The secret of exciting Christmas cooking which excludes the standby of meat, is to take all the evocative and enjoyable tastes - the parsnips, the blue cheese, the sprouts, the roasty root vegetables - and reimagine them in new combinations and contexts. That is what we have tried to do this year, switching the parsnips into a soup with coconut, taking our blue cheese away from the cheeseboard and using it as a sauce with fried polenta, matching sprouts with the alluring scents of sesame, and placing our root vegetables in an Oriental sauce.
And it's not merely fun to rethink the Christmas meal, it is also great fun to cook it. The fact that the polenta can be prepared in advance makes things very relaxed on the day, and the play of spicy flavours and the various textures - the chilli kick of the soup; the oozy and crunchy polenta with sauce; the richness of the hoisin with the vegetables - is smashing.
Thai-spiced Parsnip and Coconut Soup
A lot of people like to serve a soup as part of the Christmas meal, so we have concocted this variation on the classic curried parsnip soup, using the basic ingredients of a Thai curry. It's deliciously enervating, subtle, and a perfect starter.
2 tablespoons groundnut oil
2 onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
50g ginger, peeled and chopped
1 stick preserved lemongrass, chopped (fresh lemongrass is better if you can get it)
1 red chilli, seeded and chopped
500g parsnips, peeled and chopped
400ml can coconut milk
350ml water or vegetable stock
1 teaspoon salt
Natural yogurt
Coriander leaves
Warm the oil in the pan and soften the onion, garlic, ginger, lemongrass and chilli over a moderate heat, uncovered, for about 10 minutes. Add the chopped parsnips and sweat for about another six minutes, stirring now and then, covered.
Add the coconut milk and water or stock. Simmer for 45 minutes to an hour, or until the parsnip is soft. Season after about 15 minutes.
Use a buzz gun, or puree in the food processor - then, for a very smooth finish, pass through a sieve. Thin out, if necessary, with a little stock, water or milk. Serve garnished with the yogurt and coriander.
Fried Polenta with a Cashel Blue Sauce
Polenta makes a deliciously novel Christmas staple, especially served with a blue cheese sauce, which has appropriately Christmassy accents. If you wish to be traditional you could use a good Stilton for the sauce, but Cashel Blue works to perfection.
Bear in mind that polenta works best when it is served either of two ways: either you make it as runny as porridge, or as crisp and crunchy as toast. We use crispy, crunchy polenta here, where the polenta is cooked, then poured into a bread tin and allowed to cool. When cool, it is sliced, and fried in butter and olive oil. As such, it pairs brilliantly with the blue cheese sauce.
Salt
300g (101/2 oz) coarse-grained corn meal
This is Marcella Hazan's method, and and although the steady introduction of the grains to the water is crucial, I reckon you don't need to stir continuously for 20 minutes, so long as you do keep revisiting the pot frequently to stir things along.
Bring 1.5 litres (three pints) of water to the boil in a large, heavy saucepan. Add salt, turn the heat down to medium low so that the water is just simmering, and add the corn meal in a very thin stream, stirring with a stout, long, wooden spoon. The stream of corn meal must be so thin that you can see the individual grains. A good way to do it is to let a fistful of corn meal run through nearly closed fingers. Never stop stirring, and keep the water at a slow, steady simmer.
Continue stirring for 20 minutes after all the corn meal has been added. The polenta is done when it tears away from the sides of the pot as you stir.
When done, pour the polenta into a buttered loaf tin. Allow to set.
This can be done the day before.
When it is time to cook dinner, simply slice the polenta into halfinch slices, and fry in a mixture of olive oil and butter over a medium high heat, until the polenta is crispy and crunchy, which should take about five minutes. This amount serves four to six people.
Cashel Blue cheese sauce
200g Cashel Blue
Knob of butter
125ml single cream
Melt a knob of butter in a small saucepan, add the chopped cheese and allow to melt over a low heat. Gently whisk in the cream. Serves four.
Sesame Brussels Sprouts
Our sprouts use another novel technique, where sliced brussels sprouts are fried in peanut oil and quickly simmered in a little water, with sesame seeds and oil finally marrying with the flavour of the sprouts. As the sprouts are sliced, they will cook pretty quickly. Don't overcook them - they must have a crunch! Sesame and sprouts were made for each other. Serves four.
400g sprouts, trimmed
1 tablespoon peanut oil
250ml water
Salt and black pepper
2 teaspoons sesame seeds
2 teaspoons sesame oil
Cut each sprout into four coin shapes, lengthways. Have the water measured and ready beside the stove.
Heat a wok until smoking hot and then add the peanut oil. Stirfry the sprouts in this oil for a couple of minutes, then add the water. Season generously with salt and black pepper, and then cook over a very high heat, until all the liquid evaporates. Dress the sprouts with the sesame seeds and sesame oil and serve immediately.
Red Cooked Vegetables
Ken Hom's technique, which we have adapted to suit Irish root vegetables, makes enough for two as a main vegetable dish, and serves four as part of a Christmas meal. The idea appeared originally in Paul Levy's book, The Feast of Christmas, and it gives anyone who has been given a wok for Christmas a chance to try it out immediately.
425g (1/2 lb) carrots, peeled and cut into 2.5cm (1["]) dice
110g (4oz) Swede turnip, peeled and cut into 2.5cm (1["]) dice
1 tablespoon peanut oil
1 clove garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon coarsely chopped fresh root ginger
1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sugar
300ml (10 fl oz) water
Mix together the soy sauce, hoisin sauce, sugar and water. Heat a wok over a high heat. Add the peanut oil and then the garlic and ginger. Stir fry for a few seconds, then add the turnip. Stir fry again briefly and then add the liquid.
Bring to the boil and simmer for five minutes. Then add the carrots. Simmer the dish, uncovered, until the water is almost all evaporated. Check the vegetables - if they are not yet soft, add a little more water. When you think the vegetables are just about cooked (they should not, by any means, be mushy), let the water almost completely evaporate. The vegetables should be separate, tender, and glazed in the sauce.