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?

Hits:

King Ed potatoes for roasties, with a bit of a herb shaker seasoning thing on, done in olive oil as vegetarians present. Crisp, fluffy and tasty.
Asda pigs in blankets, bog standard but delicious
Asda generic sage and onion stuffing, everyone liked it
Gammons with honey glaze and cloves a la Delia from the 90s
Quorn 'roast'. Weird beige log thing but it smelt lovely and the veggies scoffed it.
Lemon curd roulade, which was wonky but tasty. Think it's an old Delia recipe.

Misses:
Bloody turkey crown - I did the Mary Berry thyme butter under the skin with citrus, and everyone said they liked it but I thought it was dry. I really don't like turkey.

The ham went down very well. I boiled it with fennel, anise, coriander and orange peel then glazed it in the oven with orange juice, treacle and mustard. The dog has been staring at the kitchen door since Christmas Eve, it's killing him.

Martha Stewart's brined turkey. Made a cheap frozen turkey moist and delicious.
No misses yet but we've still got an M&S mirror glaze chocolate cake to eat.

Hits:
Using foil trays for everything. Zero washing up last night

Ready roasties, ready parsnips, ready stuffing....... if it wasn't coming out of a bag yesterday it wasn't being cooked. Only thing I made myself was the pigs

Instead of Christmas pudding a mince pie with the top taken off and a dollop of clotted cream.

Misses:
Asda cocktail sausages. Tiny things and the kids are whining that they're too chewy. Will stick to the usual butchers ones next time.

I bought all my Christmas lunch stuff from Aldi, the turkey crown was terrific.

My roast potatoes were absolutely fantastic, according to MiL and my gravy was immense , according to me.

I never get it all to the table scalding hot despite hot plates , that’s a yearly miss I can’t get right.

Jamie Oliver was right about roasting a whole carrot skin and call, he was wrong about the parsnips you need to peel them.

A standard length sausage pig in blanket is better than a mini one.

Hits
Nigella's ham in cola
Waitrose pigs in blankets
Cheesecake (Cheesecake factory)

Misses
Waitrose roast potatoes with goose fat (just not crispy)
Cabbage - boiled to death after listening to DH's advice. Should have followed my instinct

Hits : Lidl mushroom and Stilton wellington
Nigella red cabbage
Whole baked cauliflower

Misses : cherry liqueur truffles

wild boar cranberry and chestnut pate for starters divine
beef and veggies for main cracking
my roast spuds totally refused to go brown and crispy in time so we ended up with sort of half roasted half boiled spuds normally my roast spuds are spot on
dessert was a bit meh but as i bought ready made irish cream gateaux cant complain

All of it was a hit I did an M&S Christmas

Turkey crown was delicious the stuffing was absolutely beautiful
The M&S parsnips were good
The roast potatoes were fabulous however did take longer than 45 mins
The carrots and oranges were lovely.
As was the tender stem broccoli
I did make my own pigs in blankets which came from Waitrose.
Stuffing ball was lovely even if the kids wouldn’t touch it.

This year I only cooked what we would eat - I didn’t buy food which would be wasted. It was only for us four so had no one to impress and we all wore out Christmas pj’s for the majority of the day!!

Today I have a Asda gammon thing which was reduced to £5 (had to pop to Asda as we ran out to loo roll so I broke my not going out on Boxing Day rule!!) as I forgot to take the beef joint out the freezer!

Pudding was a home made Yule log! With ice cream which was ok not my best effort but wasn’t that bad

I contributed a simple chocolate cake as a pudding alternative and it was a bit of a miss - I used a bigger tin than the amount of batter and had to make more and scrape it into another. That said, used melted Tesco dark chocolate which made it fudgey as well as dark brown sugar and am enjoying the leftover scraps :)

Waitrose stuffed turkey breast was excellent. Stuffing balls were also vg but overkill really. Stars of the show were the
Parsnip rostis. Really delicious.

Miss - I forgot to buy any bread sauce.

Hits for us were:

Homemade chestnut stuffing was absolutely lovely - Bacon, leek, chestnuts, breadcrumbs, parsley and lemon.

Likewise homemade pigs in blankets - Waitrose chipolatas wrapped in lightly smoked fancy pants 'artisan' bacon were amazing and unsurprisingly there are none left.

Misses:

Gravy - I am shit at gravy, I don't personally like it and can't make it for toffee. Thought I had bought some M&S ready made turkey gravy but it turns out I hadn't.

Homemade bread sauce is easy least

Peasy damn autocorrect

Hits -
Turkey crown from Costco. Really moist and great flavour!

Beetroot and butternut squash wellingtons for my vegan parents. Dad ate the whole thing and he never finishes anything so must have been good.

Misses -
Maple roasted parsnips. I'd usually do honey roasted and they go crispy but the maple syrup ones just went soggy. Got eaten though!

Yorkshires were shit didn't rise

Hits - turkey roast, veg. Spuds got parboiled too long but crisped up well in the oven.
Misses - the stuffing I forgot to put in the oven, and some Sainsburys Christmas profiteroles that had choc custard but no chocolate. MrNC liked them though and having been reduced it was OK.

Hits for us were: Morrisons small turkey cooked Jamie Oliver style with butter and herbs under skin, delicious and tasty. Also I made celeraic and parsnip bake - mashed with cream and butter then baked in oven, yum. M&S gammon - boiled in cola then glazed with brown sugar and mustard.

@AnnaMagnani is that the book that has a white cover with green dots? Think the title was in a red box?

Used to make Boxing Day Beef. It's so delicious.

Don't know where the book is anymore. Can you still buy it? I would live to have it. Looks a few times but no luck.

Interesting to hear of problems with roasties. I thought it was just me - new oven, not enough shelves, trays of stuffing had to take priority. Ended up putting them under the grill just to colour them.

Every year I swear the gas pressure is lower than normal because of demand. Is this true? I had my oven on Regulo 9 which is unheard of.

It's this book - Orange in the reissued version. Original has a photo of Christmas food on it - turkey, pudding, wine etc. My DM still has a battered copy somewhere.

www.amazon.co.uk/Cooking-Christmas-Food-Lovers-Library/dp/1908337206/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=josceline+dimbleby&tag=mumsnetforum-21&ie=UTF8&qid=1545836265&sr=8-1

@AnnaMagnani tell me more about the chocolate crunch pudding!!!

Ah, thanks. Might be slightly different to the one I recall. Found this picture; different title.