This year a surprising number of people have asked me what Jane and I are cooking at Christmas. There is one thing I’ll be clear about from the start, I wouldn’t be so daft as to write about food if I didn’t at least have a go at cooking it. To do otherwise is just to be a critic and that never appealed to me in isolation – so unless it says otherwise what we are talking about here it is home made. I also have a partner who cooks, bakes,excels at food presentation, has art directed many a cook book and who shares my enthusiasm for good food and living well (it is also fair at this point to say she contributes massively to the themes of my ‘Five’s’ column).

It’s not that I don’t like turkey, as a matter of fact I’m quite fond of it in its place, but there does seem to be a whole lot of trauma associated with a Christmas lunch that is not much more than a glorified Sunday roast. Each to their own, but there is little I can find to enjoy in a ritual that involves spending most of what is meant to be a holiday cooking insane quantities of vegetables. Both of us are bored by routine and I’m instinctively sceptical about ‘tradition’ – so eating the same thing every year is a non-starter.

Mind you, why cooking a Christmas lunch should hold out any horrors given the amount of on-screen tuition that’s rammed down our throats I know not. I’ve lost count of the number of times in the last fortnight we’ve been shown how to cook roast potatoes. In fact one channel screened three programmed in one evening showing us how to cook pretty much the same meal! To top it all off you can cook your Christmas lunch along to Gordon Ramsay this year. Watch Gordon swear a lot while the kid open their presents and you cook your turkey to f***. I’ll be giving it a miss.

So some time ago the main festive meal moved from Christmas Day to Christmas Eve – something which is ‘the way’ in lots of other countries and seems to me a lot more practical. This is not to suggest that there is no ‘effort’ made, to the contrary, the effort is considerable and involves dishes that have been sampled and enjoyed elsewhere then re-created with or without a re ripe to work from. The whole thing is complicated slightly by my just not loving some of the ‘bog standard’ Christmas flavours. So you won’t ever find me eating mince pies, Christmas pudding/cake nor drinking mulled wine. It is not that I find them inedible – I can eat pretty much everything – it’s just that there will always be things I would rather eat more and, as it is supposed to be ‘fun’ (at risk of provoking debate with the more puritanical god botherers) I don’t see why I should grind through food that I don’t love just because it is Christmas.

So, to get to the point, what are we eating this year:

With cocktails (probably Blueberry Cosmopolitans)
Vietnamese Rolls
(a canapé variation on the sausage roll, more interesting, lighter – one of the fruits of my better half doing her ‘rolls and dumplings’ class).

Ham and Eggs with a celery and chestnut veloute
(attempting to reproduce John Campbell’s festive menu amuse bouch from Coworth Park is a gauntlet that had to be picked up – a little tower of ham hock, apple compote, toasted brioche and soft-boiled quail  egg surrounded by a rich soup. George us, hopefully).

Potted Duck with chutney and homemade breads
(I was lucky enough to be given Heston Blumenthall’s “At Home” for my birthday and I’ve been itching to make this one).

Prawn Won Ton
(again, thanks to Jane’s cookery school outing).

Pressed Pork Belly with Oriental Spice
(a variant of a big favourite mashing up recipes from Gordon and Heston with a twist of my own. Pork was the Christmas meat when I was young. My grandfather wouldn’t eat birds and there just weren’t enough of us to justify turkey, which was relatively expensive. I think the facts are on my side when I say that pork is the traditional Christmas meat. This adds Eastern spices which are themselves very Christmas – the kitchen smells brilliant).

Lemon
(Specifically, lemon curd meringues, lemon ice cream and lemon and blueberry sorbet and maybe some last minute additions inspired by L’Ortolan’s Citrus desert).

Alternative Mince Pies
(the alternative being that they are not mince pies at all, they are chocolate – well, it had to come in somewhere).

Now the point of all this is not to bang on about how great it all is or how fancy the food is or how pig-headedly different I can be and it is certainly not to talk about how much this lot costs. In fact it is quite inexpensive, working out at about £8 per head for the entire menu – about £40 overall for the five of us excluding drink. That’s not bad for seven courses and an awful lot less than some folk will spend for a lot less.

Next year, goose, probably.

Christmas Day then becomes a more casual business with some serious relaxation aided by brunch:

Pancakes with bacon and maple syrup
Or possibly filled croissants (we buy the dough)
strawberries

And later,

home cooked:

Terrine of turkey, phesant and cranberries
Spiced topside of beef
Ham with a honey and mustard glaze

A selection of local cheese from the excellent Wellington Farm Shop

Praline macaroons
Lemon and poppy shortbread

Somewhere in the mix will be several bottles of Malbec (all affordable – I refuse to pay silly money for wine), espresso martinis, and experimental mojito with Thai basil, if it gets cold bourbon sours, of course margaritas and some Patron tequila.

Happy solstice.

Sources:

“Heston Blumenthal at Home”, Heston Blumenthal, Bloomsbury, 2011.

“Gordon Ramsay’s Sunday Lunch: and other recipes from “The F Word”", Gordon Ramsay, Jill Mead, Quadrille, 2006.