Yo yo! Time to blog about my Christmas dinner this year! This time it was an extra special dinner, as Sandra's parents are here visiting from Germany, and it was the first time both families have gotten together. It was a delicious dinner, with lots of laughs, love and many back-and-forth translations between both sets of parents. (Thank-you Sandra for the translating and generally being the best).

Christmas Dinner for 6

Roast Turkey

Treacle-Glazed Ham

Red Cabbage

Eggplant with Saffron Yogurt

Bread Dumplings

Christmas Pudding with Vanilla Custard

It was our standard Christmas menu, with a few little twists. Gordon Ramsay's roast turkey (buttered and bacon-blanketed) is non-negotiable for me, as is Nigella's Ultimate Christmas pudding with vanilla-bean custard. German red cabbage always features on our Christmas table. We added the leftover ham from our Christmas Eve dinner too.

My mum is on a doctor-imposed low carb diet, so we skipped the usual goosefat roast potatoes, in favour of some vegetable sides. I could have gone ahead with the roast potatoes, but I feel it would have been quite the douche-move to serve one of my mum's favourite dishes when she can't eat them. 

Ottolenghi's eggplant with saffron yogurt (from the original cookbook) is always a winner, and I feel the red pomegranate sprinkling is quite festive. Hilariously, I also made some honey-glazed carrots with haloumi... and in the hustle and bustle of the day, completely forgot to serve them and left them in the turned-off oven. Whoops!

Anyhoo.. as I've mentioned before, we did our family's big Christmas lunch a couple of weeks ago, before we came to Germany. Let's take a look!


Let's start with the pudding. Every year I mean to get organised and make it in advance - at least a week, possibly a few months - but mostly I just forget until the last minute. (Except in 2011, where I made two puddings and froze one for the next year). Anyway, this time I actually made it super last minute - I made up the batter the day before, and steamed it while we were eating Christmas lunch the next day. I was worried that with only one steaming, and no maturation time, it might taste weird, but it turned out delicious! Hooray!

I got some suet at Rendinas Butcher on the day I made the pudding. Luckily they had some (I'd been to another butcher the day before and had no luck), and even better, they kindly gave it to me for free!

Suet

I Googled around, and apparently you can make Christmas pudding with cold grated butter or vegetable shortening, (my backup plans), but I'm told that suet gives the best result. The melting temperature of suet is higher than the other fats, so it takes longer to melt. By the time that the grated suet melts, the batter will have already begun to set, leaving little air pockets in the batter and giving the finished pudding a light and spongy texture.

Here's what it looks like grated up.

Grated suet

As usual, I use Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding recipe, for utter perfection.

Christmas pudding mixture

Even the batter smells good, with its Pedro Ximinez-soaked dried fruit and generous spices.

Delicious mixture

Okidoki, let's look at the lunch itself! We rocked up at my Dad's house late in the morning, Sandra set the table, and we got to work putting lunch together.

The table

As you can see, this is our traditional and much-loved Christmas lunch - Gordon Ramsay's turkey, goose fat roast potatoes, red cabbage and a vegetable side. This year it was roasted carrots.

Bacon blanket for the turkey breast!

Bacon blanket for the turkey breast

Ta-dah! (I'd been given some cherries from the Victorian Cherry Association the week before, so we thought we'd add them to the table. So Christmassy!)

Fooooood

My turkey-carving skills are surely improving. Woop woop.

Carved turkey

Here are the potatoes! As you can see, some of them are a little pale. I forgot to bring the semolina with me, and I think the potatoes were a little overcrowded in my baking tray. Never mind, they still tasted good. (And on my second, small Christmas lunch, you'll see that I made sure they were semolina-dusted and super crispy).

Goosefat roast potatoes

FLAMING!

Christmas pudding

I absolutely love Christmas pudding - and I see no reason to try to find a more crowd-pleasing dessert for the big day. Pavlovas, fluffy sponges and chocolate puddings are all well and good, but for me, the proper Christmas meal must have pudding.

Nigella's ultimate Christmas pudding is my favourite one - both rich and light, super moist and gorgeously aromatic. I don't want to wait until next Christmas to have this again! (We had some leftover and it was just as good microwaved in individual slices for an absolute treat of an afternoon tea).

Christmas pudding

Although I must admit, for some people, the highlight of the Christmas meal isn't the pudding, but rather the vanilla custard. Ahem.

Custard

Merry Christmas everybody!

Christmas Dinner for Five

Gordon Ramsay's Roast Turkey

Gravy

Red Cabbage

Nigella's Perfect Roast Potatoes

Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding

Vanilla-Bean Crème Anglaise

And dessert was, of course, Christmas pudding. I made Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding (which is my favourite of all the Christmas puddings I've ever made). I know you're supposed to make pudding weeks or months in advance, but I only actually made it the day before, after having steeped the fruits in Pedro Ximinez for a few days. It was still good! Very good! (Perhaps next year I'll be more organised). We flambéed it using Bacardi 151 (75.5% alcohol!), which gave it a lovely bright blue flame!

Nigella's Ultimate Christmas Pudding

And I served it with vanilla bean custard, which I made while we were recovering from eating all that turkey. I'm very proud of myself that I can make custard without a recipe, woohoo.

All dat custard

Merry Christmas everybody!

Christmas Eve Dinner

Gravlax with potato pancakes, cucumber salad and chive-flecked crème fraîche

Mustard ham steaks, sautéed peas and hasselback potatoes

Chocolate salami and mince pies

Gravlax, potato pancakes

Potato pancake, gravlax, crème fraîche, cucumber salad

On the side, we had sautéed peas (cooked in chicken stock with shallots) and hasselback potatoes.

Sautéed peas

I just want to say that I did make more than one potato! I just forgot to take a photo until there was only one left, haha.

Hasselback potato

Chocolate salami

Mince pies

For breakfast, I just reheated the leftover potato pancakes and served it with gravlax, hard-boiled eggs, sliced avocado and chive-flecked crème fraîche. Yum yum yum, what a treat!

Christmas Breakfast

Christmas Breakfast

Lunch was essentially a pared down version of last year's Christmas dinner - although I have to say it was pretty ambitious of me to think we'd be able to eat such a big lunch after all that other eating! Feedback to self: next year have the big meal at dinner, not lunch!

Roast Turkey

Roast potatoes, gravy, roast butternut squash, red cabbage

Goosefat roast potatoes

Roast butternut squash with pine nuts and sage

I had planned to serve Christmas pudding after lunch, but we were way too full to contemplate dessert! (It's a Fortnum and Mason Christmas pudding that I brought back from London earlier this year). I'm hoping to steam it up and share it with my family sometime before the New Year. Any ideas what I can serve before it? I'm thinking something Christmassy but not too big, hehe.

Merry Christmas everybody!