Forget faffing around with fiddly canapes – it’s time to embrace the British buffet again. Gizzi Erskine talks to Keeley Bolger about the easy way to lay on a fab festive feast
Gizzi Erskine is on a mission to make festive feasting easier for everyone.
Fed up with fiddly foodstuff like Hors d’oeuvres and aperitifs, she thinks simplicity is the key to entertaining at home.
“I swear, if I go to one more dinner party where it’s canapes and amuse bouches…” says the 37-year-old chef, breaking into an exasperated laugh. “No chefs eat like that at home, so why make it?
“Those things are made for restaurants. That’s the exciting thing about going to restaurants, so if you’re making that, you’re just showing off!”
Her solution is the humble buffet. But before you start threading cubes of pineapple and cheese onto toothpicks, Erskine has something more upmarket in mind.
And in her latest cookery book, Season’s Eatings, a celebration of food for occasions from Halloween to New Year’s Eve, she outlines her plan.
“One of the things I’ve really tried to bring back in this book is the buffet,” she says. “We used to do it so well in the UK, but now we’ve stopped making it a thing, because we’ve all got a bit posh and think a buffet isn’t. Well it is, and it can be! It’s still impressive.
“If someone wants to contribute, you can make space for the things they’ve brought along. It’s so much cheaper and so much less work. You might make a big ham and then loads of salads, a cheeseboard, some charcuterie. It’s easy, and it means everyone can focus on eating and the host can get everything done in advance.”
Although Erskine adores the festive period enough to devote an entire book to it, New Year’s Eve leaves her cold.
“I’m turning into an old man – but it’s expensive, you can’t get in anywhere, and you can’t get to the bar,” she says with a sigh, revealing she’ll either be abroad with friends or working when the clocks strike midnight on December 31.
Born in Dumfries, before moving to London as a child, Erskine trained at Leiths School of Food and Wine, before her presenting career started in 2005. She hosted Channel 4’s Cook Yourself Thin from 2007-2010 and is now a regular on cookery shows, as well as a food columnist and author.
Owning her own restaurant, she says, is “the dream… eventually”.
“The problem is I’m a stickler for detail,” says Erskine, known for her love of vintage Sixties clothes and memorabilia. “I don’t want to just hand over my brand name to a restaurant; I really want to be involved. I want to cook. What people don’t realise is that I am actually a real chef, so I don’t want to just pass over or do development to the recipes.”
So why don’t people know she’s a trained chef?
“I think people just presume I’m a domestic cook because I’m a girl,” she says, noting that her experience in the restaurant industry has been positive.
“I get a lot of, ‘Where are you a chef?’ And I’m like, ‘Well actually I work here and here’, but I don’t scream it because I don’t feel it’s necessary to have to prove my credentials all the time.
“It’s that weird misogyny that you find in the media. They just presume that you’re not capable because you’re female, or because I like to wear nice clothes, that you can’t be a serious chef… I just crack on and do what I do.”
Want to crack on too? Here are three lovely recipes from Season’s Eatings to keep guests happy over the festive period…
:: SMOKE-ROASTED TREACLE-CURED SALMON WITH POTATO, CUCUMBER & BUTTERMILK SALAD
(Serves 6)
1 x 600g side of salmon, skin on, pin-boned
100g fine salt
100g caster sugar
3tbsp black treacle
1tbsp toasted fennel seeds
1tbsp coriander seeds
Vegetable oil
For the salad:
800g Jersey Royals or other new potatoes, cooked until they just about break up with a fork
2 small Middle Eastern cucumbers, peeled, halved, deseeded and thinly sliced into half-moons (if you can’t find these, a regular cucumber will do)
100g cornichons, thinly sliced
150ml buttermilk or soured cream
2tbsp mayonnaise
2tbsp soured cream
A good squeeze of lemon juice
A good handful of dill, roughly chopped
Sea salt flakes and freshly ground black pepper
Lay the salmon skin side down in a roasting tray. Blitz the salt, sugar, treacle and spices in a blender, until they just come together. Don’t overdo it, or the ingredients will start to melt and be hard to handle. Sprinkle this salt mixture on to the pink surface of the salmon, wrap the tray in cling film, and leave to marinate for two hours.
Preheat the oven to 260C/240C fan/Gas Mark 10, or as high as your oven will go. While the oven is heating up, put your warm potatoes into a salad bowl. Add the sliced cucumber and cornichons. In a separate bowl, mix together the buttermilk, mayonnaise, soured cream, lemon juice and dill with some seasoning. Dress the salad with this buttermilk dressing while the potatoes are still warm.
When the oven is scorching hot, wash the cure off the fish and dry. Liberally rub the skin with oil and season with salt.
Place a large baking tray in the oven with a generous glug of oil to prevent the fish from sticking, and let it get hot. Lay the fish skin side down on the hot tray. You need to roast it for 15-20 minutes, to allow the skin to get really crisp and dark and the fish to cook to the perfect opaque middle. Immediately, with two fish slices and some help from someone else, slide the salmon fillet off the tray and on to a platter to rest for five minutes. Serve the potato salad alongside the fish. Great with a simple watercress salad.
:: TURKEY MOLE ENCHILADAS
(Serves 4)
500g tomatoes
1-2tbsp rapeseed or olive oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
A few thyme sprigs
50g ground almonds
2tbsp ground cumin
1tsp chilli powder
1/2tsp ground cinnamon
1/4tsp ground cloves
A pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
1-2tsp cocoa powder
700ml fresh chicken stock
400g leftover cooked turkey or chicken, shredded
4 medium or 8 small corn tortillas
120g Cheddar cheese, grated, plus 30g extra for topping
To serve:
2 avocados
Juice of 3 limes
Sea salt flakes
4 tomatoes, chopped
1 red chilli, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely grated
100g soured cream
1 Little Gem lettuce, finely shredded
3tbsp pickled jalapeno chillies, drained
Half a small bunch fresh coriander
Before you start, you need to char your tomatoes. You can do this one of two ways: the ‘safe’ way, by roasting them at the highest temperature your oven goes until the skins just blacken, or the more risky way of charring them on a griddle pan or over an actual flame. The charring adds flavour, so once blackened, bung the tomatoes, skins and all, into a blender and blitz until pureed.
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan and fry the onion very slowly over a medium heat for 10-15 minutes, or until the onion has fully softened and started to turn golden brown. Add the garlic and thyme for the last couple of minutes of cooking. Now turn up the heat, add the ground almonds, and toast them for a couple of minutes. Add the spices and the cocoa powder and cook for a minute, then add the pureed tomatoes. They will be quite liquidy, so you will need to cook them until they have dried out a little, to concentrate the tomato flavour. Add the stock to the pan and cook for 20 minutes, or until the sauce has begun to thicken, reduce and become rich and full-flavoured.
Preheat the oven to 220C/200C fan/Gas Mark 7. Put the sauce into a blender and blitz until smooth. Pour three quarters of the sauce back into the pan, along with your shredded turkey or chicken meat, and cook slowly over a low heat for a further 15 minutes. (The rest of the sauce will be used to top the enchiladas.) As it cooks, the meat will get really ‘shreddy’, and the sauce will get very intense in flavour.
In a dry frying pan, quickly warm your tortillas over a high heat. Divide the filling and the grated cheese between the tortillas and roll them up like cannelloni, placing them neatly in a row into a 2-litre baking dish. Pour over the reserved sauce and top with the remaining cheese. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and the dish is bubbling and golden.
Meanwhile, chop the avocados and mix with the juice of two of the limes and salt to taste. In a separate bowl, mix the chopped tomatoes with the chilli, garlic, remaining lime juice and salt to taste. Serve the enchiladas with the chopped avocado, salsa, soured cream, lettuce, jalapenos and coriander.
:: CLEMENTINE & GINGER TRIFLE
(Serves 8)
100ml ginger liqueur (I use The King’s Ginger liqueur)
600ml fresh custard
300ml double cream
1tsp icing sugar
50g good-quality dark chocolate
A few glace cherries, chopped
For the ginger cake:
225g unsalted butter, plus extra for buttering the tin
225g dark brown sugar
225g black treacle
2 free-range eggs, beaten
290ml milk
340g plain flour
1tbsp ground ginger
1tbsp ground cinnamon
A small fresh grating of nutmeg
2tsp bicarbonate of soda
For the clementine jelly:
150ml water
50g caster sugar
300ml clementine juice
4 gelatine leaves
3 clementines, segmented
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/Gas Mark 4. Butter and line a 30 x 20cm roasting tin.
To make the ginger cake, melt the butter, sugar and treacle together in a pan, leave to cool for 10 minutes, then stir in the eggs and milk. Sift the flour, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and bicarbonate of soda together in a large mixing bowl, then fold in the butter mixture to form a batter. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 45 minutes, or until the cake is risen and firm.
Leave to cool on a wire rack and store in an airtight container until needed. You will have made too much cake, but this is no disaster – it freezes brilliantly and gets better with age.
To make the clementine jelly, put the water, sugar and clementine juice into a small saucepan. Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 10 minutes, then squeeze out any water with your hands and add to the clementine juice to dissolve. Arrange the clementine segments in the bottom of your trifle bowl, pour over the liquid and refrigerate for at least four hours, to set.
Now you’re ready to construct the trifle. Chop up 150g of the cake and place on top of the jelly. Pour over the ginger liqueur. Pour over the custard and level out the top. Whisk the cream with the icing sugar until it’s gently holding its shape, then spoon over the custard. Grate over the chocolate and finish with glace cherries if you like. Pop the trifle into the fridge to chill for one hour before eating.
:: Season’s Eatings by Gizzi Erskine is published in hardback by Mitchell Beazley, priced £25. Available now
THREE OF THE BEST… Boxing Day treats
:: Tesco Finest Drunken Duck & Black Cherry Parfait, £7 (www.tesco.com)
This duck liver, pork fat and Armagnac parfait comes topped with candied cherries and a red wine and port glaze. It’s amazingly smooth and flavoursome, but best of all it comes in a lovely crockery pot, so it’s literally ready to go on the table for the Boxing Day feast!
:: Cook! Side Of Scottish Salmon With Lemon & Dill, £25 (www.cookfood.net)
What could look more impressive on the festive table than a whole side of salmon? Delicious hot or cold, the wholegrain mustard, lemon and dill glaze really finishes off this dish – and there’s plenty to go round.
:: Sainsbury’s Turkey, Sausage And Cranberry Garland, £7 (christmasfood.sainsburys.co.uk)
Arguably the poshest sausage roll on the planet – both in terms of looks and taste, this garland is packed with new flavour combinations and is utterly delicious. Worth every penny of it’s brilliant-value price tag.
