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?

MrsChollySawcutt Please can you share your stuffing recipe. Sounds delightful!

Got turkey, pigs in blankets and sprouts from a farm shop and all were gorgeous. Sprouts came looking like a Christmas tree and DD was going round house giggling with them. DS was in love with the pigs in blankets as much bigger than shop ones. Cat and I were in love with the turkey though its big chicken for her as she doesn't understand word turkey. As soon as you say big chicken she does an extra loud purr.

Lovely home made Yule Log too. Prosecco was good too but bit strong for me when I realised I was about to help myself to turkey from the cat's bowl. 😳

I did the Delia sprouts with chestnuts but forgot to take them off the hob after 2 minutes so they had about 5 - but were really nice. I am never peeling chestnuts on Christmas morning again though!

Roast potatoes went well but took ages longer than the recipe, probably because of other things in oven. I did them in olive oil.

Parsnips were my most successful ever. Big chunks, parboiled, roughed up, honey & flour added then in oven dish with olive oil.

Yorkshire puds were amazing! I forgot to do the batter the night before but it didn't matter. They were posh eggs, maybe that's why.

Today we were at my mum's and she had clementine cream with Cointreau (M&S?) which was delicious with Christmas pud. Love Boxing Day lunch with cold cuts, pickles and bubble & squeak.

Here is the stuffing recipe:

Chestnut Stuffing

INGREDIENTS
200g Tinned or Vac Packed Whole Chestnuts
400g Tinned or VacPacked Chestnut Puree
115g onion, chopped
115g leek, chopped
115g lean bacon, chopped
25g butter
115g fresh, white breadcrumbs
2 tbsp parsley, chopped (Waitrose frozen chopped flat leaf parsley works well)
Grated rind of 1 lemon
1 tsp dried thyme
1 large or 2 small eggs, beaten
Salt & pepper to taste

Put the oven on at 180°C, with a rack on middle shelf

METHOD
Fry the onion, leek and bacon in the butter until lightly golden then leave to cool
In a large mixing bowl, combine the breadcrumbs, parsley, lemon rind, chestnut puree, smashed whole chestnuts, and thyme. Season with salt and pepper
Add the cooled onion, leek and bacon to the mixing bowl and stir together with the other ingredients.

If you are making in advance STOP HERE, cover and refrigerate the mixture until you need it.

When you are ready to cook the stuffing:
Beat the eggs and use to bind the stuffing mixture
Roll into balls and cook in a greased tin for 40 minutes, or use to stuff your turkey or chicken at the neck end and cook accordingly.

Hits

Mary Berry's method of cooking the turkey - breast side down
absolutely no need for basting brilliant!
Aldi Duck Fat frozen roast potatoes - we cooked another batch today!
steamed sprouts and chestnuts
roast parsnips
Lidl pudding and vanilla swedish glace

Miss
the amount of food generally consumed - self inflicted but at least it was good

Burned the pigs in blankets! Grrr my fave bit of Christmas dinner.

The sprouts were weird, don't know what went wrong.

Finest free range, corn fed chicken from Tesco was really lovely, rubbed and crumbled a chicken stock cube on the skin.

Haven't had any Christmas pud yet but have had mince pies with brandy butter and custard.

Have eaten my own considerable body weight in cheese and biscuits.

New to us hits
Lidl gingerbread ice cream
Coop sloe gin & blackberry ice cream
Waitrose gluten free small Xmas cake. DM who is coeliac said it was best ever & took the rest home.

St Delia's sticky toffee puddings, the grandchildren made them a few weeks back and they freeze beautifully. Aldo prize winning pudding not good, didn't come out in one piece, never bought one before, never will again!

My roast potatoes (I can't bear the word 'roasties') WERE NOT CRISPY
I will learn from this mistake - next time they go in a separate tin with boiling hot oil, not in with the chicken juices 'because they will absorb the taste'.

Hit:
M&S turkey crown
M&S gravy
M&S luxery Xmas pud.

Miss;
M&S red cabbage-too sweet and very mushy
DHs cauli cheese. The cauliflower was bland (I blame Sainsbury's) and undercooked and he didn't cook the flour in the sauce well enough so you could taste it.

I'd never tell DH that though!

Gordon Ramsey’s gravy (made ahead) with lemon, cider and rosemary was horrible.
Bog standard gravy made from turkey juices with s bit of knorfliquid stock on the day was lovely.

Turkey crown from local butcher was delicious.

Fillet of beef from local butcher amazing and even better fried op on Boxing Day in rolls

Also chipolatas for piggies and stuffing meat

My creamed parsnips

Morrison's stuffed duck

Baddies... Morrison's cranberry sausages M£S creamed spinach

I thought I'd make it easy this year and bought Sainsbury's pre-prepared stuff. It wasn't that much easier and some of it was nasty. Won't be doing it again.

For Christmas Eve we had the glazed ham which looks so vile I can't actually bring myself to eat it. It's reformed and just looks kind of slimy.

Smoked salmon terrine starter - too much for me. I found it hard going.

The turkey crown was fine and we may buy that again next year (might just go for a good chicken from The butcher though).

The kids weren't keen on the TTD pigs in blankets as they were quite heavy on the seasoning. I'm with PP's kids on Paxo as I found the posh stuffing balls too heavily flavoured.

Sprouts with chestnuts were ok. I normally go for the smaller sprouts.

Parsnips with honey glaze were pretty good. The leftover roasties went in the bin unfortunately as none of us really liked them.

The cauliflower cheese was something and nothing. I'll definitely never buy that ready made again.

Red cabbage was good - perhaps just a little sweet.

The kids didn't like the salted caramel and chocolate pudding cake which is unheard of.

The free TTD Christmas pud was good.

All in all I'm going to have to suck up the big Christmas Day cook in future. It was a lot of money for a mediocre dinner.

We broke into the christmas cake last night and I have to add it my hits. I followed this recipe and it was delicious: www.theguardian.com/food/2018/nov/07/how-to-make-christmas-cake-recipe-felicity-cloake

It's by far the best fruit cake I have ever made.

Used Delia's royal icing recipe instead of roll on icing though

DD made our Christmas cake. She goes to a special school and did it in cookery. It's really, really good. I'm very proud.

That's lovely, Mornings.

I don't think we had any misses. It wasn't the best turkey ever but it was fine. I'm particularly pleased that I managed to restrain myself and we don't have all that much left now. I've made stock from the carcass and half of the stock went into a big pot of soup. Rest will be frozen. Haven't touched the cake yet, but we have visitors soon, so that was planned.

Tesco Finest Christmas cake, gorgeous.

In all my years cooking Christmas lunch I’ve learned the following:

Pare it back as much as possible - parsnips, potatoes, sprouts, carrots and one other veg if needed, stuffing balls
No starter
Plenty of pigs in blankets
Cook way less of each side than usual as there’s so much on the plate only very small helpings of each
Rest turkey for 45 minutes whilst you crank up temperature and cook roast things and sausages and stuffing
It really is just a roast
It really isn’t necessary to prep anything ahead unless you’re going mad or catering for over 12 people
It really is just a roast

Agree totally Taffetta. We have to cook pretty well everything from scratch due to allergies, I do peel the veg and make the stuffing and cranberry sauce the day before but simple is best on Christmas Day.

For everyone who had disappointing roasties, there is a failsafe method:

Put a baking tray of whatever fat or oil you’re using into the oven to get really hot.

Parboil spuds.

Drain and leave until the clouds of steam have stopped (wisps are fine).

Sprinkle spuds with semolina and any seasonings you want.

Put tray of hot fat onto the hot hob and spoon semolinary tatties in - you want it to sizzle violently.

Spoon the hot fat over the top of the spuds so everything is evenly covered.

Absolutely foolproof. Just remember: semolina coating and into hot oil/fat.

Think of me every time you’re complimented on yr fabulously crunchy and fluffy roasties

Mostly hits, including Delia's red cabbage made and frozen a month ago. Mince pies with orange peel pastry were great.

Miss, Delia's chocolate torte. The DC liked it but it was too bitter and too sweet at the same time and far too rich.

Hit - keeping the flavours simple
Roast potatoes - blanched and roasted in olive oil.
Sausagemeat, sage and apple stuffing - BBC recipe
Roast gammon - just maple syrup and cloves
Passion fruit pavlova - such a no fuss easy crowd pleaser pudding

MIss
Roast Chicken was too large - no need for chicken leftovers - gammon and sausagemeat stuffing leftovers much better!
I didn't cook the sprouts for long enough.
We haven't even got to the cheese yet! Too much food, will be more careful next year.

All was a hit this year, I was really happy with it all.

Aldi chocolate carousel as the dessert- looked amazing and everyone enjoyed it.
Aldi spinach parcels for my veggie DD’s- they absolutely loved them. Homemade cauliflower cheese & roast potatoes as great as ever.

I also improvised and made a honey drizzle for the veggies which went down well. Honey, butter, rosemary and salt melted in the microwave for 30 seconds.

Tesco mushroom Wellington ( veggies here ) was very nice and very affordable too at £4 , the box said it would feed 4 but we have big appetites so we had one between two of us but by god we were stuffed.

Hits:

Tesco 2kg gammon boiled in Pepsi and finished with wholegrain mustard and maple syrup. (Someone left early and stole the leftovers 😡)

Miss:

M&S Brussels in butter with cracked black pepper
M&S pine cones - looked pretty, but after the first couple of tastes too heavy and boring.
M&S mini bites - soggy/soft pastry or biscuit bottoms