CHRISTMAS DINNER:THE SECRET OF cooking the Christmas dinner is all in the timing: namely, knowing just when to get the hell out of the chef's way before they blow a gasket.
The perfect turkey has been talked about for decades, with recipes passed down generations, tips swapped between friends, and recipes proliferating across newspapers and TV. Even science has had its say. A couple of years ago, a boffin came up with the perfect scientific approach to cooking the turkey. He explained, "When muscle fibres are heated above about 40 degrees the proteins start to denature - the resulting change of shape involves the proteins coiling up." Mmm, sounds delicious.
The Christmas dinner in Ireland might seem to be a universal affair, but there are variations. A surprising number of central European countries have a proclivity for carp at this time of year, but we have yet to be afflicted by the growing craze in the US for Turducken, in which a turkey is stuffed with a duck which itself is stuffed with a chicken, and then the whole thing is cooked and served up (usually at Thanksgiving) in a growing number of houses in the Deep South.
Why there is a need to go to such extremes is baffling, because Christmas dinner in even its simplest form is a leviathan. It is always a feast on an almost unimaginable scale, involving at least a doubling of conventional portions: two meat and four veg; a couple of starters; a couple of desserts. In many families it can be served up only by using a chain of people, like medieval villagers trying to tackle a fire.
The feast should go on for several hours until people are so full they wonder if they'll need to eat for a week, not in an ironic way but in a sincere "this is how camels must feel" kind of way.
The dinner should be finished with several rounds of dessert including a trifle with more layers than the Earth's crust and a Christmas pudding. That, of course, needs to be first doused in brandy and set alight, preferably with safety procedures fully adhered to. We don't want Father losing his eyebrows. Again.
Scattered throughout it all should be the Christmas crackers. The jokes rely on reassuringly awful punchlines involving some porcine pun or other. Why not try this approach for a change: give the answer first and see if anyone can guess the question.
And there is that bizarrely enjoyable tradition in which people coo at the trinkets that fall from them. "A tiny pack of cards, that'll go down well at the next bridge night," they'll say. "Wow, one of those curled up red fish things that I didn't understand the previous years, but I'm sure I'll figure out this year," they might add. And, with the exception of the nail clippers, none of these surprises will ever be seen again.
Other annual rituals of the dinner might include the attempt at setting up the family portrait, involving Father balancing the camera on the edge of a sofa while trying to get everyone in frame. The advent of digital cameras, with their big screens instead of the tiny eyehole, has spoiled it a little, but there is still some joy to be had from urging Father to get back to his place at the dinner table before the timer triggers, the entire family yelling like he's dropped a grenade.
The Christmas dinner is a wonderful family occasion and shouldn't be ruined by any inadvertent or deliberate griping. Mother-in-laws, we're looking at you. When invited to have a dinner cooked by your daughter-in-law, it should not be taken as an opportunity to compare the dryness of the turkey/sharpness of the brandy butter/redness of the Christmas napkins with how you have done it for 40 years at home.
However, those who are welcoming a new son- or daughter-in-law for the first time should be aware that when your guest looks you in the eye and sincerely announces, "This is the nicest Christmas dinner I've ever had", what they are really thinking is "This doesn't taste like my mammy's Christmas dinner! Spending Christmas in these people's house is really weird!" Please don't let this spoil the atmosphere.
