Merry Christmas, everyone!

Well, this has taken absolutely forever…

It is currently 11 PM on a Friday night. I am sat in my pyjamas and silk bonnet. My younger brother is across the corridor playing an online game with his friends and all I can hear is him screaming in frustration or laughing in victory depending on the outcome of his game. I had planned to start writing this blog post about two hours prior but my Dragon Software had a different plan in mind! What I thought would be a simple process of installing, took multiple restarts of my computer and a frantic Google search through forums to troubleshoot an issue. As much as I would love to blame the software, it turns out it was an error on my part but once again, it is 11 PM so I am in the mood to forgive myself.

For giving myself is – and has been – the theme of the last year from me. The last couple of years have been quite hard on me as I’ve missed a lot of the things that I previously took for granted. Albeit, things are a lot better than they were in 2020 but things are definitely not as they were. Therefore, I have had to learn to adapt to a new way of living and forgiving myself when I find it frustrating and limiting because if we are all being honest, no one really expected the last two years. However, it’s currently December 17, 2021 and I’ve just done my first lot of Christmas dinner shopping and I have wrapped all of my presents beautifully under our tree. I’m grateful to say that I have my entire family around me this Christmas and we have suffered no tragedies. There are definitely a lot of things that have not gone my way or as expected (and I’m learning to accept that) but by the grace of God a lot of things have gone extremely well. I guess what I’m trying to say is that to anyone reading this – it gets better. Even if it feels like you are at your wits end and everything is more than you can handle: just take a breath, accept what is happening, reach out to those you trust and remember that you already possess everything you need to get through. We thank God Almighty for everything because every setback, difficulty or “disaster” is an opportunity for God to show his mighty works. His light truly does shine brightest when it is the darkest.

Anyways, enough with the seriously mushy/emotional business. Let’s talk about more light-hearted topics: Christmas dinner time!

If you have been following me on Instagram, you know that I take Christmas dinner very seriously. For me Christmas dinner is equivalent to the US Super Bowl. It is a long awaited, excitement inducing, blood pumping, “clear mind, full heart, can’t lose” type of event for me. I honestly don’t know when Christmas dinner became such a big deal to me. My earliest memory of taking it so seriously is probably back in secondary school. I must have watched something on the Good Food channel about a very trendy way to roast a turkey or roast potatoes and I wanted to give it a go. Usually, our Christmas dinners were very Nigerian traditional. There was jollof rice, fried rice, fried stew and a bunch of other mouth-watering dishes made exclusively by my mum. However, as most second-generation Nigerian children sometimes envy, I wanted to have the same Christmas dinner as my white friends. It’s actually quite funny because the first time my mum attempted it, she hadn’t gotten the potatoes quite right as they were boiled and not roasted. The gravy was rather thin. And I distinctly remember there being savoy cabbage on the plate which none of the children wanted to eat! It took a while for us as a family to want to attempt another British Christmas dinner like that. However, I made it my mission that we would have a better experience the next time we attempted it.

I can safely say that my Christmas dinner tastes good. I’m not going to call myself the next Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver but I can hold my own on Christmas Day. The only thing I know I struggle with is timing (however, I almost want to blame other people because I feel like if they chopped quicker instead of worrying about cutting themselves on a sharp knife, my timings would be perfect). I think I’ve been very lucky over the years to have had time to practice and re-practice dishes so that I am now at a point where I can pretty much guess what is needed without too much stress. My go to Christmas dinner spread has not really change much in terms of its foundation since I took over doing Christmas dinner seven or eight years ago but what I do change is the seasonings. My basics are simple:

• A roast meat (90% of the time that means Turkey but as of late the leg of lamb has wormed its way into the mix)

• Roast potatoes in animal fat (or olive oil if I’m feeling health-conscious)

• Two roasted vegetables

• Yorkshire puddings

• Stuffing

• A boatload of gravy

The only thing that I really babysit is my turkey. I was fortunate enough (and unfortunate for the person who helps me cook) to watch Bon Appetit’s Thanksgiving special series where they all made different elements of a Thanksgiving dinner. I was absolutely mesmerised by the process of dry brining a turkey that is already broken down into its various pieces and then glazing it to get the perfect shine and crust on the skin. Prior to this, I had used a foolproof method of slathering the turkey in a spiced butter both under and over the skin and cooking the turkey upside down. By cooking upside down you essentially allow the turkey to baste itself as the cooking juices run into the breast meat which prevents it from getting dry. Absolutely genius, right? However, I found that dry brining had a similar effect but was 10 times more juicy. I’m pretty sure there is a lot of science behind it and something to do with salt denaturing the proteins in meat but that’s not the point. If you’re not dry brining a turkey before you cook it – dishonour on you, dishonour on your family and dishonour on your cow! (20 points to you if you know that references from ;-)).

I should also note that, as of this year, stuffing has been removed from the list. I know this may be shocking to a lot of people reading this who are diehard stuffing fans but it just doesn’t make sense in our house anymore. I used to make it because every TV show I watched said that there should be stuffing at the table but none of us really like it that much. In my family, we don’t eat pork and 80% of stuffing recipes are pork mince or pork sausage meat. I tried stuffing with lamb or beef mince and it just didn’t hit the same. I then tried it with chicken sausage meat but I think the lack of fat meant it didn’t get beautifully crispy as I would have wanted it to. Also my mum is gluten intolerant so we always had to make a separate stuffing for her. Stuffing has run its course in this family but the memories will always be cherished. She is gone but not forgotten…

The vegetables this year are pretty simple: maple glazed roast carrots, cumin roasted cauliflower and sage roasted butternut squash. I am adamant this year that all of my vegetables will look beautifully caramelised and nothing will look anaemic. For some reason, I have had this issue where my vegetables will not brown in the oven unless I essentially burn them. I cooked my vegetables at 200°C for about 25 to 40 minutes in a bit of oil with seasoning. If anyone knows what I’m doing wrong, please do advise!

And if it’s not already obvious from reading this post, I am the person who has already made their gravy. I used this recipe from Jamie Oliver for his Get Ahead Gravy and is now sitting beautifully in a freezer. I do make quite a few tweaks to the recipe in terms of seasoning. I add chili as we do like our food a little bit more spicy so this year I swirled in some chipotle paste and two scotch bonnets. I know this sounds like a lot but the chipotle paste adds more of a smoky warm undertone while the real heat comes from the scotch bonnets. However, due to the amount of liquid and the fact that I do not add the seeds, the gravy is very traditional when you first taste it and it’s not until the very end that you get a little fire at the end of your palette in the most pleasing way. If this frightens you, a good dollop of wholegrain mustard after you have drained the bones and vegetables from the gravy, would taste really good if you want a kick without the fire.

The only thing I haven’t really discussed is dessert. There are two groups in our house: those with a sweet tooth and those without. Trying to find a dessert that pleases both parties has been a point of contention for as long as I’ve known. This is also combined with my desire to do fancy and technical desserts because I want to show off. However, in the spirit of Christmas (and peace), we have settled for a marmalade jam sponge and custard. Fortunately, I get to use my home-made clementine marmalade which I made for the first time this year as mini Christmas gifts to my friends and family. I have many jars that needed using up so this is a great excuse. I’m also thinking of losing the turkey in the marmalade as well…

I could easily talk about Christmas dinner for hours so I’m going to pause myself here before this blog post turns into a short story. However, I would love to hear about Christmas dinner traditions where you are! Are you very traditional or do you like to be inventive on Christmas Day? Alternatively, do you run away from Christmas dinner preparation like it’s the plague and hope that the task force to anyone else except yourself? Or, as this is a safe place, please do feel free to share any Christmas dinner fails. If you do, I might feel like doing a whole blog post about when my Christmas dinners have gone wrong…

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

Mary