Christmas food hits and misses

[NotAnotherJaffaCake]

What were all your food hits and misses? This year we had:
M&S turkey crown - win, piece of piss to cook and loads of moist flavoursome meat, according to the meat eaters. Added bonus of gluten free stuffing for the MIL
M&S vegan nut roast thingy with bulgar wheat - bought as I was rather uninspired but eaten even by fussy DC1. Lovely fruity nutty thing.
Puds - made Christmas pud, raspberry roulade and trifle, and they were all great.

Misses:

Saint Delia of Norwich sprouts with chestnuts - followed cooking times etc to the letter. Using 8 shallots would have given me more shallots than sprouts, and sprouts were still hard.
Also Delia Parmesan parsnips - made them dozens of times so no idea what I did wrong.

I also need to do more roast potatoes today as we don’t have enough for leftovers!

What worked for you?

My usually banging roasties were a bit shit. For some reason I bought Mirabelle potatoes rather than Maris pipers. Just too waxy to crisp up.
Tesco Turkey crown cooked well.

Keeping everything very simple worked for us, steamed carrots and sprouts, potatoes and parsnips roasted in goose fat, turkey wth onion inside it, covered in butter and bacon and cooked by Delia's foil tent method, the juices made about a litre of gravy.

We also got the amounts about right so we haven't got leftovers to get use up apart from turkey and gravy which have been frozen and the carcass used for stock. Got enough potatoes and veg for one lot of bubble and squeak later in the week, today we are back to normal food.

agree M&S stuffed turkey crown is delicious. We have had it a couple of years now. All veggies were ok - red cabbage, stir fried sprouts with pancetta, carrots and parsnips - bought Aldi ready prepped pigs in blankets and they were fine. M&S gravy was good too.
Not many leftovers other than a ton of Christmas cake.

Next year will be simplifying for sure!

Not having turkey. The giant chicken and lamb with wild garlic went down a treat on Christmas Eve. Roast beef and yorkies yesterday polished off by all.

Delia's chestnut stuffing.

Aldi pate, especially the chicken parfait with herbs.

Tesco finest mandarin and ginger trifle.

Best thing is we still have lots of leftovers.

Bought Josceline Dimbleby's Christmas book (published 1978) to remind me of my childhood - so far every recipe has been a winner.

Did Boxing Day Beef on Christmas Eve - amazing.
Parsnip and Chestnut Stuffing - winner, will be repeated next year.

And the best - Chocolate Crunch Christmas Pudding - may never make a traditional Christmas pudding again.

Also did Anna Jones butternut squash and chestnut nut roast. Really tasty, all of us meat eaters loved it.

Still many days of Christmas cooking to go here

Due to taxi not turning up I did not get to eat my Christmas dinner yesterday so will have it today. It will be Linda McCartney sausages, Brussels Sprouts, carrots, potato wedges, yorkies, gravy plus instead of Christmas pud - Artic roll (I had half yesterday when I eventually got home at 23.45! ) which cheered me up a bit.

The marks party pack of mini sausage rolls scotch eggs etc was rank. Wouldn't give the sausages to the dog!
Marks beef bone pie was incredible.
Waitrose pannetone was good.

Sainsbury’s stuffed turkey crown was the most moist and delicious turkey I’ve ever had. Really pleased with it.

M&S 12 year matured Christmas pud was great, too.

No huge misses this year, although I slightly overlooked some of the veg. Never mind! The leftovers will make good bubble & squeak

Co-op gingerbread stuffing balls (all the better for being reduced to 83p on Xmas Eve)
Waitrose honey and rosemary chipolatas wrapped in bacon - delicious and double the length of a normal pig in blanket.

Hit: M&S turkey parcel was delish, we all really enjoyed it and looking forward to the leftovers.

Miss: My roast potatoes 😢. I usually do amazing roast potatoes but was struggling for room in the oven so cooked them early in the morning then reheated when the turkey parcel was resting. They weren’t crispy, just a bit chewy.

Son in law bought Tesco’s stuffing l think it was a sausage meat with chestnuts in it...was bit like a meaty nut roast.
Loved it..finished it off before we left.
His slow cooked beef was beautiful and gammon too.
All good.

Oh, Morrison’s vegan choc torte ( was also gluten free) was nice.
Not too sweet...so I had two slices.

Hits:

Aldi bronze turkey crown
Nigella cranberry sauce
Delia brandy cream recipe (oh my god, divine, will never buy the ready made stuff again)
Roasties were great

Misses:

Mary Berry custard - strange scrambled egg texture (prob my fault not Mary's)

Made some fiddly German christmas biscuits which were bland and not worth the effort

The gravy was lumpy (I wasn't responsible for that though!)

Not really a miss but I made Nigella's xmas pudding - first time I've made xmas pud at home and discovered I actually prefer shop bought... Also, it's huge, and ridiculously rich, not sure how we're going to get through it!

Made some mulled wine that turned out horribly bitter. Going to try again with a different recipe today

No one ate the cheeseboard.

I had a day where everything went well, definitely luck than judgement.

Mary Berry's thyme butter under the skin trick made our (Waitrose frozen) Turkey crown really moist and flavoursome. Definitely will do that again.

New tin for Yorkshire's works brilliantly. My FIL face was a picture cos he loves them and they were huge.

Sprouts par boiled in the morning, put in cold water, than sliced in half and pan fried with pancetta that's already crispy and a knob of butter. Genuinely delicious. And I don't like sprouts.

Other than that, I bought wine in Aldi and read the "goes with" and both were delicious with the turkey and £6 a bottle each. PIL are wine keenos so I very much scored points there too.

After all the effort and wine I then fell asleep on the sofa and snored and woke up to the kids howling with laughter at me 🙈

I've made Nigella's Christmas pud before and it is not as good as Delia's.

Made Delia's Cranberry sauce and clearly tastes have changed in our house since the recipe was published in the 90s and 3oz of sugar is way too much. Had to ransack the kitchen looking for bitter things to chuck in it to salvage it.

Lemon I did EXACTLY the same!! Where did you buy from?

Hit - Nigellas gingerbread stuffing (DH has made it the past 3-4 years and its always amazing)

Jamie Oliver red cabbage.

Miss - my roast potatoes. DH got big standard white rather than Maris Piper. Didn't ruin the dinner but they could have been nicer

Aldi ashfield farm pigs in blankets. We also had a pack of maple cured ones from Aldi and just chucked them all together. You knew when you got a cheap one 🤣

The wine. I'm 31 weeks pregnant so had been savouring and waiting for this for months. I'm no connosuer but spent more than I normally would on one with a cool label. And my god it was sweet. Better with the food but just a bit 'meh' after looking forward to it for so long

Most of it was a hit! We're a vegetarian, dairy free household so I cooked 2 Quorn roasts, 1 nut roast, a tray of yorkshire puddings, roasted charlotte potatoes, cauliflower 'cheese', steamed carrots & sprouts covered in vitalite, sage & onion stuffing balls & onion gravy.

The only miss was that I did mashed swede but I over mashed it so it was a bit like puree - bit disappointing.

Other than that it was lovely! We had it Christmas Eve & I made almost double so had loads of leftovers which DH & I had lovely late tea at about 8pm last night after the DC went to bed.

I'm tempted to make another roast today as I still have lots of lovely veg in the fridge to use & I'm feeling 'roasty' lol.

DH made chocolate fudge cake (Betty Crocker) for pudding & we still have half left which I'm eyeing up for lunch!!

Love Christmas food

Yes to Waitrose honey and rosemary bacon wrapped chipolatas, we had them too, we eat them all year round, they are lovely.

Noted AnnaMagnani, next year Delia

Hits here were, like others, Waitrose chipoloata pigs in blankets. Also Waitrose red cabbage and poultry gravy. My roasties were the best thing on the plate 👌

Lidl melting Chocolate hazelnut pudding was good.

Misses - Waitrose organic parsnips in cinnamon, cooked for twenty minutes longer than instructed and still barely edible so next year I’ll go back to home made.

Turkey brined and cooked in steam oven. Juicy, moist and absolutely best turkey I've ever eaten.

Potato dauphinois, roasted potatoes - amazing.

Bought nice tesco finest stuffing. Kids take one bight and say yuck then proceed with “we like paxo”!

Back to paxo it is!