Christmas dinner had to come early for hubs and I, or not at all. One of us is working and the other volunteering on Christmas Day so a 3 course slap up the day before was a must. However, I gave myself the added challenge of creating the festive feast, with drinks, for under £20...a success? Yes, with change to spare.
Our Christmas menu consisted of Cream of Broccoli Soup to start; Roast Gammon with Boiled Potatoes, Shredded Sprout Salad and Pineapple Puree for main as well as Luxury Hot Chocolate and Homemade Shortbread for dessert. We are completely full and have left overs to boot so maybe this blog should read 'feed 4 for £5 per head'...!?
In order to keep the target spend in check we bought our necessities from Lidl. We are familiar with Aldi and tend do to most of our shopping there week to week however, if you aren't a regular at these budget supermarkets I would encourage you to give it bash- quality produce at a fraction of the price compared to mainstream supermarkets, win win in my opinion. Our total spend was £10.63 which included a gammon roast wrapped in streaky bacon, all veg, freshly baked bread rolls, double cream along with white and milk chocolate. Additional bits a pieces such as pineapple chunks and condensed milk were fetched from Tesco, taking the total spend to £13.35.
Our custom made cocktail of rum, bourbon, cinnamon, orange zest and ginger ale tallies up to a grand total of £1 per cocktail (granted you have to buy a bottle of Bulleit and Morgan's upfront) but warms the belly nicely. The finished dishes also included store cupboard items such as mustard, plain flour and stock cubes. Now onto how they were made...
Soup: fry 1 large onion and 1 stick of celery in butter adding a whole broccoli (including stems and leaves for flavour) and 500ml of chicken stock. Leave to simmer for 20mins, blitz with a hand blender and add double cream, cornflower to thicken and ground pepper to taste. Tip- add chopped smoked bacon when frying the onion and celery to give greater depth.
Main: the gammon came pre prepped with cooking instructions and was served with boiled potatoes dressed in melting butter and ground pepper. An added twist was given by steaming shredded sprouts for 8 minutes and then running under cold water to give a cold crunchy, yet seasonal, salad side. The pineapple puree was made my warming pineapple chunks in juice with brown sugar, lemon juice, cornflower and mustard giving a final blitz in the last minute with a blender once again.
Dessert: get ready for a heart attack! Melt condensed milk, a full bar of milk chocolate, half a bar of white with milk and cocoa powder...you only need a small cup of this stuff to satisfy your sweet tooth! This was served with shortbread biscuits which were made from a traditional recipe of sugar, butter and plain flour.
We are now throughly stuffed, lying on the couch watching movies- exactly how Christmas Day should be ;) have a great day when it comes folks! Ho Ho Ho x
