Christmas dinner is taken very seriously in my family, and is more or less the highlight of the entire holidays. I start cooking two days ahead – making stock for gravy, prepping the vegetables and making a start on the pudding, which is always cold rice pudding – all while people are coming and going, peeking into pots and tasting, enjoying the smells of Christmas and drinking port, and often with a Christmas movie playing in the background. That all leads up to the centrepiece of our Christmas meal, the duck, which I take out of the fridge on the morning of the 24th and get ready for the oven. I serve it with red cabbage, kale salad, classic caramel potatoes and a nice gravy, but it’s the crisp, sweet and tender roast duck that binds the entire meal together.
