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:
Yes to turkey crown, made a curry for tonight and enough for crispy Chinese turkey pancakes tomorrow

White forest roulade - magazine recipe - white chocolate and cherry - all gone in the bat of an eye

Panettone - all gone

Ham - boiled two whole ones instead of half boil half bake. Finished with glaze in oven for the last 25 mins. Much nicer texture

Celeriac gratin - Sainsbury’s magazine recipe

Got the tiniest bag of baby sprouts from Waitrose - perfect amount!

Have probably got too much cheese and chocolate. Not a bad problem to have.

Turkey in a bag from Waitrose was a big win. Said it would feed three but it was a good six portions so we ate it for lunch again today instead of beef.

AnnaMagnani Where on earth do you get wild garlic from at this time if year?
Are you not in the UK?

Lots of misses in our town. Our local Aldi sold lots of turkeys that had gone off. However the Christmas spirit shone on through the FB groups and lots of people donated joints of beef/gammon/chicken that they were going to eat today to the families with no Turkey!

Hits
Turkey
Mince pies
Carrots
Fruit cake
Onions
Peas

Misses
Ham
Parsnips
Broccoli sprouts
Tomatoes

It wasn't me with the wild garlic! - I don't recall making something that listed as an ingredient and if so, I ignored it.

Chocolated crunch pudding - basically a v v posh fridge cake.

Ingredients : 6oz butter, 3 tbspns golden syrup, 8oz plain chocolate - I used 70%, 6oz ginger biscuits crushed(used Waitrose essential ginger biscuits), 6oz plain biscuits crushed (used Waitrose essential digestives), 1oz currants, 3oz raisins, 2oz glace cherries chopped roughly, 1oz candied peel (I ignored all of this and used Lidl brandy soaked fruit for the lot), 2 tspns ground cinnamon, 2 tablespoons of brandy or rum.

Grease a 2 pint pudding basin. Melt and stir together the chocolate, butter and syrup in a saucepan. Mix in the rest of the ingredients and spoon into the pudding basin and chill in the refrigerator until set. Dip basin briefly in hot water and turn out onto a plate. At this point it looks exactly like a Christmas pudding and I considered stopping.

Icing - melt 3oz chocolate with a tablespoon of water and stir until smooth then stir in 1oz butter until melted in. Cool slightly and coat pudding with it.

The whole thing is v v rich - it will go a long way. However being basically chocolate it likely will also be popular with pudding haters and children and it also takes not long to make compared to the huge effort of a real one.

I'd heard of the Dimbleby Christmas book - that crunch pud sounds amazing!

I also meant to recommend Non Stick Bacofoil. Probably an ecological disaster but OMG so brilliant. Covered my baking trays in it and no washing up.

Just myself, Mum and Dad for the main meal this year. Was slightly dreading it to be honest so wrestled control of the kitchen.

Despite the fact that I have a side hustle as a private chef Mum and Dad are sceptical of my cooking ability.

I won on the day though. Cooked a New York Strip Loin of beef, recipe from the NY Times cooking section. Newly purchased digital meat thermometer ensured it was perfectly cooked and not over.

Roast potatoes and parsnip were perfect.

Also cooked Yotam Ottolenghi’s caramelised fennel with goats cheese from Plenty. This was delicious too and a perfect side dish that sounds more complicated than it actually is, and easy to cook while beef is resting.

Pavlova for dessert.

hits
M+S seafood platter
Waitrose Profiteroles
Sainsbury's cheeses particularly their Gouda

miss
m+s sirloin stuffed with porcini stuffing. expensive and way to too fatty

hits - brussel sprout gratan and M&S turkey parcel, was delicious

honestly never really had a miss, except for me chocolate as I dont like it

Hit - stir fried sprouts with mushrooms and onions, chilli and garlic - everyone ate it and asked for more

Miss - my homemade trifle- have had Tesco value ready ones that tasted better

Waffleberry pudding - will stick to bread and butter pudding next time

Roasted parsnips- soggy as anything for some reason despite making crispy as f potatoes

@MissMarplesKnitting

I read that as 'PIL are keen winos '

Hits: cheddar and cider bake from lidl with fresh bread and a table full of crackers, biscuits for cheese, Camembert etc went down FAR better than normal party food for the evening.

Misses: over cooked the turkey so was bordering on dry but hit - made all left overs into a Boxing Day pie!

Ours was lovely.
Hits was the M and S vegan almond, pistachio and butternut roast and an Aldi butternut and chickpea wellington. Both really nice, not fatty and nice flavours.
Also Asdas potato's maris pipers and M and S parsnips and 2 big bags of mixed veg from Asda, comprising of carrots, peas, baby sweetcorn and broccoli and some cheap stuffing as well.

This meal was enough without anything else, no Yorkshires etc. I finished off with about 20 Quality Street. No sprouts after I once found one with a worm in it.

it. Never again!

Didn't really have a miss this year! My turkey was gorgeously moist, bought a huge self basted one and put herby butter under the skin. Loads left over and frozen in batches for pies/curry/chilli/risotto.

My Yorkshire's rose like fluffy clouds. I was SO proud of them!

Oh yes and Morrison's ready made turkey and Madeira gravy tasted like heaven! I usually make my own but DH spotted it on offer on Christmas Eve when he had popped in for something we had forgotten. It was divine!

No major misses this year, only Nigella ham recipe that was tried for the first time and tasted like......ham. Won't bother again, it was ok but nothing special, will stick to usual recipe next time.

Massive hit this year was my very first pavlova which was very popular, everyone loved it and demolished second helpings

Hit - booths small Xmas dinner. Everything was lovely, dead easy to make and did two big dinners and turkey sandwiches for four.

Miss - m and s bread sauce. Unfortunately this was really watery and tasteless. It might be the one thing I make myself next year!

Hit was Hairy Bikers honey and mustard ham recipe - delicious, and leftovers forming dinner tonight with baked potatoes and salad

Miss - my Yorkshires. Not sure what happened except I think maybe I overfilled the individual tins so the bottoms were pure storage!!!

Stodge not storage

My bottom is pure storage at the moment. Flab all the way after eating so much food.

Aldi smoked bacon pigs, sprouts with garlic and chilli olive oil, Kelly bronze turkey were a win
Misses - festive red cabbage with star anise and cinnamon - watery, over cooked let down despite following the recipe to the letter

Hits:
Mash made with Maris pipers
Misses: roasters made with king Edwards. Just wouldn’t crisp up and I usually make amazing roast spuds 😢

Hits - the Co-op white chocolate dessert, Dickensian gammon (Abel & Cole recipe book) roast potatoes (both Waitrose and made by me) gigantic chicken from the butcher - although it cannot have been able to walk when it was alive so I feel a bit bad about that.

Misses - Waitrose salmon en croûte, so much spinach I thought I'd bought the wrong thing.

Made sprouts with streaky bacon (cooked this in butter first), then pan fried with toasted almonds and lots of salt and pepper...best sprouts ever. Made red cabbage last week, froze and reheated, delicious. Aldi butternut squash, mushroom and chestnut veggie roast was fantastic. Aldi frozen parsnips a huge hit, were super crispy and delicious.

Tesco Finest mature Christmas pudding and chocolate bomb pudding were great.

Cadbury's layers of joy "chocolate" trifle, where was the chocolate!