Miraculous Make Aheads Home Comforts at Christmas

The heart of my home is the kitchen.

At this time of the year,

it's the perfect place to gather and celebrate the festive season.

For me, Christmas is all about rustling up some fantastic food.

And eating it in the company of my favourite people.

These are the dishes that I cook

when I want to spread a little bit of cheer.

These are my Christmas Home Comforts.

# Rocking around the Christmas tree... #

Christmas is such a busy time,

but you can make the day go a whole lot smoother

if you start preparing early.

This includes getting ahead of the game in the kitchen too,

and I've got some really great dishes you can cook in advance

to de-stress the festive season.

Starting with this, a make-ahead consomme with tortellini.

As the nights draw in, you get this bowl of loveliness.

Our festive food reporter, Annie Gray,

samples a seasonal slice over in Austria.

It smells like Christmas just standing here.

Back home, the king of conversation, Sir Michael Parkinson, drops by...

How are you doing, boss, all right?

..for an extra large serving of chat and pork.

It's not very slimming, is it?

It's my house, what do you expect?

We've all heard of farmers fattening up their turkeys for Christmas,

but fattening their fish?

Robbie Wilkieson has pioneered the perfect alternative

to meat on the big day.

Tucked away off Scotland's west coast is the Isle of Gigha,

home to Robbie and the UK's best kept culinary secret.

Our one and only onshore halibut farm.

On the site as a whole,

we have about 120,000 halibut, of various sizes and various ages.

It takes on average from the fish being hatched from an egg

to market, about 4.5 years.

And in that time,

the world's largest flatfish

can grow to more than ten feet in length.

That is almost as big as my car bonnet, but not quite as pretty.

Some folks say it is not a particularly bonny looking fish,

but I think it's pretty beautiful.

They've got grace and beauty about them

if you look at them long enough.

I think I'd rather eat them.

We have got an Atlantic halibut and we have just taken it out to

give it a check before we harvest it.

We are just checking fins, the eyes are still there.

The fins are all in good condition

and it's ready for the Christmas market.

A nice female fish, maybe 7.5 kilos. We harvest every week.

We harvest every Sunday, maybe 300 fish a week.

In the run-up to Christmas, that order will double

to over 600 fish for the couple of weeks before Christmas

just as the restaurants gear up to serve the finest quality fish that

they can find to keep the customers happy with something different.

Although demand is high all over the UK,

not all the halibut make it off the island.

Some of its 160 inhabitants get a taste too.

Tonight, local chef Gordon McNeill is preparing a festive feast

at his restaurant for Robbie, along with his friends and family.

It's fantastic, you can't really go wrong with it.

It is this little chef's baby.

Pan-fried, grilled, chargrilled, barbecued, oven-baked,

with lots of different ingredients, it's fantastic.

At £12 a kilo, this is not exactly your everyday fish, but it is always

worth trying something a little different at this time of year.

Smoked Christmas canape, anyone?

The good thing about smoked halibut is you can put it with

a lot of meaty things like horseradish, chestnuts, cranberry.

It will fit in wonderful.

So, after four years in the water,

and just one hour in the kitchen, how well does it go down?

I think it makes a really lovely change from your turkey

or your roast, and I think something like halibut adds a really

different dimension to a Christmas meal.

It's great after all the hard work put in by the team over

the year, from the hatchery right through to the chef, it is great

to sit back and relax and enjoy a bit of halibut produced in Gigha.

Whether you live on the island, or mainland,

you don't need an excuse to buy this delicious fish at Christmas time.

I would eat it just for the halibut.

# It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... #

There are lots of ways to cook this fantastic fish.

Whatever the time of year.

But I'm going to make a halibut dish

that's just perfect for a Christmas Eve supper.

I'm serving it with this superb make-ahead ingredient,

Korean kimchi pickle.

You wouldn't think of pickled cabbage as a classic Christmas dish,

but, particularly around wintertime, this is the staple of all

Korean cooking for me, and the recipe can vary. It is kimchi.

Traditionally, it would be done with just cabbage and beef stock.

They'd make this in the summer, store it underground until

it's frozen, and over the winter they would defrost it and eat it.

Over the years, the recipe has changed

and developed into this spicy cabbage.

There are hundreds of different recipes, but this is mine.

I'm going to use some rice wine vinegar,

which is slightly milder than malt vinegar, not as strong.

It is perfect for this.

A little bit of fish sauce.

For me, this recipe is a bit of yin and yang, really.

You have got the fish sauce to add the salty flavour,

but then I'm going to use palm sugar.

You can get palm sugar in various different guises.

This is the dehydrated form.

It keeps for much longer,

rather than the palm sugar which is in the solid or liquid blocks.

The final ingredient I will put in is this Korean red pepper powder.

It's got a really distinct flavour, but it is one that is fantastic, and

I think works so well with kimchi,

so I'll just put a little bit in there.

It is not hot, but it is sweet. Then we will warm all those flavours in.

We will put it on a low heat.

Into the main mixture, we of course use cabbage.

This is Chinese cabbage.

You can use red cabbage, white cabbage, entirely up to you.

The key to this is to get it nice and thin.

Once you've sliced your cabbage, pop it into a bowl.

Then add a few chopped red chillies,

two carrots sliced with a peeler...

..and some chopped ginger...

and garlic.

Rather than add too much salt in this, because we've got

the fish sauce as well, what I like to add is some of this seaweed.

This is just reconstituted dulse.

You can buy this from the supermarket.

All you've got to do is just put it in water to reconstitute it.

Just adds the saltiness you need, I think, with kimchi.

Add the seaweed and mix all the ingredients together before stuffing

them into a sealable container.

Now, the pot is quite crucial because it needs to be airtight.

If it doesn't, it can ferment and go off because

we're not going to actually store this in the fridge.

This is stored at room temperature.

Once you've filled the container to the top, add the juice of

a lemon to the pickle liquor,

then pour it into the container and seal.

Finish off with a shake to combine.

Good idea to do this every day, really, or every couple of days.

Just give it a quick mix around.

Don't open the lid, just give it a quick shake around there,

so all that dressing and acidity gets into that cabbage.

Then after a week - that's all it wants - we end up with this.

We leave it in a warm place, not in an airing cupboard

or stuff like that, just in your house.

You can see what it goes from, this mixture to this mixture.

And if we leave it any more,

it will just get less and less and less as well.

I'm going to serve this with some lovely halibut

and some nice scallops. The scallops couldn't be easier.

I'm simply slicing them thinly and serving them

as a Latin American ceviche.

Technically, a lot of people say ceviche's raw,

it's actually not.

You're curing the scallops in lemon juice, lime juice,

whatever you want, really. So it's kind of not raw, really.

Zest of lime over the top of the scallops, along with its juice

and a seasoning of salt.

Just leave those for no more than about sort of five minutes

and then we serve them.

The longer you leave it in that lime juice,

the more that the scallops will cook.

Pour some oil into a pan and carefully fry the halibut

on the presentation side first for two minutes.

Really, it is one of the prize fish, really,

so it has to be treated really delicately.

I'm just going to sear it.

Of course, to get a bit of colour in there,

it's just nice to use a little bit of butter.

After one minute in the butter, carefully turn the fish over

and fry for another two minutes.

And then all we need to do now is serve it.

Now, it is quite pungent, so quite strong in flavour.

Don't put too much on the plate.

You feel the scallops already firmed up as they start to cure.

What I'm going to do now is just take a nice piece of this fish,

lift this on the top and, finally, just for effect,

put these little coriander shoots, bursting with flavour,

that you can just put on the top.

It's a dish that I absolutely love.

That beautiful colour on the fish.

This is how lovely halibut should be.

You get these gorgeous chunks of meat.

You don't need me to tell you this tastes really good.

I mean, it's just beautiful. It packs a punch.

That cabbage, you wouldn't believe it.

But with the fish and the scallops, I think

in the Martin household this Christmas,

this might be on the menu.

Make-ahead pickle and quick-as-you-like fish

make this the ideal, stress-free festive dinner.

And the punchy kimchi delivers a definite Christmas kick.

Belt-busting food isn't compulsory at Christmas.

So why not try something lighter instead?

This one packs so much flavour

and it's the ideal antidote to seasonal stodge.

One of my favourite dishes to make in advance is consomme.

It's one of those dishes that have kind of fallen out of favour,

really, I suppose, over the years.

People think it's more complicated than it is.

It's actually really simple.

Roughly chop a couple of carrots and one leek

and throw them in a pan.

Next, chop some fresh thyme

and add it to the pan along with some good quality lean beef mince.

Then whisk two egg whites together.

Of course, it's the whites that will clarify

and clear our consomme to give it that classic appearance.

Add the whisked egg whites to the pan along with beef stock,

then bring it gently to a simmer for one-and-a-half hours.

Don't boil or stir it because, as the egg whites set,

they capture anything that could cloud the consomme.

While this cooks, I can get on with the pasta.

Now, for a tortellini, I'm kind of going to cheat, really.

I'm going to use some pate.

I'm stuffing the tortellini with the pate

and, once made, they can be kept in the freezer for months.

But first, I've got to get my pasta rolled as thin as I can.

It's a good idea to roll it out a couple of times through

the machine, just to make sure it really is thin.

I'm going to cut this roughly in half,

and then we can start to fill it.

Lay two neat rows of pate filling on the pasta sheet.

And then brush around each ball with a little water.

Next, lay another sheet of pasta on the top...

..and use a biscuit cutter to cut out your shape.

What I'm going to do now is just basically just take this mixture,

fold it over...

Simply wrap both ends around your finger and press to secure.

It doesn't have to be perfect. I just think they look nice.

Purists are probably screaming at the TV now,

but I just think they look so much nicer.

Continue cutting and shaping your pasta.

You'll need three for each serving.

And then place them in the fridge.

Now time to check on the consomme.

If I lift a bit out on the spoon, that egg white is doing its thing.

You can see that starting to clear. That once cloudy stock,

see that? Already starting to come through.

You've got bits and pieces in there but those bits and pieces will

actually start to clog up and solidify together as it cooks.

This dish does call for a little time and patience.

But while the consomme does its thing, you can do yours,

especially if it's Christmassy.

# Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer

# Had a very shiny nose... # That it?

Ralph.

You're going, "Dad, don't make me look stupid."

A little titbit will soon have Ralph the red-nosed dog-deer

a little happier. Good boy.

Once the consomme has had its hour and a half,

strain the liquid through a muslin cloth.

And then you end up with this amazing consomme,

this beautiful clear smelling and tasting liquid,

which is so, so good.

Just leave that to gently warm through and, while that's happening,

we can just prepare the rest of our little garnish for our pot.

To do that, I'm going to use a Parisienne scoop.

Now, I say Parisienne scoop.

If you're from Chelsea, it's a Parisienne scoop,

anywhere else, it's a melon baller. All right?

So you just scoop out some courgette.

Once you've scooped enough from the courgette,

do the same with a carrot.

Then pop the balls into a pan of boiling water

for a couple of minutes, along with the tortellini.

Once drained, we're ready to serve.

So we take the garnish first of all,

with your nice veg and your tortellini.

Just put a few in the bottom. This is what I like about this, you can

almost eat the consomme

and you get this little sort of nugget of gold on the bottom.

And then we pour this over the top.

The smell of this - just fantastic.

You get this amazing...

..consomme.

But this is what it's all about.

There's something about this that I just love. Just tastes wonderful.

This is perfect for one of those dishes that you can make

way ahead of time, make it now for next Christmas.

Simple, tasty, delicious.

Our festive-food reporter Annie Gray has been hunting out some

fantastic seasonal bakes in the capital of Christmas, Austria.

Nothing beats the glistening lights

and sweet smells of mulled wine and spicy cakes, like these.

Before visiting Austria's street markets,

I went high up in the mountains of the Tyrol.

There, I met a family keeping

the Austrian Christmas-baking tradition alive.

I travelled to the small town of Niederndorferberg...

..to learn how to make their time-honoured Christmas bread...

..along with the traditional seasonal butter that goes with it.

Farmer Peter Bischofer is getting me started.

Erm, I've never milked a cow before.

HE EXPLAINS IN GERMAN

There's a sort of sucking motion, quite strong -

I suppose just like a calf sucking at a teat -

but it's surprisingly tuggy.

What's remarkable is that I'm seeing these cows being milked now

and, in half an hour or so, the milk will be shooting down the mountain.

Yes, you heard me right.

The milk is carried on a unique network of zip-wires that extend

from 30 of the most remote mountain farms straight to the dairy.

Sadly, this is one car I can't hitch a ride on.

Their main products they make here at the dairy are cheese,

kind of big Emmenthals and mountain cheeses, and also butter.

And, in particular, a type of butter called fasslbutter.

Fasslbutter is really popular at Christmas.

It's eaten all year round,

but particularly in the festive season,

with a thing called Kletzenbrot, which is a sort of spicy,

fruity bread which I'm looking forward to help make.

And, when it comes to baking their bread,

Peter's mum Anna is the unrivalled expert.

-Hallo, Anna.

-Hallo.

-Hallo.

-Wie geht's?

-Mir geht es gut.

Anna's in the middle of making dough for the Kletzenbrot.

There's two types of flour in here,

white flour and rye flour, so it'll be quite dark and nutty.

A little bit of honey and some yeast as well as a little bit of salt,

so it's pretty much a straight bread dough.

What we're going to do next is add some fruit to it.

So we've got hazelnut, sultanas, we've got dried pears

from the garden just behind me.

So this really is a very local treat.

Local and loved by each and every generation.

Anna got this recipe from her mother

and she's been cooking it, she says, for more years than

she can remember, so it's a real family recipe.

I can really imagine that

if you're up on the fields above the Tyrol that a slice of this

and a bit of fasslbutter would keep you going all day.

This is a traditional Christmas bread around in this region.

It's eaten throughout the winter,

a really good thing to welcome guests and Anna says her

children really like it and her grandchildren as well.

But this really comes into its own at Christmas and, I have to say,

it smells like Christmas just standing here.

Das ist jetzt das originale Kletzenbrot.

ANNIE GIGGLES

Anna leaves the bread to rise for about 30 minutes.

Then, after baking in the oven for an hour,

it can be enjoyed by the whole family...

and one lucky guest. Yup.

The bread lasts for about two months once it's been cooked,

as long as it's kept in a cool room,

so it's absolutely ideal for a winter treat because you can

eat it throughout December and keep going until Twelfth Night.

This is fantastic.

The bread is like a sort of really refined Christmas cake

and that coat, that crust on the outside is lovely.

And then the butter is so crisp, raw milk butter from cows I can see.

And sitting here, with the family all around,

I can really see that this is

the epitome of a Christmas cake or bread.

I can just imagine the snow falling on the Tyrolese mountains,

a roaring fire, and this in front of you,

and, it lasts for two months, so it's the perfect thing to

make ahead for all those Christmas droppers-in.

LAUGHTER

MUSIC: Let It Snow by Dean Martin

# Oh, the weather outside is frightful... #

'Christmas means good food, old friends and great conversation,

'and today, I've got all three...'

How are you doing, boss? Are you all right?

-Great.

-Good to see you.

-Yeah, you too.

'Because the king of TV chat, Sir Michael Parkinson,

'is dropping by for dinner.'

We're both proud Yorkshiremen and huge pork lovers...

# Let it snow Let it snow... #

..so, today, I'm cooking him the best present I can think of.

Now, I know you're a big fan of this particular meat as well.

I love pork, absolutely. I hate Turkey as a Christmas dish.

-Right.

-I hate Turkey full stop,

and this is the perfect Christmas dish, in my view.

Wonderful. I'm looking forward to it.

What do you normally have it with? How do you have yours?

-Well, I just have a loin of pork, basically.

-Right.

The big crispy stuff, and all of that stuff -

the traditional apple sauce and all that.

So, do you venture into the kitchen then or not?

Not if I can help it.

I mean, I learnt how to cook when I was a kid.

Well, hopefully, you're going to learn a little bit more now,

because what we've got in here, we're going to basically do

-spare ribs and pork belly, but with a barbecue sauce.

-Yeah.

-And it's really simple, I promise you.

-Yes.

-All right?

It's fantastic. Full of flavour, tastes delicious.

I start by placing the ribs and pork belly into a large saucepan

and covering both with cold water.

Are you all right with a knife?

-It depends.

-What do you mean? It depends on what?

It depends who I'm with.

-Right, are you all right with that one?

-Yeah.

Armed with that. It's very sharp, all right?

-So, carrots first of all.

-Big pieces? Little pieces?

Decent pieces, like that.

Like that, we're going to chop it all up.

-So what was Christmas like for you, then?

-It was at home.

-Restaurants were unheard of.

-Yeah.

-Everybody chipped in.

I had an auntie who was a wonderful pastry chef, and...

-This one.

-Thanks.

-Downwards? That way?

-Yeah.

-A pastry chef, and...

-Watch your fingers.

..made lovely mince pies and things like that.

-Right.

-And my granny always did the main course...

-Yeah.

..and my father would do the potatoes.

Of course, he liked them crispy and all that stuff.

I'm being very careful here,

-cos I nearly chopped my finger off the other day.

-OK.

-Is that...?

-That's it. It's fine. That's all we need.

Add the chopped carrots and onions to the pan,

along with some Christmas spices, including cinnamon,

bay leaves, star anise and cloves.

-Bring this to the boil...

-Yeah.

-..and gently simmer this for about an hour.

-Yeah.

OK, now, while that's simmering over here,

we're going to make our amazing barbecue sauce, all right?

-So, have you ever made barbecue sauce before?

-Never.

-Never?

-Oh, it is a first.

Well, you can go home and impress the wife,

because you now know how to make barbecue sauce.

Even with three ingredients, it's all you need.

We're going to glam ours up,

but all barbecue sauce is

-is light brown sugar, soy sauce and ketchup.

-Yeah. Yeah.

-Wonderful. Sounds simple enough, yeah.

-That's it.

Now, because we've got the pork in here, and I've got to do

something special for you,

we'll then just use Bramley apples, all right?

-All right.

-Which I absolutely love.

So we're going to use those as a base.

-Apples are great with pork, which we know you love.

-Yes, indeed.

And it was an important cut of meat for you around Christmas time,

-wasn't it?

-We had a pig.

We used to club together, about eight of us,

-and buy this pig.

-Right.

We used to keep it at the back of our next-door neighbour's garage,

and keep it there all year, and feed it,

-all the potato peelings and all that stuff.

-Yeah.

And then the gamekeeper used to come down and kill it,

and it lasted till Easter time, I suppose.

-But then one year, somebody nicked our pig.

-Somebody nicked the pig?

-Pinched it.

-I bet that didn't go down well

-with all you Yorkshire folks.

-It did not. Absolutely not, no.

It was a very bad Christmas after that, I tell you.

So what was replacing the pig when somebody nicked it?

Having a bacon sandwich.

Now, melt some butter in the pan,

and cook the apples for a few minutes, till they're soft.

Next, add the sugar, the soy sauce and chilli ketchup.

Then add some teriyaki sauce,

tamarind and maple syrup.

Bring the sauce to the boil and stir on the heat

for five minutes until the apple is smooth.

Oh, it's wonderful. Oh, that is dreamy.

-Beautiful.

-All right?

-Yeah, lovely.

-So what's Christmas like for you, then, now, at home?

Do you have all the family round or...?

Been in Australia for the past, I suppose, 20 years or more.

-In the main... At Christmas time.

-Right.

So you have then the Australian equivalent of

-what we try to do here.

-And what's that like in Australia?

It's madness because what they do, they pretend it's cold,

so it's about 85-90 degrees in Sydney,

and we're in this restaurant,

and Father Christmas arrives outside,

with sleigh bells and all that, and gets out of his sleigh

and falls down because he's...

he collapses through heatstroke.

So then we have this problem of taking his beard off and all that.

It's not the same as in Yorkshire, though.

Once the ribs and the pork belly have cooked,

allow them to cool in the pan.

Then place the ribs onto a baking tray

and put the pork belly to one side.

The great thing about this is you can make these in advance.

Right? Stick these in the fridge, in the liquid,

-and forget about it.

-Mm-hmm.

I think that's everything out of there.

-What was that thing that came out?

-What's that?

-What was that?

-A cinnamon stick.

-Oh, I see.

You thought it was just a piece of wood that fell in?

Firewood, yeah.

-Bit of firewood?

-That's what it looked like.

There you go.

Now, spoon half your barbecue sauce over the ribs

and place them in a hot oven for 10-15 minutes,

basting halfway through.

Now, while that's cooking, we can then turn our attention to this.

-And you've got the pork belly here.

-Yeah.

Now, the great thing about this, if you take it into chunks.

So you get the pan nice and hot.

-I'm going to crisp up the fat, OK?

-Mm-hmm.

So this is just the belly pork like that.

So we're going to colour this slightly.

You'll need to fry the pork bellies fat side down

until they're golden brown.

Then turn them onto the other side,

before spooning some of the barbecue sauce over the top.

I see you're smiling at it.

I was just thinking, it's not very slimming, is it?

Look, it's my house. What do you expect?

Wonderful.

I get accused, in this game, of, sort of, using too much butter

and cream and everything else, but I figure, if I didn't use it,

then there wouldn't be the need for healthy cookbooks.

This is... This is true.

Well, at least alongside the ribs and the pork belly,

I'm serving a slimline side salad of baby gem lettuce

with a white balsamic vinegar dressing.

The meat is ready, so let's pull this pork-fest together.

We've got our pork ribs.

Take these out.

Our sticky glazed ribs.

And then we can lift these out,

and put a rack of the ribs on here.

-Another rack...

-How many are we inviting for?

It's just me and thee, lad.

-What?

-Can you see the size? Eh?

-It's just me and you.

-Oh, gosh.

And then we're going to grab the sauce,

and sprinkle it over the top.

A final flourish, with some chopped spring onions,

and we're ready to dive in...

almost.

-The pork pie?

-I know.

-Ah.

-This is just for you.

-Oh, gosh.

How wonderful. This is my idea of paradise. I'm regarding paradise.

-It's a pork-fest.

-It is, indeed.

-You take the salad.

-Yes, sir.

-And I'll take this.

-Lovely.

-Bon appetit.

-Ah.

Where are we going?

-There's no starter, I'm afraid. This is it.

-No starter...

-That's the truth, isn't it?

-LAUGHTER

-Happy with that?

-Well, it's proper food.

There you go.

The sauce is wonderful, isn't it? It's just right.

-That sort of syrupy, tangy, at the same time.

-Yeah.

Gorgeous. I could eat a lot of these.

-Well, that's the maple syrup, I think.

-Uh-huh.

You can make an absolute pig of yourself, can't you?

I mean, you end up dribbling and end up with sauce all over your nose,

and down your face, in a posh restaurant.

-Cheers.

-Cheers, mate.

-Lovely seeing you.

-Yeah, have a lovely Christmas.

You too.

Plan ahead and it might just be the best Christmas ever.

You can find all the recipes from the series at...