FEAST

 

AS A BRIT, I am necessarily cautious about tackling Thanksgiving. It’s not my party – though where there’s food concerned, I’m always glad to be invited. But still, I do feel a certain hesitancy. It’s not that the rules are hard to fathom: Thanksgiving, like Christmas, relies on the absolute acceptance of traditions, both general and within specific families, and as far as I’m concerned any menu that strays from the well-trodden path, doesn’t understand what these meals are about. And now perhaps, we need the comfort of the traditional more than ever. The more sophisticated our tastes become, the more novelty-seeking our appetites and the more eclectic the ingredients available to us, the more grateful we must surely be (as cooks and as eaters) for such reassuring familiarity.

At their heart, Christmas and Thanksgiving share some central purpose: to bring the family together around food, to celebrate being together. In both feasts, the majestic, and much-maligned, turkey rules the roost. But Thanksgiving is different in one crucial, and for me exciting, respect. There is something magnificent in the idea of what the great French structuralists might have dubbed a meta-feast: that’s to say, fancy epithets aside, an occasion when the very purpose of the feast is to celebrate the feasting. Thanksgiving really is about the food itself. Most crucially, it is about American food, a glorification of the luck of living in a world of plenty.

Now, modern (that’s to say, post 1789) Thanksgiving is actually the conflation of two celebrations: one in October – more of a Harvest festival – and one at the beginning of December, in memory of the Mayflower pilgrims’ feast of Thanksgiving. When, in 1863, Lincoln gave the feast its legal status it was in an effort to unite members of the warring states at the end of the Civil War, and to urge them to accept and celebrate their shared status as Americans.

Unlike so many other feasts – Christmas, Easter, indeed any religious festival or those small local fêtes in France or sagre in Italy – Thanksgiving is not about segregation but unification, not about what marks you out, but about what you can share.

Of course, different groups bring their culinary traditions to bear. I’ve been into the Italian butcher on Sullivan Street in Manhattan – at the crossroads of Little Italy and SoHo – and seen turkey with a spinach-flecked stuffing studded with garlic; friends of mine in Chicago, whose parents originally came from Bombay, always make a stuffing for their Thanksgiving turkey that combines chilli, yoghurt, ginger, cumin and coriander with an out-and-out, all-American cornbread.

I’m an idealist here and take the view that Thanksgiving is the federal union in culinary form. It has within it the notion of uniformity as well as of individual difference. But only so much difference is tolerated. No Thanksgiving dinner is complete without the turkey (unless you’re a vegetarian) or those marshmallow-topped sweet potatoes. In earlier days, the latter gave me, as a startled foreigner, much cause for alarm; now, grateful food-immigrant that I am, I cannot overstate my novitiate enthusiasm. Original recipes, which clearly predate the marshmallow innovation, mix sweet potatoes with maple syrup. Culinary historians have noted this significant mingling of an ingredient from the American South with one notably from the North. Perhaps after the war between the states this was a conscious effort to bring peace and harmony to the table. We all know what family gatherings are like in real life, but the idea is there and, against all odds, to be cherished.

Which brings us to Christmas. I have written before on the stresses of what is popularly known as the festive season, and to return to the gripes and moans now would not quite be in the spirit of the occasion. I always feel joyful about Christmas dinner, though. It’s true that tackling it can be a nightmare, but like so much in life the key is in planning ahead. It’s much easier then to face up to the seasonal demands and try to go with the flow. The great beacon of light as far as I’m concerned is what Christmas shares with Thanksgiving: the unfairly discredited turkey. People have covered reams decrying its irredeemable dryness: me, I love a turkey. I love the stuffing, too. And although it’s unalloyed greed that makes me slaver most, I can’t help enjoying the symbolic properties. That stuffed turkey, centrepiece of both feasts, tells us something: throughout folk history food has been stuffed to show the fabulous abundance of nature. It’s a way of celebrating plenty (just as those medieval English banquets featured a swan stuffed with a peacock, stuffed with a pheasant, stuffed with a partridge) and showcasing the abundant fruits of the earth. Perhaps, most emotively, as Claudia Roden has pointed out in a quite different context, when writing about Sephardi cooking in her magnificent Book of Jewish Food, food is stuffed to show the fullness of life.

But this is where I should admit that I no longer actually stuff the bird itself, but fill a terrine with the stuffing and bake that alongside. It is, I do see, not quite the same thing, certainly as far as gorgeous symbolism is concerned, but there are practical and emotional advantages. A roasted slab of stuffing can be carved up to feed great numbers of people easily. You can never quite get enough stuffing in a bird to satisfy the amount of people the turkey itself feeds. I think it’s probably true that there is a slight shortfall in meaty flavour when the stuffing’s not baked within the turkey, but a good stuffing should have enough flavour of its own. Plus, you get that wonderful combination of crispy outside and melting stodginess within when the bready mixture is baked in a separate, open, container. But forget the concerns of the eater for once: let us concentrate on the burden placed on the cook. Much as I like a bit of gynae work in the kitchen and am perfectly happy with my arm up a goose (see here) as I ram it with compacted sauerkraut, or whatever the occasion demands, I find turkey-wrangling just one psycho-step too far. The bird is too heavy, the cavity too small, and the job just too tragi-comic to be managed alone and after all that Christmas wrapping, too. If there’s someone in the kitchen to help – though without carping – I’m game. Secretly, I even quite enjoy it. But stuffing a turkey is easier to cope with when you’re roasting one out of season, which I often do. Early Christmas morning, when there are brattish children to humour and sackloads of potatoes still to peel, does not find me in the best mood to stuff and truss a turkey.

Six Christmas dinners have come and gone since I first avowed my seasonal intent in How to Eat, and I still firmly believe that the menu is non-negotiable. Christmas without roast turkey and all the trimmings would just not be Christmas to me. I’ve fiddled a little with the particulars – what cook doesn’t? – but the basic elements remain.

The Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts are so similarly driven that it makes sense to steer you to the recipes together. Besides, I rather like the idea of a little transatlantic exchange: some nutmeggy bread sauce dolloped on to the Thanksgiving turkey; a vivid whoosh of marshmallowed sweet potato on the Christmas dinner table. Supplementation rather than substitution is entirely in accordance with the tenets of festive eating.

Those who are roasting a turkey for Thanksgiving may well not feel inclined to have a rerun a month later. I have grown to accept that not everyone shares my appetite for turkey on a regular basis. Those less enthusiastic on this front than I am can either go the goose-route or satisfy the seasonal need for abundance and excess by reading the recipe for roast rib of beef and maybe doubling it. I think it’s not good enough just to have meat, even too much of it, on the table: it has to be a joint, it has to have commanding presence. This may be the primitive in me urging us towards some fleshly sacrifice, but as long as it’s the turkey’s and not mine (which it so often feels it could end up being), I must go with it.

MAIN COURSES

Obviously, I don’t know how many people you are cooking for, but I have written these recipes with the idea that there could be anything from about 8 to 12 people and that they will not all be adults, and that, furthermore, since there will be a lot of noise and a lot of dishes, the actual quantities don’t have to be that big. And I speak as someone who has never knowingly undercatered.

As for vegetarians, you will see that I have made no special suggestions for what to feed them. And there is no point in pretending that, with my tastes, they are anything other than “them”. This is not because I have anything against vegetarianism or, indeed, vegetarians. I feel about it and them rather as I do about exercise: it’s all fine so long as it’s someone else doing it. But, the thing is, I don’t see a vegetarian option as being necessary here. It seems to me that it’s hard to beat a meal of roast potatoes, roast parsnips, lemony beans, buttery Brussels sprouts with chestnuts (obviously miss out the pancetta from the recipe below), cranberry and cornbread stuffing and cranberry and bread sauces. What on earth would you want to add?

Which brings us to:

THE TURKEY

The most important part of cooking your turkey is shopping for it. I’m not sure I always hold by the spendthrift’s adage that you get what you pay for, but the chances are that a more expensive turkey is going to be a better one. Let’s not be vulgar though: look at the breed not the price tag. What you’re after, ideally, is a Bronze turkey; anyway, it’s the one I always go for if I can. Its flesh is tender and, moreover, it has a taste. I know this is an extravagance – in terms of time as well as money – not open to everyone, but the best thing is to order your turkey from a butcher, not drag it down off the supermarket shelves. However, lots of supermarkets are beginning to stock superior birds, so all isn’t lost if you have to buy the wherewithal for the whole meal in one frenzied swoop. Not that you should worry too much about this, or indeed any other factor here. Any big meal, especially when and where family is concerned, can be a grave source of stress, and there’s no point in adding to it. Christmas, particularly, can be comparable to life in the first few days in a first-baby postpartum household: it’s whatever gets you through… If your entire sense of worth and self-respect rests on the turkey you buy, then you may have to change rather more in your life than your butcher.

Now that I have dispensed with the actual stuffing of the bird, there is not much more to do here than remove the giblets (and you do this, should have done this – in fact – as soon as you get the bird home). Don’t throw them away since you need them for the gravy, so take them out of whatever plastic they are wrapped in, rinse them under the cold tap and put them in a dish and cover with clingfilm – or better still, if you have any with fitting lids, use an airtight container – and stick them in the fridge. Actually, I often make the gravy well in advance of cooking the turkey, indeed a couple of days in advance, so you might want to move straight to the gravy recipe or recipes now. But whatever, before putting the turkey in the fridge, wash the inside of the bird with cold running water. Drain well and blot dry with a few kitchen towels. The important thing is that you take the turkey out of the fridge a good hour before you want to start cooking it, so that it’s at room temperature when you begin.

And come to the turkey-cooking itself without prejudice; that’s to say, forget everything you’ve been told or might have thought up till now about the length of time it needs. People have been overcooking turkeys for generations, which explains why the dryness of the meat is so embedded in folk memory. Don’t be alarmed by the shortness of the cooking times below. If you follow them, you will have a perfectly cooked moist-fleshed bird, provided you have not ignored the instructions to make sure it’s at room temperature before you put it in the oven. If you’ve failed to comply, I cannot be held responsible.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6/200°C. Rub the turkey breast with a little butter, or brush with goose fat if you’ve got any to hand. Put the turkey breast-down in the roasting tray: the only fat deposits in a turkey are in the back and this allows them to percolate through the breast meat as it cooks; this makes for the tenderest possible, succulent meat. It does mean you don’t quite get that vision of the swelling-breasted bird at the table; the breast squishes down a bit, losing some of its proud splendour, but I have taken a policy decision not to let this trouble me, and advise you to do likewise.

Keep the oven at gas mark 6/200°C for the first 30 minutes, then turn it down to gas mark 4/180°C, and turn the bird the right way up for the last half hour of cooking to brown, basting well first. I tend to go for a bird of about 7kg, which means that – startling though it might seem – the oven is occupied with it for under 3 hours, which makes all the potato and parsnip stuff, or whatever else you might need the oven for, very much easier to deal with. To see for yourself that the turkey is ready, poke a skewer or fork where the meat is thickest – behind the knee joint of the thigh – and if it is cooked, the juices will run clear.

I think it makes life very much easier if you have the turkey sitting somewhere to rest (not, sadly, an option for you) while you fiddle around with everything else, and there is always a lot of everything else. I tend to leave the turkey in its tin, only tented with foil. It doesn’t bother me if it’s left like that for a good hour; it won’t get cold (as long as it’s not near an open window or in a draught), and it’ll be easier to carve. And while it sits, of course, it will be oozing lots of lovely juices which you can add to your gravy as you either finish it off or reheat it.

I’ve given weights in pounds as well as kilos here because I still think of turkey in pounds, and I suspect I am not the only one.

TURKEY COOKING TIMES

Weight of bird	Cooking time
2.25kg/5lb	1½ hours
3.5kg/8lb	1¾ hours
4.5kg/10lb	2 hours
5.5kg/12lb	2½ hours
6.75kg/15lb	2¾ hours
7.5kg/17lb	3 hours
9kg/20lb	3½ hours
11.5kg/25lb	4½ hours

TRADITIONAL TURKEY GRAVY

When I say traditional, I mean this is the recipe I have customarily followed. I am aware, now I come to think about it, that Marsala could not be considered a traditional ingredient in anyone else’s book. This gravy, which I wrote about in How to Eat, signifies a watershed in my life: the first time I ever managed to produce a gravy I didn’t need to be ashamed of. Not everyone likes the idea of a gravy thickened with puréed liver, but I’ve never met someone who hasn’t liked eating it. If you’re squeamish, you can miss out this stage (and, indeed, the allspice gravy dispenses with it happily); the gravy will be less full-bodied and paler, but it will still taste good. Equally, I’m sure if you wanted, you could do without boiling up the giblets and just use some good store-bought, preferably organic, chicken stock instead. It is crucial, however, to have gravy: if you have a hot enough gravy you never need worry about how cold everything else has got – a very important factor when catering relatively large-scale.

Put all the giblets except for the liver in a pan (that’s to say the heart, neck and gizzard), add the bouquet garni, the peppercorns, onion, carrot and celery and bacon rind, and cover with 1 litre water, sprinkling over 1 teaspoon salt. Bring to the boil, cover, lower the heat and simmer for a couple of hours. Strain into a measuring jug. Set it aside if you’re doing this stage in advance, or else get on with the next stage, which takes place when the turkey’s cooked and resting on its carving board.

Pour off most of the fat from the roasting tin, leaving behind about 2 tablespoons plus all the usual sticky and burnt bits. Put it back on the hob at a low heat, and in a separate little bowl mix together the flour with, gradually, 3–4 tablespoons of the liquid from the pan. When you have a smooth, runny paste, stir it back into the pan. Cook for a couple of minutes, scraping up any bits from the bottom and incorporating them, but make sure the pan’s not so hot it burns. Still stirring, gradually pour in 500ml of the giblet stock, or more if it seems too thick, bearing in mind you may be adding the liver later.

While the gravy’s cooking gently, leave it for a moment (though keep stirring every now and again) to fry the liver. Melt the butter in a small pan and toss the liver in it for 1–2 minutes, then remove liver to a board and chop finely.

Add the liver to the gravy. Add the Marsala, and stir well, cooking for another few minutes, before pouring into a couple of gravy boats.

note

Since first making this gravy I have bought a blender and would now add a little more of the giblet stock, say 600ml, and blend the gravy after the liver has been chopped and added.

ALLSPICE GRAVY

This is a relatively new addition to my life; and I present it here slightly out of sync. After coming up with the gingerbread stuffing for a plain roast turkey last year, I became somewhat obsessed with partnering that distinctively sober meat with the richer pull of aromatic spices. I’d known that the combination had worked with my spiced and super-juicy turkey of the year before and since I always seem to eat a version of Christmas lunch a good few times a year – certainly out of inclination, but sometimes in deference to magazine articles – I had time to practise. This is what I came up with, and have made – for chicken as well – several times since.

Put all of the above ingredients, except the flour and honey, into a saucepan and bring to a boil. Cover with a lid and then simmer gently for 2 hours.

Strain the gravy stock through a sieve into a large measuring jug. This should give you about 1 litre.

When you are ready to make the gravy, take the cooked turkey out of the roasting pan and let it rest on a carving board. In a small bowl, add a few tablespoons of the gravy stock to the flour and mix together. Then, with the roasting pan over a medium heat on the hob, add this paste to the juices in the pan.

Deglaze the roasting tin with the floury stock, getting all of the pan juices amalgamated with a whisk. Then slowly whisk in the stock and honey and let the gravy bubble away until it thickens and the floury taste disappears. Although the allspice is headily emphatic in this gravy it doesn’t swamp it, or the turkey. And it is fabulous over the roast potatoes, especially if there’s a dollop of mace-musky bread sauce quivering nearby: just makes them sing. Not that they ever really need help.

SPICED AND SUPER-JUICY ROAST TURKEY

The spiced and super-juiciness of this turkey, already given a brief mention, is not meant to suggest that the straightforward turkey above is deficient in either taste or texture, but nevertheless this is a very useful damage limitation exercise and the perfect recipe for those who have no confidence whatsoever in the quality of the turkey they’re having to cook. What’s more, the turkey it presents you with, once cooked, is, frankly, straight from central casting: the whole, bronze-burnished, bulging breasted deal. Just looking at this maple-glossy specimen of a bird on its carving tray makes me feel like Henry VIII after a particularly satisfying negotiation with his divorce lawyers. Bring on the serving wenches. Indeed, I am even happy to be one – which, I suppose, is just as well, all things considered.

What I’m requiring you to do sounds both more effortful and unpalatable than it is, for I’m going to say one word here, and it’s not a pretty one: brine. I’ll get to what that constitutes in a moment, but what you should know now is that it means you can cook a turkey of undistinguished provenance so that not only does it not dry out but it remains so gloriously juicy and oozing with seasonally-spiced flavour that even those dreary year-in, year-out, whingeing turkey-phobes will weep with greedy gratitude.

What brining actually involves is just filling up a huge pan, or whatever you can find that’s big enough, with water to which you have added salt, sugar, maple syrup, honey, an onion, an orange, a cinnamon stick and assorted muskily scented spices (or any of your own choosing). You sit the turkey in this overnight or for a few days if it’s cold and it makes life easier for you, then you just roast it, basting it occasionally with a mixture of maple syrup and melted butter (or goose fat). The great advantage here is that the brining’s keeping everything moist enough as it is, so you don’t need to roast the bird upside down for the first bit, thus you don’t have to risk third-degree burns and a hernia as you fight to turn over this admirably monstrous bird.

The amount of water stipulated below, along with the flavourings, will make enough brining liquid for a turkey weighing up to about 4kg. If the turkey is a bit bigger, just add more water; if a great deal bigger, augment other ingredients. I’ve kept to a smaller turkey than the regular roasted turkey because I more often do a brined turkey out of season when I’m less sure of getting a good bird (they’re often frozen) and am cooking for a smaller crowd. Don’t worry, though: a 4kg bird will still give you enough to feed eight with some to spare.

And above all, don’t panic if you haven’t got a pan big enough: just stick everything in a large plastic bin and cover with foil stuck down with masking tape. At this time of year, it’s fine to leave this in a cold place. After all, who’s got a fridge big enough?

It’s an odd thing to say about a raw turkey covered in brine, but it looks beautiful as it steeps. I can never help lifting the lid for quick, blissfully reassuring peeks. And it smells so festive in its pot (and later on the plate) with all the heady spices and cinnamon-oranginess.

Put the water into your largest cooking pot or bucket/plastic bin and add all the other brine ingredients, stirring to dissolve the salt, sugar, syrup and honey. (Squeeze the juice of the orange quarters into the brine before you chuck the pieces in.)

Untie and remove any string or trussing from the turkey, shake it free, remove the giblets and put in the fridge (and see gravy), and add the bird to the liquid, topping up with more water if it is not completely submerged. Keep in a cold place, even outside, overnight or for up to a day or two before you cook it, remembering to take it out of its liquid and wipe dry with kitchen towel, a good 40 or 50 minutes before it has to go into the oven. Turkeys – indeed this is the case for all meat – should be at room temperature before being put in the preheated oven. If you’re at all concerned – the cold water in the brine will really chill this bird – then just cook the turkey for longer than its actual weight requires. I think it’s virtually impossible to dry this one out.

For the basting, melt the butter and syrup together slowly over a low heat. Paint the turkey with the glaze before roasting, and baste periodically throughout.

And as for the roasting time, just preheat the oven to gas mark 7/220°C and give the bird half an hour’s roasting at this relatively high temperature, then turn the oven down to gas mark 4/180°C and continue cooking, turning the oven back up to gas mark 7/220°C for the last quarter of an hour if you want to give it a final, browning boost.

For a 4–5kg turkey, I’d reckon on about 2–2½ hours in total, but I’ve given a table, anyway, as a slightly more structured guide. But remember that ovens vary enormously, so just check by piercing the flesh between leg and body with a small sharp knife: when the juices run clear, the turkey’s cooked.

Just as it’s crucial to let the turkey come to room temperature before it goes in to the oven, so it’s important to let it stand out of the oven for a good 20 minutes before you actually carve it (and see remarks concerning the regular roast turkey). Tent it with foil, and even longer won’t hurt it.

I am clamouring to get on to other meats, but before I do there is the crucial element of stuffing. Quite how many types you make is entirely up to you. I would feel pitifully shortchanged if I had to go without the chestnut stuffing, but then again, I wouldn’t want to be deprived of any of them. The gingerbread stuffing, with its medieval spicy depth and full-throated flavour, goes well with the hearty gunge of the chestnuts or the sprightly, sweet-edged sharpness of the cornbread one.

Above: Behind the brining turkey, the fully festive ham is being cooked.

CORNBREAD, CRANBERRY AND ORANGE STUFFING

OK, so the bad news is that first you have to make the cornbread. The good news is that this isn’t hard.

Preheat the oven to gas mark 6/200°C then grease a square 23cm tin (5cm deep) with butter. Actually, since you’ll be needing the cornbread to crumb, it scarcely matters what kind or size of tin you use.

Mix the cornmeal, flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large bowl. In a measuring jug beat together the milk, the egg and cooled, melted butter. Then pour the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring with a wooden spoon until just combined. Don’t worry in the slightest about the odd lump. Pour into the greased tin and bake for 15–20 minutes. When ready, the cornbread should be just pulling away from the sides.

You need most, sadly, of the cornbread for the stuffing, but the above makes just enough for you to eat one slice, still warm preferably, and maybe even spread with some soft butter to drip its melting way through it, first. Let the rest cool, and crumb it when needed. It might well suit to get started on the stuffing as the cornbread gets cool enough to crumb. You need, in full:

Zest and juice the orange. Put the cranberries into a heavy-based saucepan with the orange juice and zest. Bring to simmering point on a moderate to high flame, add the honey if you’re going for that option (I like this vibrantly astringent and don’t add it, but it is a matter of taste) then cover, turn down the heat slightly, and simmer for about 5 minutes. Add the butter in slices or spoonfuls and stir, off the heat, until it melts, then add the crumbled cornbread – and here’s where you can leave it (for a day or so in a refrigerator) until you want to bake it. At which time, beat in the eggs and season with salt, pepper and cinnamon.

Now, if you do want to stuff the turkey with this, and it certainly benefits, since the stuffing absorbs the meatiness from the bird, remember to weigh the bird – as for any stuffing – before it goes in as you’ll need to include the weight of the stuffing(s) in the total cooking time (and follow the stuffing method for Bohemian roast goose). Otherwise fill an ovenproof dish: I use a tin that’s 20cm square and 4cm deep. I know that doesn’t sound very big, but you’ll get nine brownie-sized slabs out of it and I doubt any child present will be interested in eating any.

Should you have any stuffing left, here’s what I suggest you do with one or two slabs. First, fry a rasher or two of bacon in a drop of oil then, when it’s crispy, remove it to a plate and quickly fry the leftover stuffing in the bacony fat. When done on both sides, let it join the bacon and eat them together, joyfully.

note

As a general rule, I think of this as a corn-yellow stuffing studded with the ruby of the cranberries. However, one year I did forget about the cranberries as they cooked in their pan and they turned to mush. If this happens to you, don’t worry: all it means is that you miss something of the biting contrast between sweet bread and sour fruit, but not all; and by way of recompense, you end up with a slab of baked stuffing that is bizarrely but gratifyingly magenta.

CHESTNUT STUFFING

This is a modest reworking of the stuffing, as made by Lidgate’s of Holland Park, which appears in How to Eat. I’ve fiddled a little, but not much – it didn’t need it – and this should make enough to fill a dish of just over 16cm by 10cm and about 8cm deep, though I often use a foil container that is shallower and wider. Neither need more than 30 minutes’ actual baking time.

This recipe doesn’t make a huge amount, any more than the cornbread, cranberry and orange one does, so I occasionally double everything to make the big logs of stuffing you’ll find for the gingerbread one, which seems to go better with cold meat, which is why I start by making more.

For breadcrumbs, use stale real bread that you’ve crumbed yourself in a processor. If you need to (as I often do, since I try not to keep too much bread I’d actually want to eat in the house), just buy a loaf, slice it and leave it to stale overnight. It doesn’t have to be dry as dust, just not squidgy. I often make breadcrumbs, anyway, as I go, and just stash them in the deep freeze. Quite often when I think I’m using breadcrumbs, I’m in fact using bagel crumbs (I always buy too many bagels on a Friday which then turn stale in the breadbin before the next week’s begun) or indeed, from the opposite end of the spectrum, brioche crumbs, and neither seems to make much difference.

Peel and roughly chop the onion or onions and stick the pieces in the processor with the bacon and parsley. Melt the butter in a largeish heavy-bottomed pan and, keeping the heat fairly low, cook the processed mixture until it softens, about 10 minutes. Remove to a bowl and, using your hands, crumble in the chestnuts so that they are broken up slightly then mix in the breadcrumbs and chestnut purée. This isn’t so very hard to do by hand (a wooden spoon and brutal manner will do it), but I save myself and just use a free-standing mixer. If you want to make this in advance, then let it get cold now; otherwise, beat in the eggs, season with only a little salt (remember the bacon) and a good grating of fresh pepper and fresh nutmeg.

If you want to stuff the turkey with this, be my guest. If you don’t want to stuff the turkey, butter a suitable receptacle and bake this, covered with foil, underneath the turkey for 30–35 minutes, taking the foil off for the last 10 minutes.

I don’t deny there is, at least to look at, an almost cloacal quality here. No one’s going to be presenting any aesthetic awards to this grainy, brown wodging, but what’s pretty got to do with it? This is for me, one of the main lures of this time of year. And I need to scratch my seasonal itch.

GINGERBREAD STUFFING

I’ve always thought that it made sense to use one’s obsessions to advantage, and this recipe is a case in point. I do see that normal people don’t have footling eureka moments when the idea suddenly comes into an already food-saturated head to make a stuffing in which the breadcrumbs would be substituted by a crumbled gingerbread cake, but that’s how my head works. (It gives me some anguish to reflect on what has been displaced to give room to such meanderings, but perhaps here is not the place to dwell on that.)

Finely chop the onions and apples, using a food processor or by hand. Heat the butter and oil in a large wide saucepan and fry both until soft, about 10–15 minutes.

Now very finely chop the bacon in the processor, and add this to the softened onion and apple mixture. Cook everything, stirring frequently, for about 5 more minutes and then add the clementine or orange zest. If you’re going to make the allspice gravy you’ll need the juice from this fruit for that.

Take the pan off the heat and let it cool a little before mixing in the gingerbread crumbs. You can let this get properly cold now if you want and put it aside. Just before cooking the stuffing, add the beaten eggs and pepper, mix, and use it to stuff the main cavity of your turkey, or cook all of it (or what’s left after stuffing your bird) in a buttered baking dish. Bake it in a hot oven with your turkey for about the last 45 minutes. If the stuffing’s going into a very full oven – which it no doubt is as part of a festive meal – it might take longer to cook; alone, 35 minutes should do it.

Let the cooked stuffing sit in its terrine for a good 10 minutes before turning it out and slicing it.

note

This is also fabulous with roast pork. I don’t think it would go alongside the pork with caraway and garlic but I’d urge you to put together a different Sunday lunch one day by cooking the roast pork cinghiale, substituting for the lentils the “heaven and earth” and making this gingerbread stuffing too.

It’s also wonderful with the goose and sauerkraut; and I’m mad about both, together, cold and leftover, with some temple-searingly hot English mustard.

And as a still seasonal variation on the gingerbread, this stuffing, although it would taste significantly different and lighter, would be worth making with that Italian festive bread, panettone. If you have been given any for Christmas and it’s lying about going stale, then crumb what’s left, bag it up and freeze for later usage. And see the Easter turkey recipe.

FULLY FESTIVE HAM

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