Just in case anyone is stressing about Christmas Day..............!
Here's my top tip for Christmas Dinner....
I have concluded that the inevitable stress of Christmas dinner is created by adverts, supermarkets and TV chefs...
It's a Sunday dinner for goodness sake!!!
The only difference is that you are allowed to open a bottle of wine before you open the kitchen curtains.
We do it quite happily 51 weeks of the year but can we the consumers be trusted to manage by ourselves on one day of the year...apparently not!
Here goes...
1. Turkey... It's a big fecking chicken that's all, 20 minutes per lb plus 20 minutes at 180 degrees - jobs a good un! Get yourselves a meat thermometer £3 off the Internet poke it in the offending bird if it says 75 degrees or over its cooked!
2. Stuffing - regardless of what Jamie Oliver says you do NOT need 2lbs of shoulder of pork, onions breadcrumbs,pine nuts and a ***** load of fresh herbs to make stuffing....( no fecking wonder he's bankrupt if that's what he spends to make stuffing!)
What you need is Paxo and a kettle!! If you wanna liven it up squeeze 3 sausages out of their skins and mix that in with your Paxo before cooking .
3. Gravy - Jamie Oliver is copping for this one as well....
Bisto Jamie.... All you need is Bisto!
I ( nor anyone else I know) has got time on Christmas Eve to ***** about roasting chicken wings and vegetables, adding stock and flour cooking it for another half hour, mashing it all up with a potato masher and then straining the whole sorry mess to make gravy
4. Vegetables... Never mind faffing round shredding sprouts and frying them with bacon and chestnuts to make them more palatable... If you don't like them don't buy and cook the fecking things!! If your family only eats frozen peas then that's good enough!
5. Roast potatoes... Yes, I par boil mine, then roast them in goose fat, but Aunt Bessie also does the same .
6. Trimmings /Christmas pudding and the like.... Aldi or Lidl!
(oh and while we're on the subject of pudding - if Birds custard is what your family likes on the wretched thing then that's fine - you do not need brandy butter/rum sauce, etc, or anything else that costs a fecking fortune and takes 2 hours to make!)
7. Family....
Children.. Feed the little blighters first separately, if they only want turkey with tomato sauce - fine leave 'em to it, it doesn't matter. Once they are fed, ***** them off to play with their Christmas presents so that YOU can enjoy your dinner in peace!
Adults... Anyone that can manage to get their sorry backside to your dinner table is also capable of helping to serve up/sort the kids out/clear the table/wash up/dry up, etc.
And Finally.....
NO ONE.... And I mean no one APART FROM THE COOK IS ALLOWED TO GET ***** AND FALL ASLEEP BEFORE THE WASHING UP IS DONE!!!
Rant over
Merry Christmas!
On the subject of Jamie Oliver, a chef usually has one way of cooking things and sticks to their method because to them it produces the best results. And yet in one programme Jamie Oliver says that good old Goose fat is far the best for roasting those delicious mouth watering roast potatoes and in another programme he has totally changed his tune by saying that the best method is using Olive oil and Butter. Maybe both methods to him produce perfect results but you can't go confusing the public on TV. The best solution to is to cook it your way and ignore the so called professionals with their gimmick menus.
However, my way is to put a glass Pyrex dish in a pre-heated oven, wash and par boil the potatoes for 5 - 7 minutes in a saucepan of water. Drain off well the boiling hot water and then add about an egg cup full of Vegetable oil to the hot saucepan so the oil instantly thins. Put on the lid, swish it round and then add table salt and ground black pepper to taste. Swish the saucepan round a second time and then add the potatoes and oil straight to the hot pre-heated dish and shake well before returning to the oven. The potatoes have been evenly coated with the vegetable oil so no need to keep turning whilst roasting. I've tried both methods previously by using Goose fat and the Olive oil and Butter and the latter doesn't even crisp the potatoes but comes out as an unappetising soggy mess. I would challenge Jamie Oliver that my method of roasting potatoes produces far better results in comparison to either of his ideas of perfection plus it's simple without any faffing about and saving time in the process..... and I'm sticking to it!
I think that is exactly the point tango55. When you have a way of cooking something that works, then that is the way for you to do it.
A recipe/method can only be a guide. When I select a recipe for cooking, often it contains ingredients either we do not like or can not afford to eat for health reasons, so the recipe is adjusted accordingly.
Roast potato? Microwave for about 4 mins then in preheated glass dish with olive oil then into the oven and Bob's your uncle. (Well no not really, he is my aunty now because he has had the op, but that is another story.)
My husband gets the right 'ump.
He hates the way the chefs are always trying to mess up (or reinvent) a trad christmas dinner. Although the word mess up is usually substituted for another word
I've cooked so many Christmas dinners over the years, I have suggested changing things, but he likes things as we've always had them.
One year his sister did one of Nigellas special dinners, the gammon was soaked in coca cola overnight, and the turkey was stuffed with ginger cake amongst other things
His mum and dad went there for Christmas Dinner, his dad tried to be diplomatic, but said it was pretty grim, and he used to eat anything
As OH said if it ain't broke don't try and fix it, or in his words **** it up
Amazing family weekend with old steam engines, classic car displays, market stalls, and full catering and bar. And camping on site - Save £25 by booking in advance.
Topic: It`s only Christmas!!!!!
via mobile 05/12/2020 at 6:44am
