Chicken Wellington, roast potatoes, roast carrots and parsnips, sprouts with bacon, pigs in blankets, gravy; tiramisu cheesecake

And so this is (or was) Christmas dinner, and I managed to get it on the table (or kitchen counter) only about 20 minutes later than my target time. Mum said she didn’t want much, and ate a big bowl of cereal and some chocolate only about half an hour before the food was ready, but she served herself a decent portion and ate nearly all of it, so I’m counting that as a win.

We had already had some tears this morning as I gave mum the present I bought for her¹ (thank goodness for online shopping), and she apologised repeatedly for not getting me anything. Given that she asked me this morning whether Christmas was over I really wasn’t expecting her to get me anything, and repeatedly assured her of such: the only good thing about her memory problems is that such things are quickly forgotten.

A review of the components of Christmas dinner, all from Iceland, with some notes on the cooking, for which I can only blame myself:

Chicken Wellington: nice moist chicken, decently flavoured stuffing and cranberry sauce, although there was too much stuffing in proportion to the chicken. The cranberry sauce leaked out and welded itself and the Wellington to the baking tray; between myself and mum we managed to remove the Wellington, but the baking tray sadly looks like it might be a write-off.

Roast potatoes (McCain Triple Cooked): decently crispy and golden, but not much flavour, despite being (apparently) cooked in beef fat.

Roast carrots and parsnips: I finally got more than one piece of parsnip, as mum doesn’t like them. The biggest piece didn’t taste of much, but the smaller pieces were nicely sweet and parsnip-flavoured. The carrots tasted of roasted carrot which, if you’ve never had them, are delicious – way better than boiled or steamed carrots, imo.

Sprouts with bacon: these were the main reason for lunch being late, as the stubborn little buggers refused to soften from their frozen state. Once they did, though, they were pretty good: I think I’ll be buying frozen sprouts from now on, as they’re as good as fresh ones, imo, and considerably more convenient without the faff of trimming and preparing them.

XL pigs in blankets: ended up somewhat caramelised as I shoved them on the tray with the veg, which took longer to cook, but were very tasty. There are still several left in the pack, which will almost certainly make an appearance tomorrow with the rest of the chicken and gammon, with bubble and squeak (if I’m not too tired to make it after all today’s efforts, which wouldn’t have been possible without the perching stool, annoying as it is as a kitchen trip hazard).

Turkey gravy: very nice, not too salty, and clearly poultry-based, unlike the gravy at the home, which I never did manage to decipher the flavour of.

Red wine (in the back of the photo): good, rich colour; distinct blackcurrant notes on the nose and palate. Because it’s Ribena in a wine glass, to make it look fancy.

Tiramisu cheesecake: not easy to serve, as you can see! The cheesecake filling has a good, strong coffee flavour, and with the cream and chocolate on top did give it a tiramisu-y quality. The thin piece of sponge cake between the cream and cheesecake parts might be very tiramisu but was weird with the rest of the cheesecake, and was largely the reason my serving fell apart.

So that’s my first post-hospital roast dinner done, and done well (done very well, in the case of the pigs in blankets). I just need to get through Strictly Come Dancing, which I will do by hiding in my bedroom until it’s over, and then the day will be a good one.

Have yourselves a merry little what remains of Christmas, y’all.

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1. A gift tin of Lebanese baklava, which I’m hoping mum might be kind enough to let me try a piece of so I can do a review of it. (And only so I can review it, obviously, because I’m entirely selfless like that.) ↩︎