Episode 1 Nigella's Christmas Kitchen

# Merry Christmas, baby

# You sure did treat me nice

# Merry Christmas, baby

# You sure did treat me nice Yes, you did

# Gave me a diamond ring for Christmas

# Now I'm living in paradise

# Well, I'm feeling mighty fine... #

We all know what we want to have at Christmas dinner.

At its best it can be unimaginably joyous, there's no other word for it.

At its worst, it can be tear-inducing and fraught.

It's that rich panoply - the mixture of so many dishes - that makes it the feast it is.

I love this meal.

I love it far too much to risk anything going wrong.

I have devised my plan of action and I use it year in, year out

and I'm not just enthusiastic, I am evangelical about it.

# Merry, merry Christmas, baby

# Merry Christmas, baby. #

My countdown begins on Christmas Eve with a bucket,

several litres of cold water and the turkey.

I bring tidings of comfort and joy

and this is the means by which I do it.

It's not some elaborate Christmas parlour trick.

What it is, is the means by which

you need never, ever worry about having a dried-up turkey again.

It's a miracle bath, a spice bath.

Starting off with that Christmas spice, the clove,

some caraway seeds, gorgeous smells of caraway,

the warmth of star anise,

mustard seeds,

just a little bit of heat of a different sort,

some allspice berries. These are wonderful.

Throw everything with abandon. How can that be anything other than beautiful?

And some cinnamon.

Gorgeous Christmassy scent and fabulous warmth from the cinnamon.

That is the spices. Quite a lot of them

but they need help to ooze their way into the turkey.

This is not a marinade, this is a brine.

Salt is what turns this into a liquid

that will permeate the turkey,

bringing all the spice with it and keeping everything moist while it cooks.

Brine's not just salty liquid,

it's sugary, salty liquid. A bit of sugar.

I don't want just sweetness, I want some taste with it.

In particular, that gorgeous resiny depth of maple syrup.

Onions are always the basic unit of savoury cooking and you do need to add some here.

You won't suddenly find you've got some strangely flavoured turkey

which tastes of spices and onion.

It just somehow gives it a bit more fullness

so it is not just the fact it stays juicy,

it has a wonderful fullness of taste.

The same goes with ginger too.

That great heat.

Oranges too, very Christmassy.

Quarter this,

spritz the juice.

It is also a flavour purveyor and a force for tenderisation.

If you've got some parsley knocking about the kitchen, add that.

I always do. Leaves, stalks and all.

Everything provides its own scent.

There we are.

Fragrant bath water is ready.

I am now going to get the baby to pop in it.

This liquid is not just spiced water, it's a magical elixir.

It's going to transform the turkey

and it's going to be super juicy

and gorgeously spiced.

'My fridge isn't large enough to fit the bucket in, so I leave it outside securely covered.

'Next, it's time to set out my Christmas schedule.'

The best way of approaching this is to get a pad, cup of tea,

a pen and start writing a list.

Tomorrow, we do know that the turkey will have to go in the oven.

We will baste it a bit but that's fine.

What I do every Christmas Day morning, I get started on the gravy.

This is an allspice gravy

and for me it takes all the stress out of normal gravy making.

No last-minute tinkering about with the baking tins on the hob.

Tomorrow too, I want to do my perfect roast potatoes

and they really are the ne plus ultra of the potato world.

There's my maple roast parsnips.

These are more heavenly than you can believe

and incredibly easy to make.

I've also got to have Brussels sprouts. You need Brussels sprouts at Christmas.

I cook them and toss them in butter, pancetta, chestnuts and Marsala.

I have to say Christmas Day would not be Christmas Day

without the smell of bread sauce wafting through the house.

It is my mother's bread sauce and I make it year in, year out.

Right now, that leaves me not much to do. All of it pleasurable.

I've got the Lawsonian staple - the rum butter. It has to be.

I've got the work of moments with my redder-than-red cranberry sauce.

First of all I want to start off with the gingerbread stuffing.

To get cracking on that, I do no more than get a few onions,

a couple of apples, peel them, quarter them,

blitz them in the processor

and cook them gently in a pan with a bit of butter and olive oil.

This gingerbread stuffing is so full-bodied, so full-flavoured,

that yes, you can certainly stuff the turkey with it,

but it really can hold its own if you shove it into a baking dish

and slip it into the oven alongside the turkey tomorrow.

The onions and apples are now gorgeous and buttery,

soft and completely cooked.

I'm going to get on with the bacon.

The bacon here with its saltiness

is so good against the sweet, sharp apples and savoury onions.

A lot of bacon here.

Many times when you read a recipe for stuffing, it says belly pork.

I find using streaky bacon - don't use back bacon - works just as well.

Blitz this until it's a pink pulp.

It's going to be full with all the bacon in,

so you probably need to make this a two-spatula job

and turn slowly and patiently.

If I can do that, anyone can.

Don't expect the bacon to crisp up or colour.

It will stay pink. You want it to be cooked through a bit.

Boost the Christmas flavour here by zesting a clementine in.

For no culinary reason but just because I don't want to burn my hands,

I'm going to let this cool a bit while I get on with crumbling the gingerbread.

This announces itself on the packet as "ginger cake".

I call it gingerbread and no doubt you call it gingerbread too.

This came to me one moment.

It shows if you are a food obsessive, every moment is useful.

I was thinking about how to stuff the turkey and I thought,

since stuffing is always made with breadcrumbs,

why did I have to use normal bread, why couldn't I use gingerbread?

So I tried it and I am a complete convert.

Turkey has got a delicate flavour and that is one of the things I love about it.

For that reason, it works well with a robust stuffing with such punch.

I've got the first loaf crumbled,

I'm now going to start mixing the gingerbread in

with the bacon, onion and apple.

In this goes.

Most if it in the bowl.

Crumble this in too.

Gorgeous smell.

Because this bowl is pretty full,

I have to say the easiest way to mix is by hand.

This is very therapeutic and very pleasing. And I'm done.

This is cooked, it's mixed, I'll put it in the fridge

and it will be ready to go in the oven tomorrow.

# Just hear those sleigh bells jingling

# Ring-ting-tingling too

# Come on, it's lovely weather For a sleigh ride together with you

# Outside the snow is falling And friends are calling yoo-hoo

# Come on... #

It's not just children who love rituals at Christmas,

I have to say that I, as the family cook, really love them as well.

I know where I stand and obviously, it stands to reason,

a lot of my rituals are traditions I've inherited from my mother.

In some sense, I've gone in for a bit of daughterly naughtiness and disobedience

because my mother always had cranberry sauce out of a jar.

I would certainly say that for me,

a Christmas Eve ritual is making cranberry sauce.

All you need to do is get a pan, a packet of cranberries,

enter the cranberries into the pan,

add a snow of sugar,

a splash of water

and a glorious glug of cherry brandy.

Put the heat on

and when the cranberries start boiling, they will start popping,

when they have all virtually popped, decant into a bowl

and you will see although they are cooked, it's slightly runny.

The minute this sauce is cold,

because there's so much pectin in cranberries, it will be set.

My mother always made her brandy butter on Christmas Eve

and although I still adhere to the ritual,

I deviate from tradition a little.

Another act of rebelliousness in that I use rum instead of brandy.

This is another simple recipe.

It is just a matter of beating butter with some icing sugar,

some of the ground almonds

and a splash or two or three of rum.

Leave it somewhere cool until tomorrow and avoid the temptation to plunge in it straightaway.

That is the thing. I love that sense of getting ready for Christmas.

I'd be happy to spend the rest of the day pottering in the kitchen

but I have done everything I need to do. That's it till tomorrow.

-# I wanna talk about my baby

-Yeah, yeah

-# With her pretty smile

-Yeah, yeah

-# She's bound to drive me crazy

-Yeah, yeah

# Makes my heart beat wild

-# So everybody say yeah

-Yeah, yeah

# Everybody say yeah... #

Right! Let's get to it.

Got my bowl of Christmas gravy cheer.

First I am going to release the turkey from its briny bath,

and yes, I did get these in my Christmas stocking.

It looks like something from "Creatures Of The Deep".

I'm going to wrestle with this.

It is freezing.

An Eraserhead moment here.

I know it's not pretty at this stage

but it's going to taste fabulous.

I'll leave the turkey to sit and get to room temperature,

and I am going to get on with the allspice gravy.

Water there, salt.

This allspice gravy has many flavours

and all of them build together to make this very rounded and gorgeous.

Celery, never to be underestimated in cooking,

onion, skins on - the colour will help -

carrots, wonderfully sweet,

cinnamon,

bay leaves and here are the allspice berries

and some peppercorns.

Yesterday, I used the zest of this clementine in the stuffing

and now I'm going to get the juice.

Get a bit of pulp as well. The more the merrier.

This does taste of turkey as well.

You need the turkey giblets or failing that, the turkey neck.

For viewers of a sensitive disposition,

look away now.

Without any more ado, lid on,

heat on.

This needs to simmer for two hours

and I suppose I ought to go and get dressed.

# Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?

# In the lane snow is glistening

# A beautiful sight We're happy tonight

# Walking in a winter wonderland

# Gone away is the bluebird

# Here to stay is a new bird

# He's singing a song

# As we go along

# Walking in a winter wonderland

# In the meadow we can build a snowman

# Then pretend that he's a Santa Claus... #

Now is the perfect time to get all the vegetables done.

And actually, don't dread it because I love this part. It's quite relaxed.

A bit of mindless repetitive activity,

which creates, actually, a feeling of calm.

I've peeled the parsnips and I've cut them into rather fine twig-like shapes

and put them in the foil roasting dish.

The reason why I've done them quite thin is because I don't want to parboil them

and I really want to make sure that they cook inside

before they burn on the outside and I am going to roast them in that,

because I think Christmas is made an awful lot easier

if you use throw away foil roasting dishes rather than ones you have to scrub for hours afterwards.

Now the sprouts, I prepare in exactly the same way

I remember year in year out my mother doing,

making a cross incision here, just to help them cook more evenly.

I just do them anyway cos my mother did.

The way I cut my potatoes, now that is my patented method

for creating the perfect roast potatoes,

so I imagine this in a way as if it's going to be cut into a triangle in the middle,

so I go like that there and I create the triangle

and then I have three pieces with maximum amount of cut sides

and it's these cut sides that make all that crunch and crispness.

I also think that it's better to give someone

six small roast potatoes than two large ones.

Anyway, I know I'm right so I'm just going to carry on.

# While we were walking

# In a winter wonderland... #

Time to parboil the potatoes

which simply means letting them come to a bubble in salted water

and then boil away for four minutes before draining them

and I am going to get on with the turkey.

Although the brine makes the turkey fabulously juicy,

it does keep it a bit wet.

I mean, I've dried it but it's still a bit wet, so to help the skin crisp up,

I am going to melt some butter,

with some maple syrup.

Although I always refer to this as a basting liquid, cos I do baste with it,

it's really a bronzing liquid, just to make sure the skin gets lovely and brown.

For a four to five kilo bird,

I reckon on about two-and-a-half hours. That'll be perfect.

# By the fire

# While the breeze on high

# Sang a lullaby

# You'd be all that I could desire

# Under stars chilled by the winter... #

I love this bit when everything is just beginning to come together

and it gives me a kind of prickle of excitement.

Anyway, may as well relish it now, cos it's certainly going to get a bit manic later.

Not that there's that much to do, really.

And I've already got the bread sauce in hand

and it's so simple to do, much simpler than you'd ever think.

All you need to do is pour some milk into a pan

and into the milk throw an onion that's been peeled and quartered.

Each quarter studded with one clove

and a blade of mace, a few bay leaves,

some peppercorns and a scattering of salt.

Let all these flavours infuse over heat for a short time,

and then dig out the onion

and crumble in a staleish white loaf, the crusts off and sliced.

Grate over some fresh nutmeg.

Stir for a while, until all the bread has absorbed the milk

and take it off the heat for a while with the lid clamped on.

Another thing almost crossed off my checklist is the gingerbread stuffing.

All that needs to be done there now is to beat two eggs into it,

wodge it into terrine and pop it in the oven.

And this can cook on a rack under the turkey for around an hour.

I am about to pass on wisdom for which you will be eternally grateful

or you will be if there's any justice in the world.

This is my recipe for the perfect roast potato.

These have been parboiled, but instead of dredging them in flour,

as is the usual practice, I dredge them,

and all the women of my mother's family dredge them, in semolina.

And there's a sweetness to semolina and a slight graininess

that makes them incredibly crunchy.

A bit of a workout.

To burn off the calories I will replace with the potatoes later.

But if this is one important factor, the other equally important factor

is that the oil or fat you fry them in must be ferociously hot.

Now the fat is goose fat

and the reason it's so good is because it has a very high smoking point,

which means you can get it incredibly hot

and it won't make the whole room smell acrid and horrible.

Plus, it's rather high in omega fatty acids

so I'm telling you now

that these roast potatoes are a health food.

Don't panic if you've just got one oven

and therefore you can't get the potatoes in a really hot oven

because you can just take the turkey out, tent it in foil,

wop the heat up to high and then roast potatoes take about 45 minutes

and a turkey will sit covered like that fine.

I just have to hear a potato sizzling in the pan and I start to salivate.

The oven's on max, so I feel we're just 45 minutes away

from roast potato heaven.

Much as I relish the chaos and commotion of Christmas,

I do think it's important before it all kicks off

to snatch a quiet moment, so you can go over what you've done, what needs to be done

and I've come to the conclusion that in order to stave off panic,

you need to prioritise, so for me,

I would so much rather buy a Christmas pudding and make my own rum butter

and all you do is put the pudding in a steamer or saucepan

and all that steam coming out is so welcoming, it doesn't matter that you haven't made it yourself.

And I've given up parboiling the parsnips.

All I do is peel them and cut them small enough

so I can just smoosh them around in the tin with some maple syrup and vegetable oil

and then 35 minutes or so in an oven, and they are gorgeous.

Happy Christmas!

# Merry Christmas, baby

# You sure did treat me nice

# Merry Christmas, baby

# You sure did treat me nice Yes, you did

# Gave me a diamond ring for Christmas

# Now I'm living in paradise

# Well, I'm feeling mighty fine

# Got me some good music on my radio... #

I know that sprouts are so often regarded as some sort of Christmas joke

but I have to say there's no joke about these.

They are seriously good.

Bit different, but not so different that you're shocked.

Start off with a bit of oil in my special Christmas decanter.

You don't need too much oil because what's going in next,

is some cut up bits of pancetta, bacon, really, or lardons you can get from the supermarket.

I love sprouts with chestnuts

and I didn't think it was possible to improve on that

until I added to match the sweetness of chestnuts,

the saltiness, intense gorgeous savoury saltiness of bacon.

There's no turning back once you've done that.

And now, a little bit of butter.

Because I think chestnuts taste best

when they've been softened in butter.

The fact that you're not having to cook and peel your own really makes life easier.

These have been vacuum packed.

Now, this is the bit that brings the saltiness of the pancetta

and the sweetness of the chestnuts together.

A good splosh of Marsala.

And now, sprouts still warm.

I didn't cook these for very long, about five minutes,

because a sprout that is still nutty is immensely good

and a sprout that is blowsy and waterlogged is inedible.

I've got a lot of parsley and actually I'm not using this as a garnish.

It's really almost as another vegetable in with the sprouts.

Leave some for later but a huge amount on now.

The glorious thing about cooking sprouts this way

is that I think they taste better if you sit them in the pan and clamp on a lid.

All the taste, the salt of the bacon, the sweetness of the chestnuts will ooze in.

'And while the sprouts sit there infusing,

'it gives me a chance to grab a quick snifters.'

# You sure did treat me nice Yes, you did

# Gave me a diamond ring for Christmas

# Now I'm living in paradise... #

I like to get the turkey out of the oven

before everyone's absolutely clamouring to sit down at the table and eat.

It makes it taste better if it can sit and rest for a while

and besides, it gives me time to do all my finishing touches.

To complete the gravy,

all I do is put a couple of spoonfuls of flour in a saucepan

and whisk in the pan juices from the turkey.

And my hot allspice stock has been simmering away for a while now

so I just whisk it in and the gravy's done.

Because I like a mood of abundance and plenty to dominate, I get a vast platter.

On one end, I tumble out my maple roast parsnips.

And the rest I clatteringly fill up with my crunchy roast potatoes.

You can serve the bread sauce just as it is

and it would be really good, but it is unspeakably fabulous

if you warm it up slightly, add in a knob of butter and a dollop of cream.

The Brussels sprouts need no further tweaking,

although I do like to have a little scattering of freshly chopped parsley.

The gingerbread stuffing I serve more or less straight from the oven.

And then, the final moment of glory awaits

and that is the triumphant bringing out of the turkey.

OK, folks.

# Santa came down the chimney

# About a half past three

# Left all these pretty presents

# That you see before me

# Merry

# Merry Christmas, baby

# You sure did treat me nice

# I haven't had a drink this morning

# But I'm all lit up like a Christmas tree

# Merry Christmas, baby

# Merry Christmas, baby. #

CRIES OF APPRECIATION

# Snow flakes falling

# Church bells calling

# It's Christmastime again... #

This is why Fanny Cradock always used vodka when she was flambeing at the Albert Hall.

She could make this burn for 11 minutes!

-Always use vodka with Christmas pudding.

-She was something.

She really was, yes.

# There's the tree to trim

# Our glasses brim

# With love and joy and cheer

# To all a Merry Christmas

# And a Happy New Year. #