How to Eat

by Nigella Lawson

  CHRISTMAS

  * * *

  Seasonal food doesn’t come much more seasonal than at Christmas; this is not exactly to do with what’s in season, but with what’s expected of it—and you. If, like the majority of British, you are going to be cooking multiple meals at this time, or even just one, for upward of six people, you will need to be organized. It is hard not to feel swamped by food and food preparation during the holidays, and even if you like cooking, Christmas can induce panic and depression. And the quantity of food involved can also begin to instill a sense of unease; so much excess is unsettling, and it feels decadent to be the creator of it in the first place.

  This isn’t, of course, purely a moral distaste—after all, food is celebratory and it’s perfectly respectable to choose to appreciate its plentifulness—but, rather, a narcissistic anxiety. We feel uncomfortable with the prospect of overeating. But just as we fear it, we court it, because the truth is that we don’t have to plow our way through seasonal cakes and chocolates and nuts and pies. We feel we have an excuse, and so we plunge into an orgy of overindulgence that is utterly unnecessary and that makes us feel both guilty and resentful at the same time.

  For me, an urban person, Christmas is rather like being in the country: not much to do apart from eat and drink. I end up suffering from boredom-induced bloat. But cooking itself can make a difference. It’s the amount of packaged and processed food around at Christmas that makes us feel truly bad. Not all Christmas food has to be the sort that leaves us stultified and slumped over the table for hours after we’ve eaten it.

  Christmas Day itself is, in my view, nonnegotiable. It’s fashionable to decry the traditional English Christmas lunch as boring and the turkey invariably served as dry, but I love it all and on December 26 start longing for next year’s lunch. My great-grandmother was so keen on Christmas lunch, and felt it was such a waste to eat it only once a year, that she had a second one each Midsummer’s Day in celebration of the summer solstice. This was the first sign of great-grandmother’s eccentricity.

  Some British argue for a Christmas lunch goose; I’ve eaten it, and have no fierce objections, but I don’t think I would like to see my turkey ousted by it. Cooking a goose for a Christmas Eve or Day dinner seems to me the best idea, as one can then make sure at least of getting some excellent leftovers. Goose is anyway much better cold than hot.

  What I really object to are the bright magazine alternatives to traditional Christmas dining—medallions of pheasant in Armagnac sauce, guinea fowl with grapes and sweet potato galettes, rolled breast of turkey with chestnut and pine nut stuffing and celeriac rösti. I do see that if you’re a vegetarian, some alternative is required. But, frankly, I would still avoid the nut-roast route. Forget the whole thing and eat as normal on Christmas Day—even consider a simplified menu. I would be happier with this than with some jaunty ersatz number.

  But even if you’ve got Christmas Day dining figured out, there is still the other holiday-time to think of. Remember that anything you serve for Christmas Eve or Day can be devised for enjoyment after. I am a huge fan of cold leftovers. Resist, please, the tendency to camouflage, to go in for makeovers. Cold beef, as long as it hasn’t been overcooked, is wonderful, as is cold ham, cold duck, maybe even some cold lamb.

  The best sorts of leftover meals are those that are glorified picnics. Alongside the cold meats, you need a good purchased pâté en croûte—one made with veal or duck would be just the thing. Also put on the table some salad and bread. I occasionally add cheese to this board, sometimes serve the cheese after the meat has been eaten and cleared away. And at Christmas, not unreasonably, I have at hand some good English cheeses—an excellent Stilton, naturally, but some Cheddar and possibly some Cheshire, too. These British cheeses seem right for American holiday tables, too.

  You need some sort of mayonnaise (page 12), if only for sandwiches. And sandwiches, especially for eating television-side, are an essential part of Christmas food.

  But other sauces are important for leftovers, too. Cranberry sauce (see page 59) is an obvious poultry accompaniment, but I also have to have mustard. I have a painful Christmas memory of lunch at a friend’s house where everything was perfect, only there was no English mustard. Mustard is especially good with cold stuffing. Mango chutney is fundamental to cold meat sandwiches, and if you are eating cold goose, you should make sure you have some horseradish. You should try here, too, that Jewish mix of horseradish and beetroot called chrain. And while we’re on this particular culture clash, potato latkes (see page 63) are wonderful with cold fowl.

  I think it’s all right to give people leftovers if they’re coming for dinner around Christmas, but in that case, make a hot dessert. It needn’t be complicated, but it looks as if you’ve made some effort. Soup, too, not out of a can, gives a hospitable uplift to the inevitable leftover offerings.

  However much you like cold cuts and leftovers, you can’t eat them for every meal. Christmas food divides into food that is seasonal and food that is deliberately not. By this latter category, I don’t mean you should be serving strawberries flown in from distant hemispheres, but that it can be a relief to eat food that is innocent of any seasonal connotation. So much Christmas food, too, is so palate-stickingly luxy; instead, keep it simple, make it fresh. Avoid the slavish overprovision of rich food that turns eating into a burdensome duty rather than a pleasure and turns cooking into an entirely out-of-character exercise.

  A CHRISTMAS GOOSE

  Years ago, I cut out this recipe for goose stuffed with mashed potato from one of British food writer Simon Hopkinson’s columns in the Independent. The recipe comes via restaurateur Peter Langan and was his grandmother Callinan’s. It must represent a curious axis, where Irish and Polish culinary practices meet, for I’ve only come across something similar in a book on Polish-Jewish cooking.

  Simon Hopkinson, no namby-pamby when it comes to food, says this recipe feeds six and I believe him (normally I treat printed portion sizes with distrust), so if you’re having more than six guests, cook a couple of geese, eat all the unctuous stuffing, and have the cold meat later on in the week. Because you need to dry out the skin well before you start, you have to get cracking early.

  1 goose, about 10 pounds, with giblets

  2 tablespoons vegetable oil

  1½ pounds potatoes, peeled, cut into large chunks and rinsed thoroughly

  4 medium onions, chopped coarsely

  2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced

  1 heaping tablespoon fresh sage leaves, chopped

  grated rind of 2 lemons

  freshly milled black pepper

  salt

  FOR THE GRAVY

  4 strips bacon, chopped

  1 goose neck, chopped coarsely

  1 goose gizzard, cleaned (ask your butcher to do this) and chopped coarsely

  1 medium onion, chopped

  1 medium carrot, peeled and chopped

  2 celery stalks, chopped

  2 tablespoons Calvados

  ½ cup Madeira

  1¼ cups strong chicken stock

  1 scant tablespoon red currant jelly

  1 heaping teaspoon arrowroot, mixed with a little water

  First prepare the goose and render some lovely goose fat. Remove all the lumps of pale fat that lie just inside the goose’s cavity, attached to the skin. Put them in a saucepan with the oil and place on a very low heat and let the fat melt. Render it all down, pour it into a bowl, and add to this, later, the great glorious amounts of fat that drip off the goose into the pan as it roasts. The goose fat will be wonderful for roast potatoes on Christmas Day—or any day.

  Now, get to work on the goose’s skin, so that it crisps up in the oven like Peking duck. Put the goose on a rack in a roasting pan, puncture the skin several times with the point of a thin skewer or very sharp knife, then pour over boiling water. Tip all the water out of the pan and let the goose dry. The brave or rural can do this by placing it by an open window—at this time of ye
ar, I think you can count on a fair breeze—and leave for hours, preferably overnight. Otherwise, and even better, direct an electric fan toward the bird for a few hours. Remember to turn it regularly so that all sides get dried. You are often advised to hang the bird up, but this is hard enough to do with a duck and a coat hanger, and a duck is very much lighter than a goose. But if you’ve got a butcher’s hook handy, and somewhere to hang it, why not give it a try?

  Your goose is prepared; now preheat the oven to 425°F. Boil the potatoes in salted water until tender, drain well, and mash coarsely. Fry the onions in the recently rendered goose fat until golden brown. Add the garlic and stir them both into the mashed potato, along with the sage and lemon rind. Season with the pepper, rub a generous amount of salt over the goose, and put a good grinding of pepper inside the cavity. Then pack the mashed potato mixture into the cavity and put the goose back on its wire rack in the largest possible roasting pan and place in the oven.

  Roast for 30 minutes, then turn the temperature down to 350°F. Cook the goose for a further 2½ hours or so. Don’t baste—you want the fat to run off the goose, the more the better—but do remember to remove fat regularly during the goose’s cooking or you might have a messy and dangerous accident.

  Make the gravy while the goose is cooking. Fry the bacon in 2 tablespoons of the goose fat in a heavy-bottomed pan until crisp and brown. Add the neck and gizzard and cook until well colored, then do the same with the vegetables. Pour off any excess fat and add the Calvados and Madeira (I’d also be happy using my usual Marsala here). Bring to the boil and reduce until syrupy. Pour in the chicken stock and red currant jelly and simmer for 30 minutes. Strain through a fine sieve into a clean saucepan. Allow to settle and, with some paper towels, lift off any fat that is floating on the surface. Whisk in the arrowroot and bring the gravy back to a simmer until clear and slightly thickened. Make sure you don’t let it boil or the arrowroot can break down and thin the gravy. Keep warm. Just putting the lid on a good saucepan should do this, or use a heat diffuser and keep the flame low.

  When your goose is cooked—the drumstick will be soft when squeezed—remove it from the oven and let it rest for 15 minutes or so before carving. Simon Hopkinson suggests serving some extra potatoes (in addition to the potato stuffing—now you see why I trust him on portion size), fried with garlic in some of the goose fat you’ve collected and sprinkled with parsley, and some big bunches of watercress. You certainly don’t need sophisticated vegetables—frozen peas, good and buttery, with some blanched and buttered snow peas stirred in would be good.

  After eating the goose, I’d just make sure there were big bowls of lychees, clementines, and some nuts on the table.

  AN ENGLISH CHRISTMAS LUNCH

  I think for Christmas lunch it has to be turkey; furthermore, this turkey has to be fresh, free-range turkey. A good bird. My mother did a splendid job, though, with a lesser bird, by soaking some clean reusable kitchen wipes in melted butter, then bandaging the turkey’s breast with them for the first part of the roasting, first on one side, then on the other. But a good turkey, carefully cooked, removes instantly all association with dryness forever.

  Though traditional for British Christmas lunch, there is no reason, of course, why this recipe can’t be drafted to fit in with Thanksgiving plans. If serving it for a Christmas lunch, however, forgo any starters. I can’t see the point of blunting your appetite before you even get to the main event.

  THE TURKEY

  The turkey needs to be stuffed, and I should, in all honesty, own that I get my butcher, Mr. Lidgate, to do that for me. I couldn’t improve on his recipes, and so I’ve got them for you—one for chestnut stuffing, the other for cranberry and orange. This is the perfect pair—the one sweet and mealy, the other sharp and fruited; the quantities in both are enough to stuff, one at each end, a 12–14 pound bird, with some stuffing left over to cook in a separate dish; adjust quantities accordingly for larger or smaller birds, and remember—if you don’t make extra stuffing, you can run out before second helpings, which is a grave error.

  LIDGATE’S CHESTNUT STUFFING

  ½ pound shallots, minced

  5 tablespoons unsalted butter

  ¼ pound piece slab bacon, chopped (any rind removed and reserved for making the gravy, page 461)

  2 eggs

  1 can (16 ounces) unsweetened chestnut purée

  8 ounces canned whole chestnuts, roughly chopped

  2 cups fresh bread crumbs (see page 22)

  1 bunch parsley, chopped

  salt and freshly milled black pepper

  whole nutmeg

  Cook the shallots in the butter, melted in a heavy-bottomed frying pan, with the bacon for about 10 minutes on a lowish heat or until soft and beginning to color. Beat the eggs and add to the chestnut purée to help thin it, or it will be hard to mix everything together later (unless you’ve got one of those sturdy free-standing mixers). Add the chestnuts to the eggy purée, along with the bread crumbs, parsley, and buttery shallots and bacon. Season with the salt and pepper and a good grating of the nutmeg.

  LIDGATE’S CRANBERRY AND ORANGE STUFFING

  4½ cups fresh or thawed cranberries

  zest and juice of 1 large orange

  8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut in slices

  4½ cups fresh bread crumbs (see page 22)

  2 eggs, beaten

  salt and freshly milled black pepper

  whole nutmeg

  Put the cranberries into a heavy-bottomed saucepan with the orange juice and zest. Bring to simmering point on a moderate to high heat, then cover, turn down the heat slightly, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the butter gradually and stir, off the heat, until it melts, then add the bread crumbs and the eggs. Season with salt and pepper and a good grating of fresh nutmeg.

  If you have a kitchen scale, weigh the stuffings before adding them to the turkey because you’ll need to count that weight in the total cooking time. Otherwise, know that 2 cups of stuffing equal about 10 ounces, and estimate stuffing weights accordingly.

  Neither stuffing here uses sausage meat; if you think you’ll miss it, just get a pile of sausages to cook alongside.

  To cook the turkey, proceed as follows.

  Remove the giblets (though you should have done this when you first got the bird home). Reserve them for the gravy. Wash the inside of the bird with cold running water. Drain well and blot dry with a few paper towels.

  Fill the neck end with the chestnut stuffing; you want to fill it firmly, but don’t pack it in. Cover the stuffing with the neck skin when you’ve done. Use the wing tips rather like pincers—or paper clips—to keep the neck skin in place while it’s cooking. Now, fill the body cavity with the cranberry and orange stuffing. Melt some goose fat (if you’ve got any) or some butter (if you haven’t) and brush over the turkey breast.

  I don’t understand why people make such a song and dance about the length of time a turkey needs to be cooked. My mother made a great point of getting up at the crack of dawn to put the turkey in the oven. But one of the things that I discovered the first time I actually cooked turkey myself is that it doesn’t need that much cooking.

  I have always followed the instructions given to me by my butcher, and the turkey’s been cooked perfectly. So don’t be alarmed by the shortness of the cooking times, below. And do remember to take the turkey out of the fridge in good time—it should be at room temperature when it goes in the oven. Also, take into account the additional stuffing weight when figuring the cooking time.

  Put the turkey breast down in the roasting tray; the only fat deposits in a turkey are in the back, and this allows them to percolate through the breast meat as it cooks; this makes for the tenderest possible, succulent meat.

  Preheat the oven to 400°F and keep it at this temperature for the first 30 minutes. Then turn it down to 350°F.

  For the following weights of turkey (stuffing included, remember) you need to cook it for about these times:

>   Weight Time

  5pounds 1½ hours

  10 pounds 2 hours

  15 pounds 23⁄4 hours

  20 pounds 3½ hours

  25 pounds 4½ hours

  It is not possible to give one serve-all timing based on minutes per pound; this time decreases as the weight of the bird increases. For such information, you should consult those who are selling your bird to you.

  Baste regularly throughout the cooking time and turn the bird the right way up for the last half hour of cooking to brown. I use no foil, as some do, to retard browning or retain moisture, but if you want to use it, add an hour onto cooking time—and still remove it for the last, breast-burnishing half-hour.

  To see for yourself that the turkey is ready, poke a skewer or fork where the thigh meets the breast, and if it is cooked the juices will run clear. Or use an instant-read thermometer, in which case the bird is done when the thermometer, plunged into the thickest part of the thigh, registers 175°F–180°F.

  GRAVY

  Now for the gravy. I am not one of life’s gravy makers. I make disgusting coffee, too; obviously, brown liquids are not my thing. This one works, though.

  Make the giblet stock well in advance. Keep the liver covered with milk in a dish in the fridge till you need it.

  giblets from the turkey

  1 bouquet garni (see page xx)

  4 peppercorns

  1 medium onion, halved

  1 medium carrot, peeled and quartered

  1 celery stalk, roughly chopped