You can forget your fancy restaurants and celebrity chefs. My mum is the best cook in the world. In the unlikely event I’m sentenced to death, I’d choose one of her roast dinners on my way to the scaffold. And if I’m to be executed on Christmas Day, it would be one of her Christmas dinners.
I like to think I’ve picked up a few tips over the years. But I still have a lot to learn. Last Christmas, I nearly gave Mum a heart attack after offering to help out in the kitchen, then insisting on parboiling the potatoes for 30 minutes, à la Heston Blumenthal, rather than Mum’s usual five. My nephews claimed my roasties were a rip-roaring success: “The best we’ve ever had, Uncle Richy.” But nearly half of them turned to mush in the saucepan.
So, Mum probably does know best. She should, with generations of experience behind her. (The only person who could cook a better Christmas dinner was my gran.) But I still want to know who would win in a Christmas dinner competition between me – using the knowledge of the traditional TV and new internet chefs – and Mum. Cook-offs don’t get tougher than this.
4.30pm, arrive home
The prodigal son has returned! Obviously several hours (and a day) later than advertised, not surprising for such a Kevin the teenager son. I love my parents, and we’re close. But if Mum hasn’t heard from me for a while and texts, “Just checking you’re not dead,” I don’t feel the need to reply for a few days, if at all.
This cook-off is to be held at my parents’ house, which gives Mum the edge as she’s on home territory. The rules? Who can chef-up the best three-course Christmas dinner. The stakes? Culinary victory/humiliation in the national press. Also, Mum might dock my pocket money if I beat her.
My late arrival means Mum is well ahead on the prep. Her trademark stilton and broccoli soup is simmering on the hob. Her legendary iced Christmas pudding is in the freezer. Made from cream, mixed fruit and marshmallow, it’s similar to Delia’s but with a more lethal dose of sherry. Mum has also helpfully begun to test out the prosecco. I’ll definitely get on with it after Mum gets my dinner ready because … you know … I’ve had a long journey and that’s what parents are for.
7pm, prep
After dinner, Mum retires to give me free run of the kitchen. Tensions are already mounting. After 40-plus years of offering to “help”, I still don’t know where things are kept, like the colanders, gravy boats and – if you’d asked Mum when I was a teenager – the kitchen sink. I have to keep popping into the living room every five minutes to ask where everything is.
For starters, I’m doing Jamie’s brussels sprout soup, which pongs out the kitchen worse than when Mum boils Dad’s socks. For pudding, Gordon’s Christmas bombe, filled with cream, meringue and fruit. It’s laced with Cointreau, so I get Dad to unlock the drinks cabinet, which encourages him to sneak in a Cointreau himself. I’ve only been here a couple of hours and it seems as if I’ve used every utensil in the kitchen. Luckily, Mum doesn’t see what a mess I’ve made as she’s having a snooze in front of Gardeners’ World.
10pm, kitchen crisis
Starters and pudding are done, so I try to get ahead by pre-peeling tomorrow’s spuds and sprouts. I wash most of the peelings down the plughole. Now the sink is blocked. (“It was like that when I got here!” I protest.) Dad curses my name as he ferrets under the sink for the plunger and caustic soda.
11.30pm, tidy up
After an hour unclogging the sink, Mum and Dad are off to bed, leaving me to clean up my mess to their high standards. This involves adhering to their ludicrous dishwasher etiquette of washing everything by hand and then putting it in the dishwasher. Now’s not the time to argue that that’s what the dishwasher tablets are for. I help myself to one of Dad’s beers.
9.30am, turkey
I wake early (by my standards) to find Mum busying herself with her turkey. What’s her secret, I ask, as I drop toast crumbs all over the floor. (“How many times? Use a plate!”). The answer is: stuffed with sage and onion, covered with streaky bacon, basted in lard. Do the experts offer any sounder advice?
Gordon Ramsay wants you to massage lemon, garlic and parsley butter under the skin for the ultimate turkey. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Heston Blumenthal say to brine in a bucket of salty water for hours, but what’s the point in that? Nigella invites you to brine in a heady cocktail of fruit, herbs and spices, then glaze with maple syrup. The internet says you can microwave a turkey (I’m tempted), or roast one standing to attention with a beer can shoved up its bottom.
I’m convinced I can do something more imaginative than boringly turkey-shaped. Ainsley Harriott seems the man for a giant turkey twizzler or dinosaur, but at best offers turkey biryani with smashed spicy roasties and sprouts. Jamie Oliver has a turkey wellington. But still, nothing says: showstopper. Henry VIII introduced turkey to the table because it was even rarer than peacock, but they don’t sell peacock, even at M&S (I checked). He was also partial to a cockentrice – a suckling-pig upper body sewn on to the bottom half of a turkey. Queen Victoria gorged on turducken – a turkey stuffed with a chicken stuffed with a pheasant. I still get my mum to do my sewing, and she’s busy, so I take up the internet’s suggestion of a Thanksgiving turkey cake layered with minced turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and sweet potato, frosted with mash and marshmallows. How hard can it be?
“A right old faff” is the answer.
11am, potatoes
If I’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of winning this Great British Mum Off, I’d better get the best bit right – the roasties. The secret seems to be how long to pre-boil, then what you use to roast them in. Mum says: boil for five minutes, roast in dripping. Gordon: boil for six minutes, roast in goose fat and rosemary. Delia: steam for 10, roast with lard. Jamie: 15, goose fat and sage. Even Heston only wants you to boil for 30 minutes then roast with beef dripping instead of something crazy like freeze them (as he does with his chips) or shoot them into space. Ainsley’s roasties with honey and mustard sound one pig-in-blanket short of a Christmas picnic, but I reckon he’s on to something. I boil my potatoes to near mush for 30 minutes (which sends Mum into a panic), then follow the internet’s advice to add a wallop of Marmite to the oil.
11.30am, veg
Alexa wars begin, as I rudely switch off Mum’s Ronan Keating, Westlife and Beth Nielsen Chapman for something a bit cooler. Eventually we settle for Take That’s new album. Everybody is happy.
For sprouts, Marco Pierre White champions frozen. Gordon fries with pancetta and chestnuts; Delia Smith uses smoked bacon in white wine. The trick up Heston’s sleeve is to separate each sprout leaf-by-leaf, which sounds a right pain, so I plump for a TikTok recipe for parmesan-smashed brussels sprouts. Mum prefers a simple peel, cross on the bottom and boil, so sets Dad to work on his annual help in the kitchen. Actually, that’s unfair; Dad did cook us beans on toast in 1998 when Mum was out. Mum traditionally serves a smörgåsbord of red cabbage, carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, mashed swede, parsnips and butter beans. At this late stage, I forfeit other veg and put all my faith in my sprouts.
2pm, dish up
The judges are to be my parents’ close friends, Tom and Glenda, who spend Christmas with the Pelleys anyway and have promised to judge fairly, provided the booze keeps flowing. Glenda is John Torode – thoughtful (although I worry about her allegiance to Mum). Tom is Gregg Wallace – happy to shove anything down his gob. Dad is Monica Galetti – no nonsense, and still quietly cross with me for blocking the sink.
My sprout soup is a surprise hit: 1-0 to me. My Marmite roast potatoes are crispier, but too salty: 1-1. Smashed sprouts beat boiled (2-1), but even I will contest that my turkey cake is utterly revolting (2-2). Mum’s made her gravy by roasting the giblets; I’ve added water to Bisto. I pull the old switcheroony in the kitchen to illegally take the score 3-2. There’s not enough Cointreau in my pudding (compared with Mum’s heavy sherry hand) for Glenda’s liking, which puts the scores 3-3.
Like MasterChef, it’s overall that counts. Final voting, and Mum is unanimously crowned the winner. I may have lost, but I’m secretly relieved. Had I won, the pressure would have been on to cook the actual Christmas dinner. There’s a kitchen-full of washing-up, but obviously I have important work to do, whereas Mum and Dad have all the time in the world before it’s time for the pub with Tom and Glenda. So Dad’s taxi service drops me back at the train station. Thanks for the healthy competition, Mum. See you at Christmas, where I promise to be absolutely no help at all.
