After I finished work on the 20th, I proceeded to spend five days in the kitchen. It has been an extremely busy time, between hosting Christmas dinner for the first time and also helping my parents with their own hosting duties (due to an injury taking one of them out of action rather more than he would care to admit). Ultimately, it was a success.
Firstly, the Christmas baking. This year Funsize, Surprise!, and I baked several things, only one of which was actually new:
- Ginger biscuits
- Shortbread biscuits
- Chocolate chip cookies (new)
- Mince pies
I had hoped to do some snowmen cupcakes, but time did not permit. In any case, given that we now have far too much food in the house, that's probably for the best.
Then there was Christmas dinner, cooked for seven. The menu for that was also extensive.
We actually started with baked camembert. This was intended to be an appetiser as guests arrived, but unfortunately this was the one bit of my timing that didn't work out quite right - I had less time in the morning than I thought, and it took longer than expected. Which meant that we were straight from that to our planned starters, which left everyone stuffed. But never mind - that's my main lesson learned for next time.
For the main Christmas dinner, therefore, we had:
- A choice of soups to start: roasted red pepper and tomato, or parsnip and apple. (These were supplied by one of our guests - I did a lot, but not everything!)
- Turkey
- Roast potatoes, carrots, and parsnips
- Hasselback potatoes
- Brussels sprouts
- Peas
- Pigs in blankets (supplied by a guest)
- Stuffing (supplied by a guest)
- Gravy (from the butchers)
- Chocolate orange tart for dessert, though we didn't actually get that far (made by LC)
So, quite a lot. We ended up with huge amounts left over, much of which I have since turned into a turkey curry.
The Outcome
Everyone ate far too much, and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. The turkey came out extremely well, which was the most important thing, and then the sides accompanied it brilliantly. All in all, I'm calling that one a success.
Lessons Learned
After an epic like that there are always some lessons to be learned. Some things that went well, and some that were not so good. So:
- There was way too much food. And drink for that matter. I'll need to give some thought to either cutting down in future, or having more robust plans in place for dealing with the leftovers.
- The camembert needed to be starter earlier, or perhaps even prepared on Christmas Eve - the second proving step could have been done overnight.
- Surprise! really wanted sweetcorn in addition to the peas. Given how small an addition that is, I'll bear that in mind.
- But the big one is this: A few weeks before Christmas I made up a meal plan showing the courses, breaking down the ingredients, and indicating what was coming from where. Then, two days before the meal itself I wrote out a "Plan of Attack" detailing what I was preparing on Christmas Eve, what on Christmas morning, with a space for the calculated cook time for the turkey (after it was weighed after being prepped to go into the oven). These two lists were hugely helpful, as they ensured that nothing was missed and that everything was being done in the right order. After which, it was just work, not stress.
So that's my main takeaway for the "No-stress Christmas": those two lists are utterly invaluable.
The one thing I would introduce as an enhancement is that, in addition to calculating the cook time for the turkey, it then becomes possible to work back from the preferred time for dinner to determine when you need to start put the turkey in the oven, when the various bits of preparation need to be done, and so on.
But... it's important, if you do work backwards like that, that you allow time for things taking longer than expected (because they will). And it's also important that you don't try to schedule everything down to the last second - if your list of steps goes over half a dozen, you're probably setting yourself up for disaster. The key thing is that those plans are there to help you, they mustn't be allowed to become another source of stress.
Anyway, that's Christmas for this year. It was a good one, fairly quiet despite everything, and I have no complaints.
No comments:
Post a Comment