Spectator Life

Turkey curry, as a means of using up festive leftovers has become something of a joke: the turkey curry buffet in Bridget Jones is the true low point of Bridge’s festive calendar. The prospect can strike fear into the most Christmas-spirited of souls. But actually, on boxing day, or the day after, the last thing you really want is the same meal you’ve been eating for the past two days, looking a little tired and fridge-worn, all the best bits gone. Don’t get me wrong: I’ll be first to the table for cold roast meats and my fifth serving of stilton in 48 hours, and if you hesitate for a moment, you won’t see that final portion of trifle for dust.

It’s Jesus’s birthday soon - so let’s have a drink. It’s what he would have wanted. As a nation, we do a lot of drinking during December. According to white-coated boffins with spectacles and clipboards, alcohol consumption increases 40 per cent in the run-up to Christmas. Not only does collective elbow-bending increase in December, it gets more eclectic – as we pour ourselves leftfield libations that simply wouldn’t be countenanced at any other time in the calendar. Case in point, The Snowball. Boasting the consistency of alcoholic custard, this classic kitsch cocktail synonymous with the Seventies is made with Advocaat, an iconic Dutch blend of brandy, egg yolk, sugar and vanilla – lengthened with lemonade.

What better time to show of your cocktail making skills than this year’s rollover Christmas? The bold flavours offered by festive ingredients like Champagne, brandy, and rum offer lots of opportunities to get creative. These crowd-pleasing serves are packed with nostalgic Christmas flavours to help you celebrate straight through till Boxing Day. French 125iStock Because it wouldn’t be Christmas without a little fizz. The original French 75 arrived in Parisian cocktail bars shortly after the First World War. It’s essentially a Tom Collins – that’s gin, lemon juice, and soda – that drops the bubbly water and replaces it with Champagne.

I wish I were someone who was organised and neat, someone who excelled at making organised and neat lists, and then methodically ticking off each item on completion. But that will never be me. And that is why, despite my best efforts, I found myself in Newcastle on a rainy Northumberland Street one year trying to decide whether I should spend £15 on a jar of pork scratchings for my father, or just scratch my own eyes out and be done with it.

The so-called 'gin craze' of the early 18th century is said to have led to 'mother's ruin' being made available in more than 7,000 specialist shops up and down the length and breadth of England, many of which experimented with delicious special ingredients such as turpentine and sulphuric acid in an attempt to tease-out a few elusive extra flavours. Fast forward 300 years and, save for the killer extras, the gin craze has come full circle. And it's no longer confined to England or even to the mainland because, in case you hadn't noticed, 'island gin' is now all the rage. That's gin, made on islands. Where distillers claim elements such as salty maritime air, storm-tossed samphire and bits of 'hand harvested' kelp give their gin the extra edge that mainland producers just can't supply.

Christmas is coming and you know what that means? More Lindor truffles than any human being can decently put away, family size boxes of Quality Street and, for the upwardly mobile, Ferrero Rocher. My friends, I am as keen on Lindor truffles as the next greedy pig but there is another way. There is a whole world of chocolate out there which is respectful of the defining ingredient, cocoa, often imaginative and delicious. The starting point, the founding principle, for decent chocolate is, More Cocoa, Less Sugar. Simple as that. And this principle doesn’t just apply to Christmas chocolate, obviously, but to chocolate all year round.

I just love Christmas in the kitchen, it’s truly one of my favourite times of the year to cook. I don’t always go for the obvious, although I do love traditional turkey with cranberry sauce and Brussel sprouts. When I want to cook something a bit different, a firm favourite is my ‘Partridge in a Pear Tree’, a dish of partridge, pear, parsnip and chocolate, which surprisingly work very well together as flavours. It’s a real showstopper and great fun to prepare; a festive treat!

December is upon us – the month where our national sandwich chains nobly attempting to condense Christmas dinner into a portable format. This year has seen some particularly strong attempts to crowbar festive cheer into our working lunches and a few notable misses. This guide will help you sort this year’s unmissable sandwiches from those best left on the shelf. Marks & Spencer – Turkey Feast (£3.30) The perfect example of the route one festive sarnie; two triangles of turkey, bacon, stuffing, and cranberry sauce that promise a taste of Christmas. The bacon is slightly granular, in the way that sandwich bacon is, but it’s a minor quibble as everything else is fantastic.

Christmas baking should be a source of joy. It should be something we look forward to, a break from the hectic organisation of dozens of presents, reams of wrapping paper, cosy-but-thoughtful decoration, enormous meals, endless Christmas parties, and stressful hosting. But Christmas baking can take on a life of its own: fruit cakes that ‘should’ have been made months ago (that three members of your family will tell you loudly they do not like and will not eat), puddings that need hours on the hob, edible biscuity decorations with boiled sweet centres that will inevitably stale on the tree. It can just become another chore. Now, I love a Christmas pudding. I even love making one, when I have the time, energy and inclination.

Christmas puddings are a little like Marmite: you either love them beyond all measure, or you’d be perfectly happy if one never crossed your path again. But, unlike Marmite, there are dozens on the market to pick through – and given that most of us will only eat one a year, it’s important to get the right pudding for you. We’ve taste-tested more Christmas puds than one person should ever eat to bring you the best of the best. Best overall pudding runner up: Aldi Specially Selected Marc de Champagne Christmas Pudding, 400g, £4.99 What they say: A celebration of vine fruits, glacé cherries and nuts blended with cider brandy, Champagne and a splash of Marc de Champagne brandy. Sprinkle with silver glitter to finish.

Like Father Christmas, I’m making a list, and checking it twice. I have scoured the food and drink world to bring you the greatest and most varied gifts for Christmas 2021. Entirely coincidentally, those who are obliged to buy presents for me can consider this my Christmas list, but I hope it will also provide inspiration for the food-lover in your life. For the keen cook I’ve used a lot of cooking thermometers over the years, both at home and at work, and Thermapen is the hands-down winner. With a temperature range of -49.9 to 299.9°C, and an accurate measurement in one second, it is easy to use, easy to read, and easy to clean.

If you’re looking for an alternative to Christmas cake (or an addition to it), then panforte is the bake for you. Sufficiently similar to our traditional Christmas cake in its flavours of Medieval spice, dried fruit and candied citrus that it can’t fail to evoke the Christmas spirit, it is still entirely distinctive. Panforte is shallower than Christmas cake, and more solid; the honey in the mix means that it is chewy rather than crumbly, and where a Christmas cake is stuffed full of vine fruits and cherries, panforte majors in dates and figs. A slim wedge of the dense, spiced bake is more than sufficient and even, whisper it, more elegant than our homegrown Christmas cake.

People are always disproportionately impressed by hasselback potatoes. Disproportionately because they are one of the easiest potato-based sides to make: just a few knife cuts, and tossed in some olive oil. They don’t require the par-boiling or roughing up of roast potatoes, and are less fragile than the simply boiled variety. As well as being handsome, they are buttery-soft inside, with crisp, taught skins, and crunchy bits where the knife has cut – and they have the added bonus of cutting faster than potatoes which remain in tact. The cuts increase the surface area, meaning greater crispness, which can only ever be a good thing when it comes to potatoes – and as they roast, the cuts force the potato to splay, to bloom.

Chardonnay has fallen dramatically out of favour. It’s passé, old hat and, well, just that little bit naff. I’m referring, of course, to the girls name, twenty years ago, which was briefly in vogue in certain circles. Indeed, in 2003 – thanks to the popularity of Chardonnay Lane-Pascoe, a character in the ITV seriesFootballers’ Wives – some sixty five baby girls were officially registered with the moniker Chardonnay. Today, only a handful of babies are thus encumbered.

It’s well documented how excited, or horrified, food enthusiasts are by the Salt Baes of this world ­– gold coated Japanese steaks certainly look good on social media. But a nice potato? Some bright, green leaves? The frilliest mushrooms or a plump bulb of fennel? We don’t often hear praise for the more humbler kitchen ingredients, especially the ones grown on British shores. Things are changing, but for many raw produce still doesn’t quite cut the mustard. You only need to look at the amount of salmon consumed in the UK to realise we don’t always care about where our food comes from. Perhaps it’s that we take for granted the availability of everything all the time.

There are all sorts of things we’re prepared to do once December rears its head, that we’d absolutely turn our noses up at in a less festive month: back to back parties, kitsch decorations, adding spices to anything that stands still long enough, engaging with relatives we normally avoid. And there are certain foods and drinks which would seem bizarre at any other time of the year, but we heartily embrace once there’s some tinsel swinging around, and chief among them is eggnog. Perhaps it is its rich, indulgent nature that means we only countenance it around Christmas, its spiced nature, or simply its surprisingly high alcohol content. Essentially a boozy, drinkable custard, eggnog is made from cream and milk, egg yolks, sugar whisked egg whites, and alcohol.

If you’re a lover of Pinot Noir and fine red burgundy you’re doubtless in a bit of a stew. You’re worried that although the about-to-be-launched 2020 vintage is an absolute cracker, the amount of Pinot produced was down by around 40 per cent and there ain’t going to be enough to go round. You’re also fretting that since the recently-harvested 2021 vintage was cursed with frost, hail, rain, disease and just about everything else, only miniscule amounts of Pinot were produced. The quality – amazingly – is high, but you’ll be darn lucky to get your hands on any.