FOOD AND WINE
Time for talking turkey
Minette Marrin cooks everything simple and delicious It seems to me a pity that so much time and energy should go into cooking at Christmas. Christmas Day food is so dull, and even if it weren't, there is so little time to cook anyway; so many of one's best resources are needed elsewhere for the extreme emotional demands of the psy- chodrama that is Christmas. And even if One did somehow find the time for creative or ostentatious cooking, and were to ran- sack all the Christmas traditions of Europe and America for different good things, most people wouldn't really like it anyway. Most people like tradition; they want bread sauce and brandy butter and plum pudding and turkey, in the ghastly phrase, with all the trimmings. So those are the best things to provide, however uninteresting; the secret is to discover a way to produce them With the least possible expenditure of ener- gy. It is far better to be having a glass of champagne with one's family and friends than staring crossly at the stove. Great dramas seem to be made about Cooking the turkey, getting up early to stuff it and put it in, basting it and watching over n for hours, turning it breast-down or cov- ering it in butter-soaked muslin. I have experimented with all this, and in my expe- rience it is all quite unnecessary, at least in a good modern fan oven; with evenly circu- lated air all meat cooks much faster, much better and much more simply. And in any Case most people's turkeys are very over- done and crumbly. Last year I simply put a 17-pound unstuffed turkey in a dish with some carrots and onions and roasted it for just under two hours (1hr 50 minutes to be precise) at 165C in a fan oven. I then left it in a warm place for an hour or so and it was just right.
Nobody ever believes this works, but it does. Perhaps it only works with free-range organic turkeys, like the ones we get from Lidgate's in Holland Park. Of course the legs were underdone, but it is never really possible to get both breast and legs exactly right at the same time and anyway the legs are better in left-over dishes later, such as devilled turkey, if they need a little more cooking.
As for stuffing, I think turkeys cook much better without it, with simply some thyme and an onion in the body cavity and only a little chestnut stuffing in the neck cavity; if they are stuffed they will take longer. Stuffings are better cooked sepa- rately, in another dish. The cook with small children, and a job, and elderly relations, and unwrapped presents, might be tempted to buy some ready-made; Marks & Spencer's stuffings aren't too bad, and good butchers often sell excellent produc- tions of their own. As a compromise one could cannibalise (so to speak) a few top- quality, exotic sausages, get rid of the skins, add breadcrumbs, herbs, eggs, some soft- ened onions and ginger and a little brandy and hope for the best.
The great thing about Christmas Day cooking, especially cooking in unusually large quantities, is to avoid having lots of big pots and pans around on the hob at the last minute. (A precise timetable is a help, if faintly amusing to observers.) Potatoes can be parboiled well before- hand, and roughed up in a colander, ready for turning in hot fat and roasting. Brussels sprouts, which people seem to insist on, are inconvenient to cook at the last moment, and I long ago learnt a sys- tem from Mastering the Art of French Cooking of avoiding clouds of smelly steam and scalding green water just when things are getting out of control: the day before you can parboil the sprouts, drain them and cool them (either spread out on a cloth or refreshed in cold water) and put them in shallow layer in a large Le Creuset or similar oven dish with some pieces of butter; half an hour before serv- FOOD AND WINE sponsored by Fortnum & Mason ing, heat the dish over a flame to melt the butter, shaking it a little, and put it into a medium oven, covered with foil, for about 20 minutes.
Otherwise you could purée the compul- sory sprouts in advance, but only if you have a microwave in which to reheat them. Reheating a large amount of purée any other way demands time and attention, which in your case you have not got. A microwave oven, not much use at other times, is something of a miracle at Christ- mas. It will reheat all pre-prepared vegeta- bles — red cabbage, red, green and gold sauteed peppers — in almost no time. Best of all, it will cook a Christmas pudding in about 15 minutes, avoiding three or four hours of dangerous steam and kettles and saucepans boiling dry.
I had hoped to include my mother's wonderful recipes for Christmas cake and Christmas pud- ding. The pudding was always unusually light, being made with breadcrumbs instead of suet, and particularly good, and she used to bring at least two with her every year. But suddenly my mother has died, and I cannot ask her for them. What I can recommend instead, and what I shall do, is what she and I did when things became difficult: try a reliable and expensive shop. I'm sure there are many places which sell Christmas cake and puddings which would satisfy the most critical guest, but I know that Fortnum & Mason's Christmas cake is exceptionally good, because I've tried it; it's very rich and moist. Their pudding is good too, and I also like their Mrs Gill's Christ- mas cake, which looks very elegant, unlike many shop cakes; since Christmas is now very often in the front line of the style wars, it is very important that cakes should also look tasteful.
Failing my mother's pudding recipe, a close friend has sent me the one used, to universal acclaim, by her sister-in-law. It is adapted from one of Frances Bissell's and also uses fresh breadcrumbs instead of suet. You need: 8 oz fresh wholemeal breadcrumbs 8 oz chopped muscatel raisins 8 oz chopped sultanas 8 oz chopped dried apricots 4 oz stoned chopped prunes 2 oz crumbled macaroons or amaretti 2 oz chopped almonds 2 oz ground almonds 1 peeled and grated apple 1 tbsp grated orange zest 1 tsp ground cinnamon 1 tsp ground mace 1/2 tsp each of ground cardamom, ground cloves and allspice 2 tbsp marmalade juice of 1 small orange 4 eggs at least 6 fl oz brandy at least a quarter pint of muscat wine, port, marsala or oloroso sherry.
It is important to use fresh spices that you grind yourself. Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl. Blend the rest thoroughly in a food processor, pour onto the dry ingredi- ents and mix thoroughly with a spoon. Leave to mature overnight or up to a week, then fill pudding basins and steam in the usual way for about five hours.
Christmas is a time when I try to relent about puddings generally, which I don't usually make any more. Circles of peeled sliced oranges on a dark china dish, with perhaps some halved grapes among them, look very pretty if at the last moment you slowly melt some sugar in a heavy pan until it is very pale brown and pour it over the oranges: it will immediately set into a hard, transparent caramel glaze. The secret is to keep a very low flame and not to stir the sugar, not even once. Serve within the hour. Syllabub is very quick and easy to make and will keep; just as double cream will absorb a great deal of brandy in the making of brandy cream, if one beats it in slowly and gently, so it will absorb other combinations of alcohol, such as best sweet sherry or marsala, depending on what you have. Lemon juice and orange or lemon zest are often a good addition. Zabaglione is lighter and very quick and easy, though it must be done at the last minute. Put three large eggs yolks, 1 oz of caster sugar and 21/2 oz of Marsala into a wide double boiler and whisk over a moderate heat until the mixture thickens, doubling the quantities if necessary. Pour into suitable glasses and serve with amaretti.
Clafoutis, though not elegant, is usually popular; it is really nothing but a rich pan- cake mixture quickly assembled in a food processor, poured over sliced fruit in a but- tered oven dish and cooked slowly. It is good tepid. If trying harder, you could use more eggs, more cream than milk, and exchange some of the flour for ground almonds. You could use good dried fruit instead, such as M & S's very excellent dried pears or apricots, first soaked in a very suitable liqueur. The French chef Joel Robuchon, in his outstanding book Cuisine Actuelle, has a more complicated recipe which turns Pear Clafoutis into something extraordinary, with Poire Willems, vanilla seeds and star anise. Robuchon is particu- larly good on details of method; this book is one of my favourites and well worth get- ting. A Christmas present for the cook, perhaps.
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