Breakfast done, decks swabbed, the planning for dinner was well advanced the goose stuffed, the vegetables prepped, we had a whiskey (well Bob and I did) and got into our glad rags and headed off up town to pay a visit to family friends Ivan and Nora( we never eat the main festive meal before 15:00 on Christmas day). We had a smashing natter or craic as they say in these parts, we drank a few more whiskies and Linda a few waters, then about 13:00 it was about time to head back home to get the Christmas Dinner show on the road, famous last words!!!
Our Menu was to be:
Christmas Dinner 2013
Starter
Parma ham wrapped, scallops, Dublin Bay prawns, steamed salmon with sauce hollandaise and a beetroot small leaf salad.
Soup
Carrot, tomato and coriander soup
Mains
Stuffed Roast Goose. Most of the fat removed from the rear end (it will normally hang in 2 lobes each side of the rear opening. Wash and dry inside and out, liberally season with salt and pepper (if I had been in Germany I would have rubbed dried summer savoury into the skin, this is always readily available at this time of the year).
Prick the bird all over paying special attention to the area behind the wings and between the legs and breast.
Stuffed turkey crown (this was a one from sainsbury’s all ready to go into the oven stuffed and bacon latticed)
Yorkshire puddings (I have to say Linda found some Aunt Bessy’s in the freezer and she doesn’t even have an Aunt Bessy)
Roast potatoes done in the rendered goose fat
Roast Parsnips
Spiced Red Cabbage braised in cider (done to the Hairy Bikers recipe, now one of her favourites)
Sprouts with onions and Ham pieces
Mashed potatoes
Giblet gravy
Pudding
Christmas pudding with rum sauce and double cream
Linda had made the soup well in advance, this is an old favourite of ours and is based very closely on one of Mamta’s wonderful recipes.
The starter was a quick and easy one, we had been into Newry on Christmas Eve to do the last of the Christmas shopping and take in the Hobbit. We had picked up some smashing Dublin Bay prawns, plump fresh scallops and a nice piece of fresh salmon filet. These along with some ready cooked beetroots and a pack of ready to eat small salad leaves would be the starter.
But first to the Goose, because the star of the show was to be our down fall (well mine at least). I had made the stuffing before we had left for our visit, this and the stock made the day before was the main prep for our Christmas dinner.
The forced meat stuffing
Ingredients:
300g Soft bread crumbs
1 tsp. each of chopped rosemary, thyme and sage.
A small bunch of parsley, strip off the leaves and chop finely
1 table spoon of butter (or for the health freaks oil)
1 medium onion (diced)
1 clove of garlic crushed and finely chopped
50g of Black smoked Bavarian speck, dice this into small cubes (you may not be able to find this so use any good quality cured speck)
250g of good quality sausage meat (from your local butcher, or buy some good sausages and strip of the casings, or even better make your own)
Salt, pepper, nutmeg, and any mix in the herbs.
I egg beaten
Stock to soften.
Fry the speck, onions and garlic in the butter until translucent. Place your bread crumbs into a large mixing bowl add the herbs mix well add the contents of the frying pan to this and mix this in, add the sausage meat and get your hands into it giving a good mixing add the egg and mix again, if a little stiff add some of the stock.
I stuffed the neck and body cavity with this stuffing, some use two types of stuffing one for the neck and one for the body; it is entirely up to personal choice. I quartered and de-cored a Boscop apple, pricked a mandarin and add these along with half a lemon to the cavity on top of the stuffing, using wooden skewers I closed the cavities and then trussed the goose so that it kept its shape. Placed some of the goose fat into a large foil tray resting on an even larger heavy duty baking tray, I used a swiss roll tray, this is a safety procedure as I know how labile the foil ones become when the goose is cooking and is full of boiling goose fat that you wish to either remove or baste, it is the floor and your feet that get well basted!! Turn up the oven to full and place this in the oven for the fat to come up to smoking, place the goose in to the smoking oil and baste all over with the fat. Remove from the fat and add a chopped onion, carrot, leek and some chopped celery to the fat and allowed to soften, then I placed the goose breast side down onto this and ladle some of the stock over the breast, enough to just cover the vegetables, cover with foil and put back into the oven. Turn the oven down to 180°C and roast for about 30 mins. After 30 minutes, take out of the oven, turn the goose breast side up (in the process skim off the fat from the surface of the stock). Place back into the oven and cook for a further 1hr 30min to 2hrs, but keep an eye on the bird, you can remove the foil towards the end of the cooking time, but keep basting with the stock and ladling off the goose fat that comes out of the bird (we got 2 pints of wonderful goose fat for the roasted tatties and parsnips). The stock will ensure a crisp skin, (make sure that your stock has plenty of salt in it).
This is how it should have happened and did in fact happen on boxing day, but alas the oven cut out after exactly 1 hour, this is now the third time that it has happened over the last 5 years twice with a bird in the oven and once with a leg of lamb, it is most annoying but that is life!!! No matter what we tried neither the bottom or the top oven could be coerced into functioning, agggggghhh not again, I was crest fallen, nay devastated, thank goodness we had not started on the veg. The top hobs worked perfectly well so cutting our losses, we decided to have the starters, soup and Christmas pud.
So, the soup had already been made, this meant we could change direction and the starter became the main and we had the soup starter, the main was Dublin bay prawns, Parma wrapped scallops, fried scallop corals, steamed lemon salmon in a thyme hollandaise
You shall require (for 2 persons, Bob doesn’t like seafood, never tried it but doesn’t like it, never mind more for those that do)
6 large Dublin bay prawns
6 very thin slices of Parma ham
4 juicy plump scallops complete with corals (there are those that throw these away, bloody fools)
Remove the corals, and the brown/black skirt (this is a frilly part that surrounds the muscle flesh), season well with pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice. Wrap each scallop in a slice of ham, season the corals with pepper and salt.
A good fresh wild Irish Salmon Filet cut from the tail end , pin bone the filet, remove the skin and cut into 3 equal sized tranches (Bob does eat Salmon, well it isn’t sea food really)
Butter for frying
Juice of ½ a lemon
Lemon and thyme sauce hollandaise
Prepare your salmon filets, salt and pepper both sides and place in a steamer on a piece of buttered foil, sprinkle with lemon juice, add the prawns around the sides. Place this over a pan of boiling water, lid on and steam.
Heat some butter in a frying pan and place the scallops into the pan, when the Parma ham crisps, turn and add the corals.
Now add your salad leaves and chopped beetroots, in a mustard, oil dressing to one side of a plate, place the salmon in the middle and the scallops as outriders each side, put the three Dublin bay prawns one each side and one at the bottom, nap the salmon with the sauce Hollandaise. I would say not a bad main course in anyone’s book.
The Christmas pud was easy, Steamed for 2 hours, Linda made some birds’ eye custard laced with rum for Bob and we had the low calorie option double cream!
We did do it flambé , with some of Bobs old Sailor black rum, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.
So that was the Christmas day meal, that wasn’t as it was intended, but never the less not bad at all.
Later that evening Linda cooked the Turkey crown in the top oven and the next morning I tried the large lower oven and it functioned perfectly, this leads me to believe that it is using everything all at once that it doesn’t like. As it is only put through its paces whenever we come to Ireland, it will only refuse to play when we are there. I think I shall have to spend some time across there when I retire, well there is a some very good fishing within a couple of Kms of Bobs house and the hunting though not on a par with what I have back in Germany is available in the beautiful Mourne Mountains, these actually look down on the Premiere fishing harbour of Kilkeel, so it can’t be bad.
I shall be adding Photographs, but I am onboard a ferry in the middle of the Irish sea and my batteries are running low, not a plug in sight!
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