Christmas!

Despite my best intentions we ended up with a two-meal day.
A late brunch, almost lunch, of scrambled egg, smoked salmon and a little tomato on the side. I served them in the new dishes I got for Christmas.

Besides the turkey, I hadn't really thought about Christmas dinner at all. But there was plenty of stuff in the house, so it was easy to busk it. I made a brine for the turkey (300 mls salt, 6 litres of water, a handful each of peppercorns, juniper berries and star anise, plus about 100 ml of brown sugar. Bring this to the boil, add another 6 litres of cold water and let it cool. Then put the turkey in a LARGE tub, cover with the brine, cover the tub and leave it in a cool place for 2 hours per kilogram).

I put my turkey tub outside for four hours, rinsed it off and then roasted it breast side down for 45 minutes. At that stage I turned it, added the parnsips to the same dish and put the mushrooms in alongside and left it in the oven for another 30 minutes. It cooked at 180C.

Let's begin with a photo of the festive table.


You can see the now-familiar amuses from Albert Heijn. That's the last of them. One was paté and cranberry sauce with cream cheese, and the other was melon and ham. The cranberry sauce was probably a no no but at less than a tablespoon, and plenty of protein in the meal to balance it out, I decided it would be fine.


We can buy carpaccio packs here, and I bought one rather than make my own. So all I had to do was put the beef slices on the plates, sprinkle them with dressing, pine nuts, and parmesan, and leave them to stand to come up to room temperature and infuse with flavour.


Soup was easy. I puréed a selection of the leftover roast vegetables (trying to leave the pumpkin out so I would get a nice green colour) with a bit of stock and heated it slowly. The garnish is fresh chopped peeled tomato.


Then came the mushrooms, which by now had cooked. I took them out of the oven along with the turkey and left everything to stand, the turkey especially needs to rest before being carved. I took the centre stem out of the mushrooms, seasoned the mushroom cup and then tossed on some sliced cooked bacon and sliced red pepper. I covered that with slices of goat cheese and left it to bake for 30 minutes. 20 minutes may have been better, but I was eating the earlier courses while it baked so I didn't check them.


The mushrooms were very rich, so a little palate-cleansing salad was very welcome. This was just lettuce, radish, olives and little of the now almost finished wasabi ginger dressing, that tastes neither of wasabi nor ginger.


At last, the highlight of the meal, the turkey, with roast parsnips and nuked green beans. The parsnips were woody and unappetising so we didn't eat them. Clearly they need to cooked and served when very, very fresh.


And yes, we did squash in dessert. Mango and yoghurt, layered in a glass, and topped with a hint of whipped cream.


That was a lot of food! I felt quite replete at the end of the meal and had to sit relaxing on the couch for it all to settle, drinking lovely Christmas tea from Simon Levelt. It's a tea laced with dried fruit and spices, and is like gluhwein, except non-alcholic. Wonderful!

We had Wolf Blass champers with the first couple of courses, which was disappointing. It had very little mousse, although the flavour was nice. The main wine was the Wolf Blass President's Selection, which was rich and full-bodied and very satisfying.