Our golden formula for hosting Christmas is: the number of guests (N) + your level of culinary competence (C) + your ability to handle stress (S) + your available preparation time (T) + your budget (B) = your menu choices (M). For the sake of this week’s to-do list, I’m going to assume that:
N (the number of guests) is higher than you are comfortable with
C (your level of culinary competence), S (your ability to handle stress) and T (your available preparation time) are lower than you would like them to be
B (your budget) is healthy enough to let you cut some corners and take some liberties to compensate for low scores in N, C, S and T.
But of course, adjust this to suit your situation. Following last week’s plan (days one to seven), let’s continue our countdown to Christmas hosting. This is the week to plan your menu, delegate some tasks to guests, and plan – and do! – your shopping for non-perishable and freezer-friendly items.
Day 8: Cogitate
Before you commit to a final Christmas menu, consider the following factors:
There are ways around limited oven space: If you are roasting meat of any kind, it will benefit from resting once it’s been taken out of the oven. This allows the juices to reabsorb into the muscle tissue, resulting in tender meat that doesn’t bleed a lot of juice when cut into. Resting gives you valuable time – up to an hour if necessary – and recently vacated oven space to roast vegetables, or heat up (and eat) the twice-baked goat’s cheese soufflés you prepared earlier.
If catering for large numbers, you can part-roast the vegetables the afternoon before- just undercook them by about 20 minutes..
Don’t forget the microwave: If pre-roasting vegetables all the way through, pumpkin, onions, sweet potatoes and carrots can be reheated successfully in the microwave (roasted tomatoes and capsicums can very happily be served at room temperature).
Roasted meat can be served at room temperature: There exists a mistaken belief – held most often, in my experience, by people of a certain generation – that meat must be served hot as Hades. If the accompanying vegetables are hot and the meat is lukewarm, no one will notice anything but its lovely tenderness.
My darling cooking-phobic mother –for whom I created a booklet titled How to Enjoy Your Own Dinner Party – benefited enormously from learning to rest her meat. In fact, she turned it into an art form. Come Christmas Day, she would arrive with – in order of importance – an ice box, the presents and my father. Inside the ice box was a roasted whole fillet of beef, double-wrapped in alfoil and an old towel. That fillet of beef was served two hours later, at room temperature, to universal acclaim. A triumph for Mum and a win for the family.
Day 9: Formulate
Opt for a few dishes and do them well: A meat dish, a vegetable dish, a seafood platter and an interesting salad or two should be ample. Try not to repeat ingredients when selecting your final menu.
Summer salads are your saviours: If the idea of make-ahead platters of chilled or room temperature ingredients will reduce your performance anxiety, I say do it! And let’s face it, ‘salad’ has come a long way since the iceberg lettuce and unripe tomato combinations of my youth.
Day 10: Delegate
Exercise the bring-a-plate option with caution. Target the competent cooks and work your menu around their specialty. Alternatively, you could suggest a dish they might like to prepare for which you can provide recipe and quantities, should they so wish.
The non-cooks could be asked to contribute wine. (Consider providing them with a list of wines from a certain German supermarket chain with a well-reviewed and affordable wine selection if it’s available in your state.)
In-kind offers of labour – particularly pertaining to washing up after the meal – should be accepted with alacrity and a jocular reference to a signed ‘pre-sup’ agreement in the event of a post-prandial change of heart. Pretend you’re not dead serious. Consider offering unreliable relatives the option of making a monetary donation ahead of time, and provide them with your bank details.
Day 11: Plan your shopping list
There are no medals for preparing everything from scratch. Mixing store-bought with homemade will save you time and stress, and no one need even know.Store-bought pestos and dips can be better than homemade if you’re prepared to pay, and a really good mayonnaise (I like Burrowes Park) will lift many savoury dishes. Your store-bought budget may, to some extent, rely on the largesse of your guests. (See above re: cash contributions.)
If opting for homemade, now is the time to juice your lemons and limes, make your pesto, and freeze it all in ice cube containers (if applicable). Measure out each cube so it translates into a liquid measurement. Ditto your stocks (if using.)
Day 12: Start shopping
Buy meat when it’s on special and freeze it if you have the freezer capacity. That same aforementioned German supermarket sells excellent whole fillets of beef at a fraction of the price of other mainstream supermarkets, but it sells out quickly.
Start buying items that don’t need refrigeration, and order specialty items like ham, turkey, crayfish, oysters and Christmas pudding.
Day 13: Make friends with your butcher
If you have a special turkey stuffing recipe, ask your butcher if they’ll stuff the bird for you. And while you’re there, find out if they offer a knife sharpening service. It’s worth the expense and you only need to sharpen one or two if your budget is tight.
Day 14: Let’s cook
Next week’s instalment includes options for your Christmas mains that covera gamut of allergies and lifestyle choices. But in the meantime, the below recipe for Swedish crispbread is a make-ahead allergy-friendly wonder.
A tip: for extra flavour, you can use the leftover oil from marinated olives or feta to make this crispbread (or for the vegetables you plan on pre-roasting). Though if you’re serving vegan guests, save the feta oil for another time.
Make ahead: Linny’s Swedish crispbread
My Swedish daughter-in-law gave me this recipe a year ago and I have baked monthly ever since. It is lactose-, gluten-, egg-, soy- and nut-free, inexpensive compared to commercial crispbread, stays crisp for weeks if stored in an airtight container, and unlikely to break a tooth. It can be served as an alternative to crackers or bread and is superb with cheese, dips or on its own. If I’m feeling especially generous I give it as gifts, presented in recycled cardboard punnets.
A word of warning: the raw mixture looks like slops and it will take a couple of attempts to get it perfect. If the mixture thickens too quickly to spread easily on your baking trays, you can scoop up the slops and add a little more hot water, then try again.
Makes: 4 x A4-sized sheets. (If you don’t have room in the oven for four baking trays, you can halve the recipe.)
¾ cup sunflower seeds
½ cup pepita/pumpkin seeds
½ cup sesame seeds
½ cup linseed
1 tbsp chia seeds (optional)
1 cup gluten-free cornflour, sifted
125ml olive oil (½ cup)
500ml boiling water (2 cups)
Preheat your oven to 160/150C fan. In a large bowl, combine all the seeds and stir in the cornflour. Add the oil and stir well to combine, then add the boiling water all at once, stirring gently with a whisk to help break up the mixture. It will be quite watery. You may want to let it sit for a minute or two but don’t be put off by the sloppy consistency.
Line four shallow baking trays or baking sheets with baking paper. Using a ladle or large spoon, take one-quarter of the crispbread mixture and pour it on to a lined tray. Using a spatula, work quickly to spread the mixture to roughly an A4-size sheet of paper. Repeat with the remaining mixture on the remaining lined sheets.
Sprinkle each crispbread sheet with salt and bake for 50 minutes to one hour, checking at 20-minute intervals and rotating the trays if they’re cooking unevenly. Once the crispbreads start to look golden on top, lift them up and have a peek underneath. If the undersides are taking on a golden colour, they’re probably ready.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool in their trays. If they are still a little bendy in the middle, you can break off the crisp outer sections and return the undercooked bits to the oven for another five or 10 minutes. It sounds fiddly but it’s worth it and will become second nature in time.
Store in large airtight containers. I like to break up the crispbread as little as possible when storing it.
To serve, break into smaller, more manageable pieces, or leave as attractive large sheets that your guests can break themselves.
