* 2008 - Also available catered only in London area We may deliver outside the Cotswolds contact us for details *
Most Highly Flavoured Gravy3:05pm on Christmas Eve, and all the deliveries are finally cooked, packed and ready to go, and then a single voice sounds out. The first verse of Once in Royal from Kings broadcast on radio 4. There’s only one month that matters in a young choristers life - and that’s December.
Composers always saved up all their tricks for their Christmas music, and the there’s the vast array of descants with which you can test your voice, reaching the highest notes possible while the congregation look on admiringly. Everyone in the choir would have their favourite carols too - for Sheila it was ‘ark the ‘erald - which always signified the beginning of Christmas for her, for Vic, it was always The Angel Gabriel - in practice he’d always change the words of the end of the chorus from ‘most highly favoured lady’ to ‘most highly flavoured gravy’ and it had us in pieces each time, and, getting to that bit when we were performing it, we‘d be knotted up inside waiting for that moment - would he say the right words? For me it was O Come All Ye Faithful. It wasn’t just that it had the highest descant, but a couple of minutes before, you’d hear the whirr of the organ being switched on and then all the stops being pulled out, and you knew - before everyone else - there was going to to be this big triumphant sound.
Years later, Christmas is still about pulling out all the stops. It begins with sourcing the best local ingredients. There’s smoked trout from
Donnington trout farm for the
starter topped at Christmas with caviar, and an old traditional family receipe for the Christmas pudding, and with coffee, handmade marshmallow with a hint of coconut from Miette in Stow on the wold. But what about the main course?
Turkey
Our Norfolk Black Turkey is free range and organically reared sourced from the
Smallholding in Chadbury. The Buckinghams have been rearing poultry for over 30 years and take care of the whole proccess themselves from the egg laying, hatching, rearing to the slaughter and preparation. They also hang their birds which gives you a much softer texture meat. Most poultry these days comes from factory production lines where the emphasis is on speed of production rather than the quality of the end result. The Buckinghams are one of only two small scale poultry farmers left in the county and have a loyal following due to the quality.
Hazelnut stuffingMade with sausagemeat from Home Farm, hazelnuts, breadcrumbs, blackcurrants, and a little mixed spice.Caumpedene Berksire breed pork chipolatas and bacon
Carol Webbs'
award winning Berkshire pigs produce the Cotswolds finest bacon and sausages. While Berkshire pigs are known to produce the best pork, these are left to roam the orchards eating natural food, and consequently have an almost gamey flavour the same way wild boar has. The bacon goes crispy like no other. Bacon you buy in supermarkets is pumped with water to increase the weight, but means that when you cook it all that water covers the baking tray, and the bacon steams rather than roasting/ grilling.
Rosemary roast potatoesAs described
last weekRoast sprouts with chestnuts
Roasting is definitely the way forward with sprouts. Gone is that watery mush texture of the over-boiled sprouts that we used to have at school. Roasting keeps the flavour in, you get the caramelisation, and you can keep them quite crisp. Mixed with chestnuts and a glaze.
Creamed leeks and baby onionsMy antidote to bread sauce. By paternal grandmother would always make creamed onions with roast lamb - a yorkshire tradition - and I think they go very well with turkey too.
Honey and thyme roast parsnip
Most highly flavored gravyOnce the turkeys have been cooked for delivery and chilled, I remove the breast and leg meat, chop the carcass and make a stock which is allowed to reduce.
The roasting juices from the roasting tin are poured off and chilled till the fat sets:
Now the fat can be removed leaving the highly flavoured tukey jus.
After that the sauce is made by caramelising
mirepoix, deglazing with red wine, adding the turkey stock and the pan roasting jus, cooking down, infusing with thyme and thickening.
The absence of cranberries
The only look-in that cranberries get is in the homemade pumpkin and cranberry bread rolls. Cranberries, being an American intervention, are not top of my list of ingredients for the traditional english feast, though due to requests I had to feature them somewhere. They make a wonderful fesive addition to the bread rolls. I prefer to use rowan and hosehip jelly to accompany turkey, made by
Dove Cottage in Broadway from berries picked from the surrounding fields.
All you need now is the mulled wine to precede it all......
For full
menu and details click hereRelated posts:Gloucestershire Echo article, Christmas 2007
Chocolate Christmas 'card' from Miette
dough before being rolled
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. 
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.
This was accompanied by creamed leeks & onions, honey roast parsnips and glazed roast sprouts and chestnuts as seen last year, and rosemary roast potatoes.
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:
