Dec 25 2008
Christmas Morning Spread
The trouble with Christmas Day is that the meal is pretty much set down for you. Okay, there’s a bit of leeway, but most people cook a bird of some kind, and the roast potatoes, stuffing, bread sauce, sprouts and so on are all set out for you. What’s to do? Brunch, that’s what.
- Swedish Salmon
- Sweet and Sour Cucumber Salad
- Warm Potato Salad
The Christmas day plan is one meal with my parents and another with Helen’s parents. The first meal of the day is officially a “champagne breakfast” but, out of two attempts in two years, we have never made it to their house before 11am. This year we didn’t eat until after one…
I started making this before going to bed the night before, and we drove to our home town the next morning, with a poached salmon and a cool bag filled with foreign Nigella ingredients. The salmon poaching is really easy, though you’ll need a large container if you want to cook a whole salmon at once. We had one side of a small salmon which was more than ample for four. You bring your water to the boil and then simmer the salmon in its flavoured water for ten minutes, before leaving it.
Overnight it cools down and the next morning it tastes moist and delicious. Draining a salmon of cold water is not a pleasant job but you get a lovely meal in return.
The salads were miss and hit respectively. Cutting a cucumber so finely that all the crunch disappears is not the right approach to take. You just end up with limp wet tissues, and no amount of interesting dressing will make up for it. Hot new potato with seedy mustard, on the other hand, is suitable for nearly all occasions. Take it to the races! Eat it for breakfast! At the cinema! Lovely stuff.
I think the cucumber salad has potential. Firstly, you have to get yourself, as Nigella says, into a Mittel-Europ frame of mind. Think Germany, think pickles, think sausages covered in slimely vinegary good stuff! Secondly, in the future I would only half peel the cucumber, leaving it stripey round the outside and giving it a bit more structure. Or perhaps not!