And we’re off…

Can you be festive during the Christmas countdown but hold back from overdoing the rich food until the big day? Rose Prince finds a way. Photographs by Beth Evans. Food and prop styling by Olivia Bennett

How to feast and avoid rich-food fatigue

I AM ALWAYS TICKLED by the annual arrival of the supermarket pre-packed roast turkey sandwich with sausage and cranberry sauce. Do we really want to start eating turkey in late November, at our desks, right through until Christmas when we have to eat it all over again on the big day, followed by the leftovers?

I adore the traditional Christmas dinner, that amazing and affirming moment when it is brought to the table, the groaning feeling of fullness after, but somehow part of the joy is the knowledge that you will not have

Pineapple tarte tatin Makes a 24cm tatin, serving 4-6

You need a heavy-based tatin pan that can take oven heat – I use an old copper one, but cast-iron versions are very good too.

— 1 large pineapple — flour, for dusting — 300g all-butter puff pastry — 90g unsalted butter — 90g caster sugar — vanilla ice cream, to serve

Preheat the oven to 200C/ gas mark 6.

Use a knife to remove the pineapple skin then cut into four pieces from top to bottom. Remove the hard core from each quarter, then cut the flesh into 3cm-thick triangles.

Dust the worktop with flour, then roll the pastry into a 32cm square (if your pan is wider/ narrower make sure you have an excess of 8cm of pastry width). The pastry thickness should ideally be ½cm.

Cut a circle, 32cm in diameter, then set the pastry to one side. Put the butter in a 24cm tatin pan and melt it over a low heat. Sprinkle the sugar over the butter, allow it to melt then turn up the heat until it is bubbling. Keeping a close eye on it, let the mixture bubble until just beginning to turn a pale gold.

Take it off the heat, then arrange the pineapple triangles in a circle, working from the centre towards the edge, in one layer. Pick up the pastry circle by rolling it on to a floured rolling pin, and quickly lay it over the pan. Immediately tuck the overhanging edges down the sides of the pan, to enclose the pineapple pieces. Prick the pastry all over the surface with a fork.

Place the pan back on the heat and cook over a mediumhigh heat until you can see the caramel turning brown at the edges. You should be able to smell cooked sugar.

Place the pan in the oven and bake until golden on top. Take it out and – using oven gloves – place a serving dish on top. Quickly invert the pan to reveal the tart. Serve hot, with vanilla ice cream. to see it again for another 12 months.

Festive foods evolved purely out of the sense of the one-off. The fattened calf or pig, the turkey or goose reared like a pet in the backyard, the accumulated store of rich and precious ingredients for puddings and pies, butters and sauces. This is the food of a decadent occasion, not for the weeks that run up to the big day.

You can feast without gorging: food can glitter yet have a merry lightness to it. This week’s dinner menu is about the other deep-winter foods. The freshest of fish has a strong presence in advent cooking in Europe, being a historic fasting food. In other times we would have eaten lightly as Christmas approached, preparing for the big meal. We don’t now of course. We party like anything, see as many friends and family as we can, mix our drinks at the office party and eat more reheated canapés than the waistlines of our frocks can cope with.

I think you can put festivity and brevity together in recipes that are not too carb-heavy, not so rich. A tingling, lime-soaked mackerel tartare, seasoned with miso and served with dark rye toast. A simple main of roast duck with Jerusalem artichokes and a platter of colourful roasted roots. Fine, my plan falls apart a bit with a sticky pineapple tarte tatin, but there’s fresh fruit in there somewhere and it is pounds lighter than plum pudding. Enjoy your run-up to Christmas, and with the true advent spirit of lighter feasts you will love that big roast on the day even more.

You can feast without gorging: food can glitter yet have a merry lightness to it