Festive Entertaining

We had a super day at our Festive Entertaining demonstration with 20 customers enjoying a full on Christmas menu cooked on our four oven AGA in the upstairs showroom.

Alison showed us how to make a light pear and blue cheese salad served with sherry jelly cubes and crusty bread. The jelly cubes added an unusual twist to an ideal starter for Christmas dinner.

Then Alison cooked a boneless gammon joint in a broth of lemongrass, chilli, ginger, onions, carrots, cinnamon and star anise. This gave a lovely seasonal flavour to the gammon which then went on to be roasted in the top oven. Alison then blended mango, ginger, soy sauce and orange juice into a delicious salsa that was a perfect compliment to the ham.

The turkey for this demonstration was a turkey breast joint that we stuffed with ricotta, courgette and Parmesan. This made it very easy to serve up for 20 people and left us with no waste at all! So not only did it taste lovely but also was a practical alternative to a whole bird.

We served the meat up with a plethora of vegetables including roasted carrots and parsnips with a pomegranate and orange glaze, braised sprouts and chorizo and almond pangrattato and a sausage and bramley apple stuffing and of course AGA roast potatoes. To garnish was Claire's special ciabatta bread sauce with clotted cream.

Puddings were delicious clementine possets with campari syrup and cinnamon palmiers. These little dishes were a mixture of smooth rich possets to which the campari syrup brought a stylish tangy contrast. Claire also made her traditional Christmas pudding along with a whiskey cream. So you can imagine by the end of lunch we were all rather well fed and watered!