MY BEST-EVER
CHRISTMAS Donna Hay, Sophie Conran and more share how they like to spend the festive period
RAVINDER BHOGAL, AUTHOR AND RESTAURATEUR
Christmas is about being with the ones we love so I want it to be easy. I stock up on delicious artisan charcuterie and cheeses (La Fromagerie’s truffle brie a must), Fortnum & Mason’s florentines and smoked salmon and pickles from Panzer’s deli. My late father shared his birthday with Jesus, so Christmas is celebrated in his memory – we had birthday cake instead of Christmas pudding and I still do this every year. We join our restaurant’s community at St Marylebone Parish Church for midnight mass then Christmas Day is a late lunch, jazz in the background, a table dressed with clementines, flowers and candles. We drink Pol Roger champagne or Jikoni negronis (vermouth swapped for port and pomegranate molasses) and serve dishes like saffron-infused turkey, panettone panzanella and the prettiest, and easiest, choux pastry wreath (left). Ravinder’s second cookbook
Jikoni: Proudly Inauthentic Recipes from an Immigrant Kitchen (Bloomsbury) is out now.
LADY CAROLE BAMFORD, FOUNDER OF DAYLESFORD
My dream Christmas would be spent at home in the Cotswolds, surrounded by all my children and grandchildren. Christmas begins with stir-up Sunday, when we make the Christmas pudding using my mother’s recipe – everyone stirs the mixture and makes a wish before soaking it in our homemade sloe gin or damson vodka. We go to church on Christmas morning, then home for a few presents. There are Bloody Marys, the Queen’s speech and more presents before lunch, the table dressed with berries, holly and hedgerow branches and plenty of candles. Lunch is very traditional with an egg dish starter – a ritual nobody remembers how or why it started – then a turkey from the farm, with all the trimmings, stuffing at both ends, pigs in blankets, then the Christmas pudding with brandy butter and rum sauce. Later, we’ll watch an old film like High Society and sing carols by the crackling fire. carolebamford.com; daylesford.com
DONNA HAY, COOKBOOK AUTHOR
Our usual Christmas is filled with a hotchpotch, open house flow of family, friends and neighbours where we embrace new traditions without leaving past ones behind. With two teenage boys, out goes leaving carrots for Santa’s reindeer but in comes toasting panettone for breakfast. I decorate differently each year –perhaps playing with branches of Christmas bush, which has lovely fluffy little red flowers, and laying a big garland across the fireplace. On Christmas morning, I pack chopped mango and cherries – and a half bottle of moscato – and we cycle 10 minutes to Camp Cove, a secluded bay off Sydney Harbour, to swim and lie in the sun. At lunch, I want everyone to be happy so I serve seafood for one sister, do all the classics like ham and turkey and make an ice cream pudding for my mum. It always feels like too much food – but two days later it’s all gone.
Donna’s latest cookbook Everyday Fresh: Meals in Minutes (Harpercollins) is out now. →
SOPHIE CONRAN, DESIGNER
I love the house’s magical transformation at Christmas, especially in those darkest, shortest days of December, filled with enough fairy lights to illuminate the M4! Halls, bannisters and mantelpieces are decked with branches of fir, cedar, ivy and holly foraged from the garden, dressed with pine cones, velvet ribbon bows, candy canes and stripy baubles tied into threes. Last year, friends stayed before Christmas and we spent part of the time decorating the many trees I dot around the house, including a huge one in the hallway, plied with my Rudolph’s Nose strawberry vodka and frozen berry cocktail. Down the middle of the table I lay baubles, branches and lots of green and gold candles. Christmas Day is all about cooking, eating, presents, walking, card games, Scrabble, sitting by the fire, watching movies, pulling crackers and chatting, missing my dad but relishing the warmth of a midwinter get-together with my nearest and dearest. sophieconran.com
SANDRA CHOI, CREATIVE DIRECTOR AT JIMMY CHOO
Last Christmas we decided to go on a family trip to make special memories, and to keep the magic alive for our young daughters for as long as possible, rather than give each other presents. We went to Lapland, in search of Santa, staying in igloos and sledding with huskies – it was magical. At our home in the countryside, Christmas is about entertaining, cooking, being together and really switching off. We decorate the house with pussy willow and holly – one year, I hope we’ll finally be able to use one of the trees in our arboretum as our tree inside. Festive feasts celebrate our many cultures: borscht like my husband Tam’s Russian grandmother used to make; a huge Chinese banquet on Christmas Eve, like we’d have with my family in Hong Kong; and roast chicken with all the traditional English trimmings, especially Brussels sprouts, on Christmas Day. jimmychoo.com
LUKE EDWARD HALL, ARTIST AND DESIGNER
Usually, my fiancé Duncan (Campbell) and I spend Christmas in Edinburgh with his family, but this year we’ll spend it in our little cottage in the Cotswolds. Christmas is the perfect excuse to cook, decorate and dress up – we fill the house with foliage, bowls of clove-studded oranges, flickering candlelight, giant Victorian witch balls hung from the ceiling and decorate the tree with mid-century Venetian Murano glass baubles and Astier de Villatte’s glittery vegetables. I make Nigel Slater’s spicy ginger biscuits, we lay the table with Campbell-rey’s Murano glasses, my Richard Ginori side plates alongside our vintage ceramics and silver dishes, and serve roast beef rather than turkey (with favourite sides like bread sauce). Fizz is laced with syrups homemade from foraged hedgerow blackberries and rose hips, and we finish with flourless chocolate cake. A long walk with our whippet Merlin, an afternoon nap and a game of evening charades always follows. Lukeedwardhall.com →
INDIA HICKS, AUTHOR AND DESIGNER
Christmas at home in the Bahamas is a blend of two cultures: as a family we decorate a real fir tree, delivered by boat, and hang stockings (made by my mother’s dressmaker years ago) but our festive table is laid under palm trees in the garden, dressed with palm fronds, ceramic vases filled with oranges, tartan napkins and pretty ceramic plates painted with charming Christmas trees. On Christmas Eve, midnight mass is actually at 10pm, after which we stuff the stockings – it’s always late, I’m always overtired and presents get muddled up but I’m still excited. Our daughter Domino, the youngest at 13, will be up first before waking her four brothers, thrilled Father Christmas has found them. We have turkey with all the traditional trimmings, wear paper hats, blow plastic whistles, tell silly jokes and always set the plum pudding on fire.
India Hicks: An Entertaining
Story (Rizzoli) is out now; indiahicks.com
NINA CAMPBELL, INTERIOR DESIGNER
For me, Christmas is about the magic of stockings. Since the children were small, I’ve done stockings for all of them. Each one is designated a different coloured tissue paper for that essential crunch, but for practical reasons it means you can start wrapping really early. I always make sure there are the same number of parcels in each stocking – filled with things I’ve picked up on my travels, and always something from Santa Maria Novella. Rather than too many fresh flowers, I like to lay candles and my funny collection of white frosty stags and forest friends on top of mirrored bases down the middle of the table. We use the formal gold-rimmed white china and proper silver, sometimes layered with a red and gold sari as a tablecloth. Christmas is when you can be as glittery and bling as possible. ninacampbell.com
LINDA BORONKAY, INTERIOR DESIGNER
My dream would be to spend Christmas with my parents and brother, along with my little son, like we used to do where I grew up in Budapest. I’d go with my mum to the markets and prop shops to find all we needed to decorate the entire house, transforming it into a Christmas wonderland with a huge tree and greenery beautifully adorned with fairy lights and ornaments. It would smell like pine and beeswax, and on Christmas night we would eat traditional Hungarian red fish soup and bejgli (a Christmas pastry made with poppy seeds). We would set the table with my great-grandmother’s cloths and crystal glasses and lots of candles would be lit, almost too many (if that is even possible).
Even though we can’t be together this year, this is the kind of Christmas I’m hoping for – small and intimate, appreciating time with precious loved ones. lindaboronkay.com