Flitcroft - Oh Come All Ye Tasteful: the Foodies Guide to a Millionaires Christmas Feast

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Contents Ian Flitcroft 2015

The right of the above author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available.

Print ISBN 978-1-9102663-2-8

Ebook ISBN 978-1-9102663-3-5

Set in Times. Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays Ltd.

Cover design and illustrations by Kate Forrester www.kateforrester.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

F or the unprepared, Christmas lunch can be a veritable minefield. Like the Noel-tide truce in Ypres during World War I, this meal is often both surreal and dangerous. Murderous in-laws glare at you across the no-mans land of the dining table, their machine guns hidden within their sleeves. One stray word might be enough to set off World War III. Though one can usually choose a husband or wife, it is doubtful youd select all, or any, of the motley collection of relatives that gather in your home at this time of year. As well as the same faces, Christmas lunch is made worse by the woeful lack of variety on the plate. This is, needless to say, a recipe for the total disaster that often ensues.

Since youre stuck with your family, the only solution is to become creative when it comes to what is served up.

Whats that you say? A turkey is a turkey? Of course it is, but that dry over-cooked bird will soar when stuffed with pigeon breast, foie gras, black truffles and a few ortolan. And besides the turkey, there are a wide range of our feathered friends who can more than rise to the challenge of a Christmas fowl.

So fear not, this book will help you create a Christmas dinner that is so wildly impressive that even the most curmudgeonly great aunt will swoon. As well as tasting sublime, the food will be so comment-worthy that youll be able to get through the whole meal talking entirely about the food. So all the usual incendiary topics that might rear their heads, from football to the sexual mores of the younger members of the family, will be duly banished.

There will be peace in the dining room, even if the kitchen and your bank balance have been destroyed in the process.

Trust me, it will be worth it!

W hat makes for a perfect Christmas lunch? There may be quite a few of you who think that tradition is the most important ingredient. To counter that let me just say that tradition, like socks, can wear thin; especially if you receive them as gifts every year. So Ill concede tradition is important, but its not the most important aspect of this meal. To transform your Christmas dining you need to let go of a few of your treasured traditions. This book will show you how to replace your boiled-to-death, once-a-year sprouts with gastronomic traditions from the past that are worth bringing back, and new ideas from the present, so all your future Christmases will be bright and merry. Did you spot the Dickens reference there? I do hope so, because there are several Dickensian-era traditions in this book that will help to get your Christmas off to a fine start.

Heaped up on the floor, to form a kind of throne, were turkeys, geese, game, poultry, brawn, great joints of meat, sucking-pigs, long wreaths of sausages, mince-pies, plum-puddings, barrels of oysters, red-hot chestnuts, cherry-cheeked apples, juicy oranges, luscious pears, immense twelfth-cakes, and seething bowls of punch, that made the chamber dim with their delicious steam

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)

What are the other ingredients of the perfect Christmas lunch? Top of the list has to be extravagance . This isnt just a meal, it is a feast; the nearest most of us will ever get to that Henry the Eighth-style banquet with roast swans on silver platters and Irish wolfhounds slouching around waiting for a half-chewed leg of lamb to be thrown over someones shoulder. This feasting heritage goes all the way back to the pagan festivals of the winter solstice such as the Roman Saturnalia. This Roman holiday started on December 17th and ran until December 23rd when gifts were given. Sound familiar? While we may not share the Roman fondness for fried dormice and nightingales tongues, there is no doubt that some Christmas traditions are decidedly unchristian.

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Next on my list comes taste . Christmas fare should excite the palate and leave your taste buds jangling. Much as we all love Christmas lunch, the sense of occasion usually beats the taste. When was the last time you had a truly amazing gustatory experience at Christmas? This is a tragedy and one which this book will help to solve. As well as taste, Christmas lunch must also be a feast for the eyes. Those roast potatoes should sparkle. The turkey (or other fowl) should have the perfect hue and the table should be hidden under platefuls of every imaginable colour. The burning flames of brandy on the Christmas pudding should be dramatic (Ill explain a neat trick for that), not the usual anaemic blue that is almost invisible even with the lights out. Our eyes, along with our noses, are indeed another part of our sense of taste and are essential to capture the sense of theatre from a great meal.

After taste I would put novelty on the list of essential ingredients, though it is one that is often in short supply. Imagine if, every year, all the presents under the tree were the same. The first year would, of course, be fine. The second year the whole present concept would be beginning to lose its shine and five years later youd all be sick of seeing the same random collection of golf gadgets, books and bath salts. So why should you do that with Christmas food? Wouldnt a few novel flavours and dishes spice up the whole affair? Of course it would. Even if you are determined to stick with turkey, you can liven up that old culinary chestnut with some spectacular additions.