not actually sure if I'm going to have as much done in time for Christmas as I'd hoped, but I'm going to have to get myself in gear or I know I'll be flapping about on Christmas Day!

Anyway, to try and gain back some advantage, Friday night I am going to be making sausage rolls, lemon shortbread dough, scotch bonnet pickle and preserved lemons. The latter two are actually to be given away as gifts, but they need time to pickle. The sausage rolls and the shortbread dough will remain uncooked, and I will freeze them. That way I can just put the cookies in the oven as and when needed. Ditto with the sausage rolls.