Christmas for the masses...

[DXBMermaid]

Looks like there will be about 25 adults for Christmas this year at our house. It will be an early dinner, so guests arrive at around 4/5 and dinner will be served around 6/7.

For starters I'm thinking of:
-cranberry and brie tartlets
-chiccory/ endive leaves with prawn cocktail

• pea and mint soup

These are all things I can make ahead and they will keep the guest occupied while I put the finishing touchers to the main course. I'm debating if I should serve a small portion of each dish on a plate for everybody or if I should just do big platters and let people sort themselves out?

For the main we will roast a Turkey in the oven and a large chunk of beef on the bbq (thankfully we live in a warm country so no need to worry about rain). The sides will be: green beans, roasted carotts, braised red cabbage, roast potatoes and possibly yorkshires or mash.

Dessert I'm thinking of a bit of a buffet again.
Candy cane fudge
Mince pies
Cheese and biscuits
And maybe one or two more options.

I will have help as we have 2 friends staying with us and DH can help a little as well, but the majority of the cooking will be done by me. For those of you who have cooked for large groups like this beforr, does this sound doable?

Clearly I have lost the ability to spell... Excuse the typos!

I guess it depends on your experience and confidence, that menu for 25 would freak me out!! If you feel calm at the thought of it then great, personally id change starters to one light vegetarian option and the buffet desserts is a great idea, a platter of lovely fresh fruit and some fancy chocolates to pad it out.

Good idea about the chocolates and fruit platter.

I've cooked for a group of this size before. Usually it's a buffet, but tbh I think a sit down meal like this is actually easier as there are less dishes to prepare and most of these can be made in advance.

I actually feel a whole lot less panicky about doing it now that I've written it all down.

Are there any vegetarians or people on restricted diets coming? I would add a vegetarian main and skip three starters and have two veggie ones instead. The prawn cocktail requires faffing around and you cant leave it out on the buffet table because of the food poisoning risk.

No changes my mind; just serve one veggie starter so you are free to get on with other things.

Can I ask how you roast the beef on a bbq? Do you wrap it in foil?

No veggies so that makes things easier, but a few will not eat pork or drink alcohol as they are muslim.

We cook the beef in one of those special racks.