I defy anyone to watch the Nigella Christmas special and feel anything but drunk on yuletide bonhomie
If your run-up to Christmas already feels a bit chaotic, there’s always a cosy nook of the TV schedule where nothing but gorgeous, kitsch, heartwarming things happen. And by that I mean the cooking channels, where it’s currently full-on re-run time. Nigel Slater’s 12 Tastes of Christmas, anyone? That episode of Fanny Cradock at Christmas when she folds mincemeat into an omelette? I defy anyone to watch my own personal favourite, 2017’s Nigella: At My Table, Christmas special and feel anything but drunk on yuletide bonhomie. Or just drunk, considering our Nigella’s first recipe is a massive Christmas vodka martini featuring vodka, raspberry liqueur and enough crème de cacao blanc to stun a reindeer. Later, she whips up a no-churn brandy and salted caramel ice-cream and souses some red cabbage with cranberries. Heaven.
I won’t make a single one of these recipes, though; I’m just here to gawp. Behold, my Christmas angel, utterly resplendent in chic, countryside garb and ambling about her fairylight-strewn cottage (even though it’s actually a TV set in Elstree with a BBC snow machine turned up to 11). Ooh, devilled eggs and duck à l’orange? I should make those! (Spoiler: I won’t.)
But whether or not we make these Yuletide recipes, all these festive specials by Nigella, Jamie, Nigel, Keith and Fanny provide a sterling service to the stressed home cook. In the Capital Floyd: Christmas Specials from 2000, Keith isn’t remotely stressed by a 12-pound turkey with giblets or a gravlax starter for nine. Yes, perhaps that’s because he’s been glugging Chateau Lafite Rothschild since 9am, but no one can accuse our man Floyd of an iota of festive fluster. Tom Kerridge Cooks Christmas, meanwhile, is another delight in which he rolls his turkey into kievs with sage butter, mulls cider and whips up some Christmas pud ice-cream. Tom doesn’t so much as break a sweat, and it’s all clearly completely doable with a bit of pre-thought, a good spud peeler and some elbow power! It’s all in the planning, he says.
Obviously, the tinsel-covered elephant in all of these rooms – and the one that’s never, ever mentioned – is that all these Christmas specials were very pre-planned. So much so, in fact, that they were recorded all the way back in April, with a cast of at least 25 researchers, producers, home economists, food stylists and lighting technicians all working for weeks to ensure that Nigella’s cottage is so spectacularly seasonal that we go all misty-eyed while watching the woman whip meringue into snowy peaks.
Grace Dent is judge and co-presenter of finals week for BBC One’s Celebrity MasterChef on Tuesday 15 December and Friday 19 December
