Neven gets us ready for the big day
IT’S getting to that time of the year when people start to think not just about Christmas itself but about the best part of the day – the Christmas dinner.
You can never pick up too many tips about making the perfect Christmas lunch – although I do wish someone had told me not to boil the sprouts in the same water as the smoked ham, that was a particularly salty disaster a few years ago that still gets thrown in my face – and the ever-affable Neven Maguire sets out to make the whole affair just that little bit easier.
Maguire’s Christmas specials have become something of an RTÉ tradition in recent times and this year he’s presenting Neven’s Kilkenny Christmas (RTÉ One, tonight, 8.30pm) a twoparter from, well, Kilkenny, which was recently voted the Irish Foodie Destination of 2018.
While he incorporates some ingredients previously seen on his most recent Spanish adventures, he sticks with the classics that people know and love and tonight sees him show the viewer how to make the perfect roast turkey with braised red cabbage and sausage stuffing.
The concluding episode goes out on Friday night and features a loin of bacon which, apparently, is easier to cook than the more traditional glazed ham.
Of course, most Irish families seem to have a tradition of the Ma cooking the dinner and then going utterly mad in the process, so it will be interesting to see how many tune in looking for actual tips, or whether they prefer to stay in a state of heightened anxiety and frayed tempers for the day – not all Christmas traditions are fun, after all...
There have been some fine – and truly, genuinely horrifying – documentaries about North Korea on both PBS and National Geographic in recent months and tonight sees Channel 4’s turn.
North Korea – Life Inside The Secret State (Channel 4, 10pm) talks to some of those brave souls who have managed to defect from the hermit state and explores the difficulties they have in trying to escape the shackles of their past while also struggling to adjust to a life where their every movement isn’t monitored.
Intriguingly, they also speak to some of those defectors who still somehow manage to maintain contact with their relatives back in North Korea.
We’ve all become rather immune to horror stories from around the world, but North Korea really is like some insane dictator’s fever-dream and while documentaries about this bizarre place seldom make for easy viewing, they are frequently jaw-dropping.