Daytime cookery show will help any level of cook produce a festive feast
With 64 recipes over ten episodes, everyone will find tips useful, writes Georgia Humphreys
What’s your favourite thing about Christmas? If the answer is “food” (and why wouldn’t it be?) then your mouth will be watering at BBC One’s new daytime cooking show.
Airing every weekday for two weeks as December kicks off, The Best Christmas Food Ever sees chefs Paul Ainsworth and Catherine Fulvio share their favourite recipes, and tips for making those festive family meals even more special. Plus, there are a few famous names joining them in the kitchen.
From focaccia to panettone to Christmas Day tiramisu, Southamptonborn Ainsworth and Fulvio, from Ireland, rustle up an impressive 64 recipes over the ten episodes.
Discussing what to expect from the series, Fulvio, who is also a food writer and owns a cookery school, says: “Whether you’re a great home cook, whether you’ve never cooked Christmas in your life, there is something for absolutely everyone.”
Ainsworth, who is chefpatron at Paul Ainsworth at Number 6 in Padstow, Cornwall (it was awarded a Michelin star in 2013), says: “With our busy lives, Christmas is the only real time that we actually probably all get together and just switch off, take time out, and really enjoy and embrace being with each other and that’s what I feel is so special about food.”
Being professionals, they have plenty of handy tips for making that time in the kitchen less stressful too.
“Something Catherine said, which I thought was brilliant, she has this golden rule: just have two things left to do on Christmas Day,” reveals Ainsworth. “And actually, that really, really makes sense; you can make your gravy a couple of weeks before.”
Stars appearing on the show include the likes of actor and panto star Christopher Biggins, and popular presenters such as Chris Bavin, Angellica Bell and Jay Blades.
“I wanted to show Martine
Mccutcheon the best Yorkshire puddings that she could make,” recalls Ainsworth, who competed in the BBC’S Great British Menu, and is also a regular guest chef on BBC’S Saturday Kitchen.
“It’s just about knowing what to do; make a Yorkshire pudding mix the day before and allow it to rest in the fridge overnight, pull it out about an hour before, get your tins nice and hot, know what fat to use, where to fill the mould up to.
“And I showed these really beautiful, creamed mushrooms that we then filled the centre of the Yorkshire puddings with.”
Meanwhile, Fulvio, who has had various cooking series on Irish broadcaster RTE, including Catherine’s Family Kitchen, says: “Martine Mccutcheon - I’m a massive fan so I was a bit starstruck.”
Ainsworth admits he put a lot of preparation in to make sure the show was the best it could be.
“I cannot tell you how many late nights, early hours of the morning I spent writing up these recipes, really thinking about them and actually trying to hit the brief,” he says.
He was particularly nervous for his special turkey recipe.
“Long before I ever thought I’d get the chance to go on television or anything, I always said, ‘You can’t cook a turkey brilliantly by doing the whole thing together’,”
he elaborates. Instead, he suggests cooking the legs and the breast separately.
“People really get worked up and anxious about it [cooking a turkey] and I’m going to show how to do the best turkey legs ever, that on their own are a lovely dish.
“I stuff them full of sausage meat, with apricots, dried apricots, dried cranberries, pistachios; all those lovely Christmas flavours, onion, sage, thyme. And then we take the bones out , roll them up and bake them for two and a half hours.”
For Ainsworth, this Christmas will be extra special because his little girl, Aricie, is now two and a half.
“Last Christmas and the year before she had no idea of what was going on, but she knows exactly what is going on this Christmas,” says the chef, who lives in Cornwall with wife Emma.
“That innocence, and just the fact that she is so excited, is brilliant.”
And it’s fair to say Fulvio, who has two children, Charlotte and Rowan, with her Sicilian husband Claudio, is looking forward to the holidays too...
“I live for Christmas,” she gushes, sounding more and more excited. “It’s by far my favourite time of the year, and it really does go back to my youth, when our guesthouse always closed for Christmas, so it was the ultimate family time, time when it was just us.
“Being farmers, we had this beautiful product; my mum was a turkey farmer, so we always used to have the best Christmas ever. So for me, doing this [show] was literally a no-brainer.”
“Mymumwasa turkey farmer, so we used to have the best Christmas ever”
● Watch The Best Christmas Food Ever weekdays on BBC One from today at 3:45pm