However as the daylight emerged on what was an unseasonably mild Christmas Day, despite the heavy rain, disaster struck as after a day of revelry I was left without an appetite, much energy and was nursing a large hangover. It was still worth it though after such a good day.
Eventually I forced myself out of bed at around midday on Christmas Day thankful that my parents were not due over, to have their first Christmas day meal away from their own house in thirty-five years, until at least 5pm.
By 3pm I had consumed four pints of water, a vitamin tablet (that well-known hangover cure) and some dip. Even though I was feeling nowhere near tip-top condition I knew I needed to start cooking the Christmas Dinner.
The music of choice had to be some of the most mellow and subdued in my collection bearing in mind I still had a sore head so I plumped for Cat Stevens' 1970 folk-rock classic Tea for the Tillerman with its laid back acoustic guitars and stately strings.
I first took three white potatoes and took any bad bits out of them with the point of my potato peeler before peeling them and washing them. I then cut them horizontally into circular shapes about one centimetre deep and two to three centimetres across. My plan was to roast the potatoes and I realised it was important to get them right by cutting them into the size pieces that I did as if they are too large they will not cook quickly enough, whereas if they are cut to small they burn in the oven.
I put the potatoes in a high sided baking tray covered with sunflower and cooked them for half an hour on gas mark 5 before turning them and cooking them on gas mark 7 for a further half an hour.
While the potatoes were cooking I prepared the sprouts by removing the leaves on the outer layers that had begun to blacken and I then cut the bottom centimetre or so off each sprout and used my knife to make a cross shape in the bottom of each sprout. I boiled the sprouts steadily with three sliced, toppped and tailed and peeled carrots I had prepared previously and once these vegetables were ready, which I was able to check by prodding some with a fork, I drained them and kept them warm in a covered pan.
The stuffing mix was prepared by putting it in a glass, greased ovenproof dish and, using an old trick handed down from family members, mixing it with a beaten egg as well as the amount of boiled water directed on the packet.
Also prepared at this time were a vegetarian answer to pigs in blankets. I made these by kneading together eight ounces of plain flour and four ounces of margarine with some dried sage and using a small amount of milk to bind the ingredients together to form a pastry. I then rolled it out and wrapped pieces of the pastry around six vegetarian sausages that were on a greased baking tray.
After putting the stuffing mix and sausages to one side, as they were not going in the oven until it was time to turn the potatoes, I took a white onion and diced it before frying it with three Quorn chicken fillets. After the onions began to become translucent and the Quorn began to go brown I added half a pint of vegetable stock with some flour mixed in and let this stew gently on the hob until everything else was ready.
When the potatoes had been turned I put the sausages and stuffing into the oven with them and cranked the temperature up to gas mark 7. I then cooked all these items for half an hour.
While the potatoes, stuffing and sausages were going through their final stage of cooking I made a white sauce using three ounces of margarine, a heaped wooden spoon of cornflour and mixing this the melted margarine in a pan. After this was done I added about a quarter of a pint of milk and stirred this in on the hob on a high heat until I had a thick sauce for covering the sprouts with.
It's fair to say that Christmas Dinner can be quite a stressful dinner to cook and one of the reasons for this is with it being Christmas there is so much pressure to get it right and make it memorable. Another reason is that as there so many different ingredients being used and elements to the meal it is a real challenge to get everything ready at the same time.
If someone had been watching me on Christmas Eve, particularly towards the end of the night, they may have laughed at the thought of me preparing Christmas Dinner singlehandedly but somehow I was able to get everything ready at the same time as my parents and I were able to sit down not long after half 5 to a meal that was also my first Christmas Dinner in my first home.
I should point out the reason it was a vegetarian dinner was a result of my mum being a vegetarian and my dad just doing what he's told. Still it did not lose much for the lack of meat as the vegetables were the same as those you'd have with a traditional Christmas Dinner while the pigs in blankets and the mock chicken in gravy had a welcome rich robustness that was a perfect meat substitute.
It was also a pleasant change for me as I had over the course of December eaten no less than three traditional Christmas Dinners. Certainly this meal and its location helped make this a different but wonderful Christmas Day. It was a Christmas Day that marked time at the end of a year of ups and downs, triumph, some sadness, much great achievement and the promise of something exciting and new in 2016...
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| The Quorn Chicken Fillet on this helping is slightly obscured by the sprouts, carrots, potatoes, stuffing white sauce and my take on Pigs in Blankets |
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