Mistletoe and wine

I have previously mentioned how fussy my sisters are. They are like birds, picking and pecking and preening and prodding at their hair and their faces and the things on their plates. This is why their make-up is always immaculate whereas mine looks like I did it in the dark, upside down with a marker pen.  It is also why trying to plan a Christmas lunch that wasn't actually Christmas lunch was an absolute nightmare. I wrote down everything that one of more of them wouldn't eat and it basically eliminated everything Christmassy, special, expensive or celebratory that you could possibly imagine.  So I gave up and did the following:

Kale salad with lemon and parmesan

This is one of Jean Georges Vongerichten's signature dishes.  My flatmate recommended it to me in New York and it was one of the stand out things I ate last year.  Ribbons of raw kale are covered in a thick lemony parmesan dressing and finished with green chilies and croutons - delicious and light as the starter for a long lunch.  I couldn't get kale that was as fine as the dark green strands across the pond; I think the curly type I picked up is a bit harsher, so I would potentially pulse the raw veg through a food processor briefly to soften it up a bit.  If you make this, you will be bang on track with the kale trend this season, but actually able to enjoy it rather than turning it into juice (which tends to break the juicer anyway).

Chicken ravioli in truffle cream sauce

You know those food shows where Italian grandmothers roll out pasta dough with the heel of one hand whilst laughing, throwing flour around and drinking olive oil? Yeah...it's not true.  Pasta dough is TOUGH. The hubris of embarking on making ravioli from scratch for the first time for eight people without a pasta machine occurred to me approximately forty three hours too late, as I stood with my back to my darling family, gathered expectantly at my table, prodding at hockey puck sized flying saucers that were turning over and over in the water and basically sinking. I just couldn't get it thin enough. The minced chicken filling and sauce were obviously nice but, if I'd wanted to serve meatballs with cream, I could have. Thousands (eight) wished I had.

Venison with sauce poivrade, fondant potatoes, carrot puree, broad beans and pancetta

This was well received. I decided to make a sauce poivrade having read Richard Olney's The French Menu Cookbook in which he describes it as one of the pinnacles of classical cooking techniques. Sounds like a challenge, I thought, and immediately I was hooked.  It's not that I am driven and motivated and keen to excel so much as I love showing off.  The sauce involves making a full blown stew from scratch, and then throwing all of the meat and vegetables away.  It took seven hours to make, forty five minutes of which required the constant vigilance of standing at the stove skimming it.  It  quickly became a chore, especially when the end result tasted just like a nice gravy.

Clementine cake

Sister Number 4 made this from Nigella's recipe (hashtag TeamNigella, needless to say) and it was delicious - surprisingly light as it's a flourless cake, and not too heavy after cheese. The hours we spent boiling the clementines on Boxing Day made the whole house smell of Christmas.