Christmas dinner

Gentle snow (still) and ice on the ground, I got snow-bound (well, ice-bound) in Wales, there is a merry fire in the grate and the boys do not want the day to end. Here, with a Merry Christmas to you, is what I made for dinner. Just a small affair this year, to please two grown ups and two young children. As we had had turkey for Thanksgiving, this year I allowed it to be ousted by a a dinner of a slightly different kind -- but festive withal. Also practical, as you will see from the leftovers.

Above is Virginia, last Christmas. That's what I call ice. Below that would be the comedy mouse snowman, to cheer you up if you are apprehensive about the new year.

A brace of pheasants, stuffed with pork sausagemeat, garlic and apples, with roasted apples to one side and wrapped all in back bacon. Just find some local pheasants if you can and get someone else to prepare them if you are squeamish. I'm not, but it should be fairly easy for you to find ready-prepared pheasant. £6.95 for a brace. Not bad.Take the pheasants out of the fridge a good half an hour before you start to prepare them for the oven: you want them to be at room temperature befeore they go in. Now, stuff them with some decent sausagemeat (or undress some decent sausages), fill the cavity with this plus some large chunks of apple and four or five unpeeled garlic cloves. Wrap the birds well in good back bacon. Cook until the breast is burnished and --really this is the only kind of occasion where I use a meat thermometer-- the sausagemeat is done. I'd allow two hours at 200c, remembering to baste frequently and your pheasant shoulld not be dry. Well, it  will be dry -er than some other birds.

Lots of chicken drumsticks, wrapped in bacon and cosied in with lots of unpeeled garlic cloves. Just as it sounds. I had got my hands on a large consignment of Halal chicken (no, nothing dodgy: this was, rather marvellously, in Asda in Hicksville Wiltshire). Halal meat has, appropriately I thought, a slightly gamier flavour which seemed apposite here. Just make sure the chicken is at room temp, as with the pheasant, before it goe to the oven and wrap it --not Halal: please note!-- with some well-flavoured back bacon ajnd sprinkle lots of unpeeled garlic cloves all around. Takes about an hour at 2oo.

Why the two? Because, this time of year, pheasant is reasonably priced (I am speaking of £6.95 for two, locally shot pheasants) and I was not sure how well the children would take this game, so cooked an alternative. They ate both and scraped at the dishes afterwards.

Sage and onion stuffing with apple, cooked to one side. Dressing, then, as they would say in Georgia. Just grate, finley chop or process --I'm not giving specifics here-- plenty of brown and white breadcrumbs, add sea salt, lots of freshly-ground black pepper, three fresh sage leaves, finely minced and some chopped red apple. Experiment until you have the mixture you like. Moisten it with water, a little olive oil and a generous dot of butter and bake for about half an hour.I cook it all of a piece in a tin, but you could form it into little stuffing balls, I suppose. If you want, a few chopped dried apricots are good here. A good grating of nutmeg would also work. And a note on sage: I don't use dried because there is always plenty of fresh in the garden. I find that dried commercially available sage seems to acquire a rather overpowering musty smell and taste. If you wanted, you could substitute rosemary for the sage.

Roast parsnips and this year, in another departure, I cooked whole carrots in with the parsnips. Just a little sunflower oil and lots of freshly ground black pepper. Peel the carrots, top and tail. Done. Same for the parsnips and then cut them in half lengthways. Cook them in blisteringly hot oil for about 45 minutes, by which time they will be sweet and irresistible and have caught the heat in places so that you get little stucky burnished bits.

Sprouts. I love them; always have.I like them quite well done here.

Roast potatoes. This year, I parboiled the potatoes --make sure you choose good floury ones-- the night before and roughened them up well against the side of the pan and then chucked them into hot sunflower oil. Goose fat, as you may well know, gives them a sublime flavour, but I'll be writing more about roast potatoes in a separate entry. Stay tuned. Cook them until they are crisp and then blitz them under a higher heat when the meat is out of the oven. Should take 45 minutes to an hour. I also added a couple of tablespoons of the sublime juices from the pheasant as they were about half way through cooking.


Mashed swede, with lots of butter and black pepper. Cook it well, in large chunks. And stunt ye not on the butter and black pepper. Salt to taste. Bashed neeps. For Kathleen from Dumfries, if she is readiing this. Also great with Haggis on Burns' Night!

Gravy. I had a little vegetable stock to one side. I had made this with half an onion, some sticks of celery and about a third if a red pepper plus four or five whole peppercorns. For additional liquid I used the water from cooking the swede and the whole thing was started off with a roux made from the juices and a little of the fat from the pheasant roasting dish. That wasn't hard, was it?

AND -- now this is peculiar-- I made unseasonal Yorkshire pudding because that had been requested by the children.

Pudding: didn't have it, really, Just the odd Clementine, hazlenuts and pistachios a little later.And then, obviously, we picked at hazlenuts, walnuts, cashews, mince pies and the Christmas cake made by an excellent aunt. This year we had no Christmas pudding, because no-one likes it apart from me. I'm not entirely happy with this state of play.

And what of dinner? I mean Christmas tea or supper. Still, confusion reigns in our Anglo-Cymric-American household.

A bubble of squeak of sorts. So, all the leftover vegetables --plenty of potatoes and sprouts-- mashed just roughly and then fried until they developed a rich, crisp crust. We had these with two pickles made in the first place by an inspirational neighbour --pumpkin chutney-- and in the second place by an inspirational parent of a child I teach: this was a tart apple and blackberry chutney. Both were received with uncommon joy and both were made from home-grown produce. We also had a piece of Somerset Brie and a slice of Dolcellate with this. A telly-side supper, while I grieved the soon not-to-be- regenerated Doctor Who. Oooh! David Tennant. There's something about his shift from tragic to comic on the turn of a dime.... Oh and we had the leftover pheasants and chicken in sandwiches with mango chutney the next day.