Due to the lack of planning I had to go for a frozen turkey, but I tried to get the best I could and plumped for a Sainsbury’s Taste-the-Difference Norfolk free-range model. Weighing in at 4.6kg, this was described as suitable for 8 people, according to the chaps at Sainsbury’s. I was keen not to over-feed the guests too much, so they’d eat my lovingly-crafted puddings. Also, there was going to be a ham as well, so 8-people’s worth of meat for 12 guests seemed a good guess. In the end, there were about 2 plates of turkey leftovers. Yum.

We got the turkey on the Monday, and left it in the shed to slowly defrost over the coming days. The weather outside was pretty cold, so this was not a problem.

The next issue, with turkey acquired, was what to do with it. There are many many recipes on the internet, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t cock it up. After reading umpteen recipes and god-knows how many scare stories about dry turkey, I was determined to make it awesome. In fact, the idea was to make every aspect of the meal as awesome as I could, and the turkey was going to be the centrepiece.

While searching for that recipe-that’s-just-that-bit-more-awesome, I came across a recipe from Heston. Now, while the man’s clearly a crazy-person, he’s also pretty awesome; so a Heston recipe always sparks my interest. In particular I’m a big fan of slow-roasting, which he’s also an advocate of. Unfortunately, his recipe suggested disregarding the legs of the turkey, which I wasn’t quite prepared to do. What I did find interesting was that he started his turkey off by brining.

Having never heard of this practice before, it seemed pretty crazy to me; if you soak your bird in salty water for a few hours, it’s just going to taste of salt. Or is it? So, with the knowledge that I wouldn’t be using his recipe itself, I started to look into the idea of brining. And it turns out it’s actually quite popular; especially in the US. If it’s good enough for Heston and the US, it’s good enough for me.

Next issue was the lack of a pot big enough. I had a bucket, but that had no lid. One of the many guides to brining suggested a cool-box, and I happened to know a man with one. So on the Thursday night, after 3 full days/nights of “defrosting” in the shed, I duly filled a coolbox up with salty water and dropped in my turkey. The quantities of salt (approx. 75g salt per litre, according to about.com) will dissolve into tap-temperature water fairly easily with a bit of stirring, and I added a bit of sugar as well just to offset the taste a little in case it al went pear-shaped.

The turkey I had used about 7 or 8 litres of water to cover it, but kept floating up. Rotating the bird to get the air out helped, but in the end I forced it under-water with a wooden spoon. A couple of trays of ice-cubes to keep the temperature down, and back in the shed overnight. It was in the water by about 9.30pm.

At 11:00 the next morning (I’m lazy, ok?!) I extracted the bird and, as thoroughly as I could, rinsed it under the tap to get rid of the brine. If I’d been cooking for lunch, I’d have just left it on the side under a tea-towel, but as I was aiming for an 8:00 meal I managed to (just about) clear enough space for it in the fridge.

The recipe I finally lumped for was a BBCGoodFood recipe involving one of my favourite ingredients: mascarpone. I find BBCGoodFood to be consistently good when it comes to recipes, and the comments were promising. The one slight downside was that I wanted a stuffed bird, and this recipe was unstuffed. Using my not inconsiderable nous, I resolved to find a stuffing recipe and stuff it anyway. Clever, huh?

I made the pancetta and mascarpone mix to recipe, feeding gently under the skin of the turkey. I found that just pushing from one end didn’t distribute it, and neither did smoothing a hand along the outside, but by combining an increasingly inserted hand and a smoothing motion I was able to distribute the mixture pretty well. Oo-err. As I was going to stuff, I didn’t put the lemons in as the recipe suggested. I used them for water instead.

I made the stuffing with Dow’s port and sausage meat from the farmer’s market to approximately the quantities in the recipe. It said 24 balls, which would make 2 each and this seemed a sensible amount. I stuffed this in after the mascarpone mix, first in the neck end – securing the skin with a cocktail stick – and then in the main cavity, trying not to pack it too tight as I’d read to do that somewhere (can’t remember where). It was almost the perfect quantity for my 4.6kg bird.

The main recipe was conveniently for a bird the size of mine, and after cross-checking with the internet at large for stuffed-bird times decided on a cooking time of about 3 hours and 15 minutes with a 45 minute rest. This turned out to be perfect, with the majority of time spent covered with foil. I basted every 30 minutes (ish), removing the foil half hour from the end to brown, but replacing it for the last 10 minutes as I was worried it was browning too much!

Great success! This recipe was sufficiently awesome, and has garnered an appropriate level of inquiry and admiration.

All 12 people that signed up were present and correct and a good time was had by all (I hope!).

At the moment, I’ve managed to put up details of the menu we went with, including links to all the recipes. There’s also a photo gallery, and a timeline of the day’s preparations. The (now updated) page on making the christmas puds is included, as is the new page on how I created the perfect turkey. Hopefully more details will emerge, but who knows.

P.S. There’s a great recipe for leftovers on BBCGoodFood. Mmmm.

First up, on my great plan to cook christmas dinner for 12 people was to make a christmas pudding. I love xmas pud, so I was keen to have this as my dessert. I wanted to do something a bit different though, and so a plan came together to make 12 individual puds, that could be individually covered in brandy and lit.

In terms of creating the mixture, there’s no practical difference between making 1 or 12 puddings. I found a recipe from Gordon on BBC Good Food, and set about tweaking it to my needs. His recipe actually allowed for 8 individual puddings of 250ml. 250ml, however, is a fairly large pudding after a whole roast turkey with all requisite trimmings. Plus, I don’t have 12 pudding basins. Bugger.

Gü then to the rescue. The irritating thing about some Gü desserts is that they come in glass ramekins, and it always seems such a waste to throw them out. So you end up keeping them. And you end up with about 20 glass ramekins. This is handy, however, if you want to make 12 xmas puddings. A quick bit of (probably shoddy) maths suggested that the volume of a Gü ramekin is about 115ml. Gordon’s recipe made 2l. A quick bit of scaling down to ~ 1.5l, and I had my recipe.

The great thing about making xmas pud is that it’s actually remarkably trivial. You get a boatload of dried fruit, toss it in a bowl with some shredded beef fat (suet) and stir. Then I simply greased the ramekins with margarine and spooned the mixture in. I ended up with enough for about 2 more ramekins worth, but happened to have 1 small pudding basin which took the remainder of the mixture. I stuck to the recipe fairly well, but added a couple of shots of brandy into the mix, and used the whole of my cooking apple, rather than waste the rest. The recipe also didn’t specify what type of Guinness to use, so I went with Guinness Original. Unfortunately, there was too much in the bottle for the recipe. Shame.

BBC Good Food handily included a link on the recipe page on how to steam puddings. So I pleated, wrapped and tied my 13 puddings. Of course, 1 pudding fits quite well into a saucepan; they’re both round. 12 fit less well. Fortunately, I’d twigged this earlier on, and bought a 38x29cm roasting tin with grid from Sainsbury’s, which were conveniently on offer. Puds in, water boiling, tin-foil lid, and the steaming was underway. Steaming’s pretty simple too; just top up the water every half hour or so for the next 4 hours.

I removed the puddings with a pair of tongs, and decided that it was imperative to test my creation. So I did. And, I have to say, it was pretty good. Here’s to hoping my guests think so :-S

I stored the puds just on a shelf in my kitchen. As it was only a week, this seemed to be fine.

A week later, on the day itself, I re-steamed for another hour to heat them back up. To remove from the ramekin took a slight knack, but once I’d done the first 2, the rest followed in short order. A flexible knife run round the outside of the pudding soon made them drop out easily. Once on the plate, they were dusted with icing sugar though a sieve and topped with a couple of holly leaves. Oh, and served with an individual measure of brandy and a match. And some brandy cream. MmmMmMmMMm.

Top tip; small puds don’t need too much brandy for ignition, or they burn for hours. Also, remind your guests to remove the holly before lighting!

Check out more photos in the album, there’s a sample of them below.