Jamie’s festive plan!
How the chef gets cracking with his family’s Christmas feast…
Nothing says Christmas like a mouthwatering feast, and in his festive special Jamie Oliver shows us how to rustle up the perfect Christmas dinner without the need for a Yuletide meltdown.
‘Whether you’re a good cook or not, everyone’s nervous about hosting Christmas,’ says father-offive Jamie. ‘There’s a lot of emotion in the air.
‘But we can make it less stressful. We can empower people to have more confidence, more free time and get a bit more organised.’
To do just that, this special follows Jamie’s quick and easy principles, where everything is either quick to cook or easy to remember, using just five ingredients.
‘You can have an awesome Christmas with five-ingredient recipes. Christmas is the one day of the year when cooks and non-cooks can stand in solidarity,’ says Jamie.
Plan ahead
‘We do everything from awesome turkey to vegetable dishes and a dessert that’s an incredible celebration of chocolate,’ he adds. ‘I hate plans generally, but at Christmas even I do a plan!’
But most of us will feel better to know that even Jamie isn’t immune to the odd Christmas kitchen disaster... ‘I used to make banoffee pie for dessert, which involved boiling tins of condensed milk for hours in a pan of water. I let it boil dry once and if you heat a tin long enough, it’ll explode. It’s really dangerous,’ he says.
‘Luckily, no one was in the kitchen at the time, but I came back to find stalactites of caramel everywhere!’