Christmas Dinner

Happy Christmas everyone! I'm sure none of you will be reading this on Christmas Day but hope you all enjoyed your meat and had a lovely time with friends and family. I was lucky enough to have two special Christmas dinners, one with friends at Lola's gorgeous Suffolk cottage which included a delicious St.George's chicken with pigs in blankets, and Abi's homemade sage and onion sausage meat balls. The second was Christmas day which I also ended up cooking as everyone else fell asleep. It was only the four of us, so we had a turkey crown without the legs and I made Abi's sausage meat balls as they were so delicious the first time!

Giving the girls some tips for carving the chicken, pretending I'm a domestic goddess when it always goes wrong at home. 

Couldn't keep them away from picking at the yummy bits left on the carving board. 

Our beautiful roast with all the trimmings was delicious.

At home, I put herbs and streaky bacon on the turkey crown. It looks more like a dinosaur, I got carried away, but it tasted delicious! I also put some water in the bottom of the pan while cooking so that the onion, garlic and carrots didn't burn. If the water evaporates you can always add more throughout the cooking. It helped me make a delicious gravy at the end too! 

These are the stuffing balls inspired by the ones my friend Abi made at the weekend. I added 500g of sausage meat to some finely chopped sage and onion and breadcrumbs. Instead of normal breadcrumbs I used croutons and bashed them with a rolling pin in a sandwich bag, mainly because it was all I could find in our cupboard, but I think it made making breadcrumbs extremely easy. Abi's top tip is to sprinkle the breadcrumbs on top for an extra crispy outside. Baked for 20-30 minutes. 

 I added some honey and thyme to some cocktail sausages because quite frankly by that point I was sick of looking at pigs in blankets. Baked for 20 minutes. 

Wishing you all a very happy new year, 

L x