Let me first begin by wishing everyone a belated Merry Christmas!!! I hope you all had a wonderful time over the festive period. Ours was special this year since it was our son’s very first Christmas. My uncle joined us from Scotland for the holidays so it was truly a family event.

Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas in our house without roast turkey and the trimmings, so that is exactly what we had. This is how the main course looked but I’ve included the recipe for the soup and the main course below.

I was planning on making Carrot and Tarragon soup but I had a bit of a soup disaster on Christmas Eve and so in a panic at 8pm there I was rifling though my cookbooks trying to find a soup recipe which could use the contents of my fridge. Luckily my trusted Covent Garden books were there waiting, thank goodness!

Our Christmas menu ended up looking like this

Mrs Kendall’s Lentil Soup

Roast Breast of Turkey with all the trimmings

Apple Strudel and Vanilla Ice Cream (this was optional!)

I got the recipe for Mrs Kendall’s Lentil Soup from the New Covent Garden Soup Company’s Book of Soups: New, Old & Odd Recipes. I modified the recipe a little to jazz it up slightly, here is my version.

MRS KENDALL’S LENTIL SOUP

INGREDIENTS

• 2 Medium Onions, finely chopped
• 500g Carrots, finely chopped
• 200g Red Lentils
• 3 Pints of Ham stock
• 200g Smoked Ham cubes
• Small bunch of parsley finely chopped
• Salt and Pepper

PREPARATION

1. Add all of the ingredients into a large pot, bring to the boil, reduce the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes until the vegetables and lentils are tender.
2. Cool the the soup slightly and then liquidize.
3. Add the chopped parsley and serve with crusty bread.

ROAST BREAST OF TURKEY

INGREDIENTS

• 3kg Skinless, boneless Turkey Breast
• 16 Rashers of Smoked Streaky Bacon

PREPARATION

1. Preheat the oven to 160°C.
2. Place the bacon rashers over the entire surface of the breast to ensure the turkey doesn’t dry out during cooking.
3. Put the turkey breast into a shallow roasting tray and cover loosely with tin foil for the first half of the cooking time, for the second phase of the roasting remove the foil to allow the bacon to crispen.
4. Baste the turkey every 40 minutes.
5. Roast the turkey until the internal temperature of the thickest part of the breast reaches 75°C using a meat thermometer. In my oven this took almost 3 hours.
6. Remove the turkey from the oven, cover with foil and allow to rest for about 1.5 hours then carve and serve with gravy.

I used a recipe which I found on the UKTV Food website from Tamasin Day-Lewis for my Crispy Roast Potatoes and it worked beautifully.

Finally I roasted some pork chipolata sausages wrapped in smoked bacon at 180°C for 35 minutes and along with some steamed broccoli, steamed carrot batons (steamed for 12 minutes) and cranberry and chestnut stuffing (pre-bought) that just about wrapped up our Christmas dinner.

We were all so stuffed by the end that we never made it to dessert!

Happy Holidays everyone!

Wishing you all and your families a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008!!

Pamela