Christmas lunch delivery or cooked and served in your home by chef and waitress in the Cotswolds, Gloucestersire, Cheltenham, Cirencester and London

Friday, December 26, 2008
Chocolate Christmas 'card' from Miette

Your Christmas day lunch or dinner in the Cotswolds & Gloucestershire sourced locally.

Dear James,

Many thanks for the fantastic Christmas dinner you delivered for my father-in-law and his mother. They both really enjoyed it and were very pleased with the generous portion sizes! For Granny to say she really enjoyed it is very hig praise indeed..... previous attempts at change have not gone well....

Many thanks, once again - a great service & wonderful food.

Yours sincerely

Jane Freeman

Pumpkin and cranberry bread rolls

dough before being rolled

Cushion of Smoked Donnington trout.

The fish are reared in crystal clear spring water at Donnington trout farm which is free of pollution so they taste delicious, with none of the muddy flavours sometimes associated with river-farmed trout. They smoke it on site in their own smokery. Smoked trout is similar to smoked salmon but softer and more delicate.
Garnished with caviar, the cushions have cold-smoked trout on outside, and a mix of hot-smoked trout, crème fraîche, cucumber dice and lemon zest on the inside.


Roast turkey ballottine - breast meat and leg meat - to see how this was made click here. Sadly, after the sudden death of Bob Buckingham in November, his wife, Elizabeth, was understandably under severe pressure this Christmas at the Smallholding in Chadbury, so our tukey came instead from Ann & Micky Meadows at Home Farm on Bredon Hill, whose family has been rearing turkeys for over 50 years.

It was accompanied by chipolatas and bacon also from the Meadows farm. They make their own sausages from their Gloucester Old Spot/ Berksire cross pigs, and the sausage casing is the traditional vareity made from sheeps intestine. They also cure their own bacon with a dry cure using salt and demerara sugar - no added water there!
Hazelnut stuffing was made with some of their sausagmeat, breadcrumbs, chopped hazelnuts, pices and fresh herbs.
This was accompanied by creamed leeks & onions, honey roast parsnips and glazed roast sprouts and chestnuts as seen last year, and rosemary roast potatoes.

For the turkey gravy I used the stock made from the roasted bones, along with red wine from Three Choirs vineyard in Newent:

Chilled, the fat from the stock can be removed


Christmas pudding with brandy sauce - awaiting photo

After dinner

To serve with coffee after Christmas lunch, I always favour something light, such as handmade marshmallow from Miette in Stow on the Wold:
Although, for the owners of Miette themselves, as I thought they would be chocolated out by the time they closed on Christmas Eve, I made some canapé sized version of my frangipane and almond topped mince pies for their Christmas lunch delivery:

Related posts:

Christmas menu
Christmas 2007
Sunday lunch in the Cotswolds

5 comments

Jan said...

That all looks really good!
Happy Christmas to you.

Anonymous said...

Happy Christmas! This all looks gorgeous and I absolutely can't get enough of smoked trout!

Joie de vivre said...

I continue to say that your clients are spoiled. This all looks amazing! I love how you packaged the marshmallows. I've never attempted them before but they look so much better than the stuff you get in the store. Happy New Year!

Anonymous said...

They look amazing! Happy New Year to you!

Julie said...

Hope your holidays were very nice! The food all looks wonderful.