Christmas shortcuts

Today is Christmas eve - preparation day. Although I'm not cooking Christmas this year I've promised to contribute a few things for the table.

I hope I never become a fretter about cooking Christmas dinner. I've only ever cooked the whole thing once in my life but had a big helping hand for many other years and I've always loved getting involved. For me, to avoid fretting, shortcuts are the answer. I'm not talking Delia and her tin of stagg mince in a cottage pie (what happened Delia?) but just adding a bit of sparkle to Christmas food staples by personalising your dishes. 

I've already got my easy peasy braised red cabbage in the oven. Although it's done from scratch it's an easy, stress free, leave-it-alone-for-two-hours feast. Next up though I'm making a Christmas stuffing and some mince pies. 

Bulked out mince pies
For my mince pies I'm going to tip a jar of mincemeat into a bowl and just add stuff. Cranberries, walnuts, diced apple, sherry...whatever I can find to jazz it up and make it my own. I'm not mashing suet or finely slicing candied peel - I'm treating the mincemeat as the raw ingredient, a base for something altogether more special and tasty.

2 in 1 stuffing
Next up, the stuffing. Growing up I didn't trust anything except Paxo. It was only when I was older - realising I actually needed to try things to decide whether I liked them - that I sampled my mum's homemade apricot and bacon stuffing. It was a thing of wonder and now my eldest sister won't sit down to eat Christmas dinner unless mum supplies it. 

So here I learned a valuable lesson in flavours other than sage and onion. But while my sister gorged solely on a good helping of mum's star stuffing, I still always had to have Paxo at the table. Years later I've discovered a compromise. I use Paxo (other non-brand sagey oniony stuffings are just as good) as purely a base for my perfect stuffing. 

In a pan, I soften finely chopped onions in butter, add sliced celery for crunch, chop in some streaky bacon, diced apple and - for christmas - a few cranberry quarters. I then bind these ingredients with the paxo and cook as usual. It's stress-free and rolls my two stuffing loves into one. 

Back to the kitchen. Happy Christmas!

N.x

Gobby

My earliest memory of eating habit disgust was at KEVICC, my secondary school in Devon. A slightly older boy, not dissimilar I thought to Bruce Bogtrotter from the film of Roald Dahl's Matilda, sat alone at a table - wet with a J cloth but with the inevitable stray baked bean descendant from his hoggy predecessor. 

But his haricot friend could offer no distraction from the apparent love of his life: a flaky pastry, slightly-too-greasy, probably not warm enough, verging on poisonous sausage roll. His mouth open, coated with soggy flakes, you could see his filthy tongue and the saliva in the back of his throat. He was a pig in shit - I was on the verge of a good vomit. 

My love of food is all powerful, all consuming. A bad day at the office can be resolved by cooking a particularly delicious batch of pad thai or baking a triumphant banana bread. But the risk of these culinary adventures is met by its matching with potential eaters. Yes, I want them to enjoy it, but within reason. Each cookery offering risks them spoiling my own enjoyment of it by shovelling wildly, mouth open, bits dripping and dropping on their chin and chest for all to see. 

But it's not just the mess that gets to me. In fact, despite my protestations, the mess isn't the half of it. I think I join a fairly decent percentage of the population who feel the same way about noisy eaters as the feeling of chewing on foil (the two of which actually meet in the winter, when soup becomes a lunchtime staple and teeth and spoon begin their courtship). Why god, why?! Clicking jaws, grinding teeth, saliva juices squelching. Listening to this is my Room 101. Alex Ferguson with your chewing gum, I mean YOU! Eating noises should be the subject of a film release for Halloween 2012. Open-mouthed crisp munchers (and come to think of it, closed-mouthed ones too) should be considered by 24 writers as an alternative form of torture by Jack Bauer on his latest terror suspect.

Even my own boyfriend can't escape the scrutiny. I regularly (yes, i know this is really bad) hold his mouth closed while he eats or just shout "GOB! SHUT!" at him with particularly venomous food tourettes. This might make me a bad girlfriend, but it's surely better than vomming in his face/throttling him/putting his face in it. It's for his own good. Right?

Can I blame my parents for this? I don't remember any particularly stringent table manners but when I look at and listen to other people's mouth habits I can't help wondering where all this has come from. I read Matilda a multitude of times when growing up - perhaps I should blame Roald Dahl. Perhaps I should blame sloppy school dinners. Perhaps I should blame the makers of Pringles.  Either way, please... just shut your mouth.