Nigella Christmas: Food, Family, Friends, Festivities (2 page)

Gingerbread stuffing

Panettone and Italian sausage stuffing

Pear and cranberry stuffing

Sausagemeat stuffing

Stuffing for rolled stuffed loin of pork

Sweet sauces, butters and icing

Bourbon butter

Cointreau cream

Eggnog cream

Hot chocolate-chestnut sauce

Rum and brandy butters

Smooth hatbox icing

Vanilla sugar

Vegetables

Beetroot orzotto

Butternut orzotto

Chargrilled peppers with pomegranate

Christmas coleslaw

Christmas sprouts

Fully loaded potato skins

Italian roast potatoes

with garlic and thyme

Maple-roast parsnips

Perfect roast potatoes

Potato, parsnip and porcini gratin

Pumpkin and goat’s cheese lasagne

Red cabbage

with pomegranate juice

Roast stuffed pumpkin

with gingery tomato sauce

Spiced squash

List of Christmas Day Recipes

Allspice gravy

Australian Christmas pudding

with hot chocolate-chestnut sauce

Bacon-wrapped chipolatas

Beetroot orzotto

Butternut orzotto

Chestnut stuffing

Chocolate pudding

with hot chocolate sauce

Christmas sprouts

Ed’s victorious turkey hash

Eggnog cream

Gingerbread stuffing

Gingery tomato sauce

Hot chocolate-chestnut sauce

Italian roast potatoes

with garlic and thyme

Light goose gravy

Maple-roast parsnips

My mother’s bread sauce

Panettone and Italian sausage stuffing

Panettone pudding

Perfect roast potatoes

Port and Stilton gravy

Quick cassoulet

Redder than red cranberry sauce

Roast goose

with pear and cranberry stuffing

Roast rib of beef

with port and Stilton gravy

Roast stuffed pumpkin

with gingery tomato sauce

Rolled stuffed loin of pork

with rubied gravy

Rubied gravy

Spiced and superjuicy roast turkey

with allspice gravy

Turkey and glass noodle salad

Turkey pilaff

with pomegranate and dill

Ultimate Christmas pudding

with eggnog cream

Wild rice, turkey, cranberry and pecan salad

I’LL BE HONEST: I NEVER THOUGHT I’D WRITE A CHRISTMAS BOOK.

But then, not so long ago, I never actually thought I’d become a food writer. I hadn’t rejected either idea; it just never occurred to me. That’s how life works, and so much the better for it. I accept – with gratitude – that what makes one happiest cannot be planned.

This is not to say I have anything against Christmas. Far from it: almost every book I’ve written has a chapter on Christmas. I wallow in it; I relish it. Everything I believe in – essentially, that warmth and contentment and welcome and friendship emanate from and are celebrated in the kitchen – finds most cogent expression for me at Christmas. But I can’t deny that I am, simply put, a heathen. Although I have not been able to stop myself from writing piecemeal about the joys – and the stresses, I don’t dispute – of cooking for Christmas, I felt a certain reserve at interjecting myself a little too presumptuously into other people’s feast and faith.

But truth is, the Christmas we celebrate in our kitchens is not the Christmas that is celebrated in Church. Yes, of course, they coincide, and, for many, the latter corroborates and gives meaning to the former, but the Christmas feasting, the Christmas lights, the carousing and the gift-giving, these come from much further back than the birth of Christianity. Indeed, one of the great geniuses of Christianity has been its sage piggybacking of pre-existing feasts and festivals. If you want to encourage the heathens to adopt your faith, how very sensible to reassure them that their fun is not going to be taken away. This, anyway, is the frank explanation of what is more eruditely tagged syncretism. Biblical scholars generally tend to believe that Christ’s birth probably fell about six months after Passover, which would make it nearer September than December. However, the Roman Festival of Saturnalia – a time of merrymaking, excess and misrule, precursor to the office party and much else besides – fell around the middle of December, and led up to the Sol Invictus – or unconquered sun – festival. Around this time mummers would go about carousing and entertaining people in their homes, which is what has led to our carol-singing now. The idea of the unconquered sun, or the rebirth of the sun, has been linked by Catholics to the notion of the birth of Christ, and links, too, with the pagan notion, the one I cling to most affectionately, of the winter solstice being about the promise of the return of light in the depth of the dark winter.

This isn’t a history lesson, nor would I be qualified to give one, but this mesh, or rather mish-mash, of traditions and festivities, enthrals me as it speaks so pointedly to our customs now. Saturnalia – in other words, the celebration of Saturn, the Roman god of agriculture and plenty – began the tradition of gift-giving, in the sense that the rich were encouraged to give food and money to the poor, at what was an inhospitable time of year. And, taking advantage of all that, it was Pope Julius I who decreed that the birth of Christ be celebrated on December 25th, the better to bring recalcitrant Romans, still very much in the majority, into the fold. The day itself had other advantages, being as well, in Ancient Babylon, the Feast of the Son of Isis, Goddess of Nature, and a time, too, of hedonistic mayhem, gluttony, inebriation and the bestowing of monies and presents. Or so I believe, and want to believe. It’s obvious that the day is intended to have pan-significance, and I embrace that joyfully. I like the sense of enjoying the legacy of partying down the ages.

But my greatest love, my deepest feelings, are for the pagan rituals that underpin the contemporary Christmas. In fact, I’d go further and say that my approach to the festival is ultimately pagan. We all know that the tree is a remnant (or adoption, if you wish) of the pagan celebration of the winter solstice, when a green bough would be brought into the house to serve as a reminder that the earth would renew itself again, and that the crops would return. But there is so much more to it than that. Christmas in my home really is about bringing light and fire and warmth into the chill darkness. I love the reminder of the cycle of the seasons, the belief in the beneficence of Mother Nature and the sense that the hearth and the home keep the light alive and provide sustenance and hope. For me, Christmas is not just a time when the Domestic Goddess comes into her own but a moment to conjure up the Domestic Druid as well. There are those within the fantastically named Pagan Federation, who still call the winter solstice, not Yule, as the Scandinavians did, but in the style of the Anglo-Saxons, Mother Night. When I was once on a radio programme discussing Christmas rituals, a high priestess of a Wiccan coven and I discovered we celebrated the festival in much the same way; she felt that the lighting of the oven, the creating of the feast, was the human way of understanding, celebrating and enshrining the sustenance of Mother Nature. How could I object to that?

I feel the Christmas rituals of the home are, even if not based around faith, essentially an act of good faith. I see the argument against: the world is starving and we overeat and celebrate overeating; the world is poor and we spend money to give presents to people who don’t truly need anything. I know how it seems – crassly commercial, tawdry, tacky and insincere. But I defend the exuberance and the lurch of excess as a kind act in a cruel world. It is about shining a light in the darkness, providing warmth in the coldness. I make no distinction between the glow from the fairy lights, the warmth of the oven, and the welcome in the home. And this is probably best symbolized by the act of bringing the flaming Christmas pudding to the table.

So, if I’ve found myself having written a Christmas book, it is all this – the belief in hearth and home, the fervent adherence to ritual and tradition when everything else in the world can make one feel unmoored, a faith in hospitality and fellow-feeling – that the book is about. And yes, it is also about indulgence, although I see festive indulgence not as a bad thing or an act of weakness, but a celebration of being alive – a positive source, if not for good, then for happiness. The book’s subtitle – food, family, friends, festivities – is not just a frenetic exercise in alliteration but an affirmation of what I believe is important in life, and all – praise be – that Christmas celebrates.

That is my inspiration, but I aim, too, to mop up some of the perspiration. I am not by nature a calm person, and, much as I love Christmas, I can be kyboshed by it. I know from experience how easy it is to be overwhelmed by the sheer workload and the burden of expectations, one’s own above all. Christmas has to be about plenty, and the last thing I’d ever advocate is a miserly, pared-down version, but there is abundant sense in finding a workable, enjoyable way through it. This, I hope, my book does. It is certainly the way I have found to save my own seasonal sanity.

I should, though, admit that my own shortcomings and temperamental failings ensure that there are many things this book is not. I have learnt how to get maximum pleasure with minimum stress, but I am never going to be the sort of person who has cake and pudding made and presents bought before November, and this book does not presume that you are, either. If you want to get ahead, and really can pull that micro-management and super-organization off, then this book gives you plenty of scope for that, as there are make-ahead and freeze-ahead tips throughout; if you are not that way inclined, then I have a couple of Christmas cakes you can make at the very last minute and a pudding that is luscious enough without having the traditional year in which to mature. I do indeed own a book – Fanny and Johnnie Cradock’s Coping with Christmas – that begins: “January 1st: Make Christmas pudding for next year”. I don’t find such an injunction inspiring; I find it discouraging.

Likewise, although I know that it is in the tradition of Christmas manuals to suggest clever ideas for making table decorations and suchlike, I just couldn’t. I’d love to be able to, but I am the living embodiment of the term cack-handed. I can wrap up a book and it looks as though I’m giving a bottle of wine. Still, I did want to share some of my enthusiasms, and thus I give you these presents (pictured below). Although I have a weakness for bulk-buying giftwrap online, I have a contrary addiction to recycling. I’m afraid my recycling doesn’t take the form of good bin management or anything as civic minded as that, but I am always happier to wrap a present in brown paper and string, with a couple of cinnamon sticks, or old newspaper and ribbon, than hand over the sheeniest, shiniest beribboned and rosetted parcel. My prompt is aesthetic rather more than ecological, though you could argue the effect is the same.

But if I can’t fashion wreaths or fold napkins, I am happy to say that there is a Christmas craft for the clumsy, and it has an important place in this book. I make chutney. Chutney is jam-making for the time-pressed. When I say that you don’t have to do anything except put all the ingredients needed into a pan, bring to a boil and cook for about 40 minutes, untended, I mean it. Moreover, I have quite a few recipes here, if such they can be called, for edible presents that involve no cooking whatsoever. And it is not some post-ironic, post-industrial, make-do-and-mend mentality (though there is every reason for heeding that) that makes me implore you to make your own presents, but a belief that what comes out of your kitchen means more than anything from a shop ever will, and that the satisfactions of the season can stem from the stove.

NOTE FOR THE READER

•

all eggs are large, organic

•

all butter is unsalted

•

all herbs are fresh, unless stated

•

all chocolate is dark (min. 70% cocoa solids), unless stated

•

all olive oil is regular (not extra virgin), unless stated

THE MORE THE MERRIER

COCKTAILS, CANAPÉS AND MANAGEABLE MASS CATERING

THIS IS PROBABLY THE ONE TIME OF YEAR when people who aren’t party-givers give parties. Sometimes, this is due to an uncharacteristic but nevertheless welcome burst of bonhomie and seasonal spirit; as often, it’s a duty-date, the product of habit, pressure or other presumed or existing obligations. For as many people who feel a blood-rushing joyousness at the prospect of having their home overrun with people out to have a good time, there are perhaps more who are filled rather with dread, and lacerated by the anxiety that a good time will be neither provided nor had.

This may be a strange thing to say at the beginning of a cookbook, but if it’s the cooking that makes you not enjoy giving a party, don’t cook. Buy salame, get cheese (all chic Italians hand round roughly chunked shards of fresh Parmesan), put grissini in jars, and regular French breadsticks in vases. But know that, sometimes, the act of preparing for a feast, by cooking simple, low-effort food, can make you look forward to the party more. I love to wallow in the Christmas spirit as I get it all underway. I’m always happy in the kitchen with Christmas songs – Elvis singing “Silent Night”, Wham with “Last Christmas” – a-playing, fairy lights a-twinkling, platters of food slowly covering every surface.

And, actually, I think that a Christmas party is the best sort to give. For one thing, everyone is predisposed to have a good time. They’re out to enjoy themselves: they’re not coming to carp at your canapés.

Of course, there are ways of making things easier on yourself. It is indeed my hope, my very aim to make things easier on you: I am too clumsy and time-squeezed to do anything elaborate, so I don’t expect you to, either. You can make a lot of different bits and pieces, or keep the choice restricted. This is up to you, though I have always, with food, had my mantra: Better a lot of a few things, than a little of many. That’s my own rule, but you should also bear in mind the professional caterer’s rule, which is that the more people there are, the less they eat per head.