Christmas dinner

[steve50]

My lovely wife really pushed the boat out this year with slow cooked roast beef, a turkey and gammon roast, roast pork with mash , roast potatoes, carrots, cabbage, sprouts and sage and onion stuffing, a rich home made gravy finished the main course. Desert consisted of a choice of profiteroles or banoffee pudding or christmas pudding. My contribution to this feast was to do the washing up as I was at the hospital nearly all morning................. My Mrs is a super star

 

[raleighnut]

A big 3.5 Kg hunk of Gammon covered with a Mustard and Honey glaze with Roasties (Maris Piper) Stuffing Balls, Brussels, Carrots, Cauliflower and Neeps (mashed with butter and 1/2 a teaspoon of Coriander Powder)

 

[screenman]

We seem to have a lot more left than we started with.

The fridges are rammed, the freezers are rammed, if buying food was in the next Olympics we have a gold medallist here.

 

[User482]

I cooked this year which meant I got to choose the menu: home-smoked salmon, slow roast rib of beef and yorkshires, spiced apple creme brulee.

 

[keithmac]

Steak, roast potatoes/ carrots/ leeks/ parsnips, yorkshire puddings, sprouts with bacon bits, pigs in blankets all with plenty of gravy over the top!.

Wife cooked a craking meal, I did the washing up and mainly got in the way..

 

[nickyboy]

Roast turkey (some new faster, less hassle cooking technique), roast potatoes, mashed potatoes, three different stuffings, about a million pigs in blankets, cauliflower cheese, red cabbage, carrots done with clementine juice which were delish, parsnips, white sauce, gravy. Some bought-in puds and MiL's homemade trifle. Nice cheeses

We like a traditional sunday roast so Mrs N isn't fazed by Xmas Day. I do the washing up as we go along and act as drinks monitor

Edit: I forgot sprouts. I can't believe I did that

 

[User10119]

The Cubs and I went to my l'il sister's. Her husband (CrinklyUncle, occasionally otp) did logistics, which involved spreadsheets, and the majority of the dishwasher duty and she and I did the majority of the cooking. It was thoroughly enjoyable, both to make and to eat, despite the fact that our approaches to cooking pretty different. A bit like the way I (genuinely) had a splendid time on the occasion that she stoked 20ish miles for me, despite me being a left-foot-down-to-stop masher of big gears and her being a spinny-small-gears-wrong-footer kind of gal.

I love cooking a roast dinner so making Christmas dinner is generally jolly good fun.

Cheat's five bird roast and pigs in blankets for the meat-eaters, roasted spuds/snips/sweet pots, gratin dauphinoise, sprouts/carrots/broccolli all just steamed and delicious, yorkshire puds, veggie gravy, and a very tasty Delia recipe for us veggies for a cheese soufflee-sort-of-mix cooked in a swiss roll tin and made into a roulade affair filled with sage and onion stuffy and completely lovely creamed parsnips with nutmeg.

I just ate some of my doggy bag of leftovers for lunch today. Nom.

(although I didn't much like the time at our mam's house that it was mostly me and my biggest sister doing it...)

 

[Supersuperleeds]

Christmas dinner is easy to do.

Get the turkey in really early (my mam cooks hers overnight) prepare the veg and once that is done start drinking. By the time you dish up you won't care what it tastes like.

 

[Reynard]

No turkey here chez Casa Reynard either - we no likey turkey, and as there's only two of us plus two cats, it's just far too much anyroad.

Ended up doing roasted monkfish tail wrapped in serrano ham, goose fat roasties, red cabbage and cranberries braised in red wine and a medley of buttered veg (peas, carrots, sprouts). Plus a rather boozy xmas pud and cream for afters.

Best bit was, it was nearly all bought on yellow sticker and the whole lot cost me a tenner on the nose. And there is still some left after reprising it tonight. I had originally planned on taking a rib of beef out of the freezer and slow cooking it with red wine and shallots, but then the monkfish turned up in the christmas eve reductions and it tickled my fancy.

 

[summerdays]

Yesterday it was normal breakfast (porridge), followed by a Danish pastry mid morning.... then slow unhurried food prep/cooking involving all the family peeling etc! Ate our duck, pigs in blankets, gammon, roast potatoes, chickpeas and veg about 3pm. No pudding and nothing more other than chocolates.... I was full.

Today was left overs, served in a wrap for lunch using some of the stock from the bird, and then more leftovers this time with cheese and biscuits got tea!

Tomorrow will probably have some leftovers with soup! Using up more of the stock!

 

[PeteXXX]

Christmas dinner, for us, was today..
Actual Christmas Day dinner, for Mrs Pete and I, was planned to be steak & salad with new potatoes. By the time we got around to it, she'd been stuffing herself with festive choccies etc. and didn't want anything else.
I ended up eating all the steak () and potatoes with a smidgen of salad just to add colour to the plate.

Today, the family descended. Proper Christmas dinner for the adults, with prawn cocktail for starters, turkey and everything that can be roasted for main course, then home made trifle (Mrs Pete's contribution) and some wines & beers.

The grandkids, 2 and 8 yr old, had, as a starter, Tomato soup or yogurt, the bits of dinner they wanted, and Viennetta for pudding. Followed by trifle.

 

[Reynard]

[QUOTE 4613081, member: 259"]That sounds bloody great.
I used to buy monkfish from the fish market at the Arndale in Manchester and it was catfood cheap![/QUOTE]

It *was* good.

Full whack, monkfish costs £20 a kg... The tail I bought was knocked down from £15 to a smidgin over £6, but it was a generous "serves 4" and made a nice treat. The cats shared a sirloin steak that I bagged for 60p

Tonight I bagged a whole duck for £1 in Tesco, so will be doing that for new year

 

[srw]

A roast is simplicity itself - leave the meat to cook in the oven, then whack the oven up and while the meat rests do the roast veg, make gravy and cook pork crackling or yorkshire pud or stuffing depending on what your main meat is, and cook some green veg on the hob. Christmas pudding just sits and steams on a back ring while everything else is being done.

This year we had lobster (frozen from Waitrose), flashed briefly under the grill and served with boiled spuds, peas and broad beans, followed by a choice of Christmas pudding with rum butter or filo-wrapped mincemeat parcels. I'm hoping for a full-blown roast sometime next week...

 

[Reynard]

Actually, I had a major boo boo with the duck... I couldn't actually get it in the freezer, boned or otherwise...

So I slow roasted it in the oven last night, sitting on a bed of sliced onion and apple with a sploosh of red wine, and with apples and prunes shoved up its bottom. Had it with roasties and peas. Enough left for tonight and will freeze what's left. The meat was just so beautifully moist and tender.

New year will now be graced by home made Gravlax instead - got lucky with a whole salmon side on yellow sticker for a fiver. The top half of the fillet went for the grav, the tail end in the freezer for fish pie.

 

[Dave7]

My daughter asked us to go to theirs (s.i.l plus 3 teenagers) for Christmas day lunch.
A week before the day she asked "could you cook the turkey".........no real problem there.
Then the kids asked "can you do us a ham joint"............no real problem there.
So how come we were asked to go for lunch and it cost ME £30.00 ?