Chefs serve up a festive feast – and guitar licks
Christmas doesn’t begin and end with roast turkey and all the trimmings.
There are plenty of ideas for trying something different this festive season – whether it’s deep frying your festive bird, glazed clementine carrots or even a cheeky glass of authentic German mulled wine.
You can turn to the Christmas food television line-up for a few ideas this week.
Beautiful Baking with Juliet Sear (ITV, today,
9.25am) sees Juliet conjures up some ideas for Christmas, including baked party canapes, a Brussels sprout tarte tatin and a spectacular chocolate orange profiteroles tower.
Meanwhile, former Bake Off contestant Liam Charles pays a visit to serve up Christmas lunch on a sheet of “ruff puff pastry”.
Juliet also visits chef Chantelle Nicholson in her London restaurant to sample a vegan main course Christmas meal – so now you can keep that difficult relative happy.
Cooking Christmas dinner doesn’t have to be stressful at all, according to Cockney food campaigner Jamie Oliver.
His stress-free guide to planning the most important feast of the year, on Jamie’s Easy Christmas Countdown (Channel 4, today, 8pm)
shows exactly what to cook, and when, across Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
At the centre of his table is a show-stopping turkey with herb butter and crispy skin.
That’s surrounded by smoked salmon pate, pork stuffing crammed with silky leeks, sweet peaches and roasted chestnuts, glazed clementine carrots and gnarly sausage and sage.
Food boffin Heston Blumenthal is usually wrapped up in the future of food, but he’s going backwards for once in
Heston’s Marvellous Menu: Back To The Noughties (BBC2, Thur, 9pm)
He’s trying to recreate a 2001 tasting menu from his world-renowned restaurant, The Fat Duck.
Heston won’t have to go it alone though as some of the original staff members will
be returning to the kitchen to join the current team.
The dining room will also be re-decorated in turn-ofthe-millennium style. Expect some Changing Rooms-style MDF on the wall, then.
Saturday morning king of cookery, James Martin, has his Christmas special this week too.
James Martin’s Saturday Morning at Christmas (ITV,
Sat, 9.25am) sees James go full David Brent – he’ll be fetching his guitar and treating viewers to a performance of Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain.
The focus is a masterclass in how best to prepare all your veg and potatoes.
There’s also an alternative Christmas dish - porchetta stuffed with chestnuts and cranberries, and a white chocolate and orange mousse flavoured with yuzu, a Chinese citrus fruit – which he is prepping with his mum.