Don't know what to cook this Boxing Day?Nigella has your feast covered (2024)

It has been 20 years since Nigella Lawson published her bestselling first book, How To Eat, and to celebrate, she’s helped us choose the best festive recipes from her two decades as a food writer.

Following Saturday’s turkey with all the trimmings and yesterday’s dinner with a difference, today Nigella shares a mouthwatering Boxing Day spread to remember.

My boozy British trifle

Ithink this really says it all. I have written so many recipes for trifle, I scarcely dare reiterate my love for it.

But this, perhaps the most traditional of my offerings, shows the sensational, time-honoured pud at its glorious, many-layered best: the jam-slashed and sherry-sodden sponge, the sharp, fruity layer of flavour-oozing berries, the eggy custard and the whipped cream. Perfection.

1 To make the custard, heat the cream in a large, wide, heavy-based pan and, while it’s heating, whisk the egg yolks, whole eggs and caster sugar in a bowl. When the cream is at boiling point — though don’t actually let it boil — take it off the heat and pour it over the eggs and sugar, whisking as you go. Wash out the pan (boring, but it does have to be done), then pour the uncooked custard back into it and return to the heat.

2 Cook over a medium heat (people will tell you it should be a low heat, but that is just too tedious for words), stirring all the time, until it has thickened. It must never boil! After 10 to 15 minutes, it should be thick enough, so straight away pour it into a cold, clean bowl, add the vanilla extract and whisk a bit to help bring the temperature down. Cover the very top of the custard, as well as the bowl, with cling film and leave to cool while you start assembling your trifle.

3 Split the 16 trifle sponges in half and make into sandwiches with the jam. Squidge these into the base of your trifle bowl. A trifle bowl should, I feel, be glass, so you can see the layers from the outside. The proportions vary and, since the point of a trifle is the layers, the dimensions of your bowl will determine how these build up and the amount of sponge etc. you will need. Pour the sherry over the sponge sandwiches and let it soak in.

4 Now, tumble in the thawed summer fruits, with a little of their liquid. (It might seem unseasonal to use ‘summer’ fruits, but I love their tartness against the sweetness of the custard, which will drape over them.) Then grate the zest of the orange over the fruit and sprinkle with the caster sugar.

5 When the custard is cool, remove the cling film. Pour and scrape the custard on top of the berries. It will be soft-set; thickened but far from solid. Cover the bowl (but not the custard this time) with some fresh cling film and refrigerate for at least half a day or for up to 2 days — it’s this standing time that makes the difference.

6 When you are ready to serve, take the trifle out of the fridge to stand for about 1 hour. Whisk the cream until softly whipped. You don’t want it to merge with the custard, but nor do you want it stiffly peaking. Remove the cling film from the trifle bowl and spread the cream on top of the custard with a rubber spatula. Finely chop the pistachios, sprinkle over the top of the trifle and adorn with a few beautiful crystallised rose or violet petals.

Christmas salad

This is the salad I bring out time and time again at Christmastime, to bring a little joy and colour to a quickly gathered-together tableful of leftovers, as a side dish when the food really needs no more than a light accompaniment, or even as a starter, so people have something to pick at as I do a little last-minute this-or-that.

Tear the chicory and radicchio or tardivo into pieces in a salad bowl. If you are using the red peppers, deseed them and cut them into 2cm strips, and add to the salad.

Sprinkle some of the pomegranate seeds over, then whisk together the dressing ingredients to pour over the salad.

Toss everything together, then do a final sprinkling of pomegranate seeds over the top before serving.

Festive couscous

The correct way of cooking couscous is to cover it with cold water for about 20 minutes, and then place the dampened couscous in the top part of a couscoussier or a steamer to steam it.

The best way to tell when it’s ready is to put a thin slab of butter on top: when the butter starts melting, the couscous is done.

However, even though the following method is, strictly speaking, incorrect, it is the way I most often do it, and feel it is only fair to encourage you down this shameful, lazy path, too.

1 Put the couscous into a heatproof bowl or a pan with a tight-fitting lid, add the sultanas, spices and salt, and give everything a stir. Pour the freshly boiled water over and cover with cling film or a lid. Let it sit for 10 to 15 minutes, by which time it should have absorbed the water.

2 Fluff the couscous through with a fork to separate the grains, and, if you like, you can carefully pour in some of the juices from your roast meat.

3 Fork through again and check the seasoning before transferring to a serving dish. Drop half the pomegranate seeds over the mounded couscous, mixing them in gently with a fork. Scatter the remaining pomegranate seeds over, sprinkle with some chopped coriander and serve with roasted meats.

Slow-cooked black treacle ham

Nothing will ever take the place of my ham in Coca-Cola from my early book, Nigella Bites — in my heart or on my table — but this slow-baked ham is a revelation of a different sort.

Instead of being boiled and then transferred to a hot oven to be glazed, I cook it so, so slowly in the oven, draped with black treacle and wrapped in foil so that it steams sweetly in the low heat.

I then remove the ham from the oven, take off the foil and rind, stud the layer of fat on top with cloves, cover with a mustardy black treacle glaze and put the joint briefly back in a very hot oven.

Cooked like this, the meat is astonishingly tender and carves into thin slices with ease; there is also very little shrinkage and no wrangling with large joints of meat in boiling liquid.

I always like a ham on Christmas Eve, which means that there is cold ham as well as cold turkey for Boxing Day (and general sandwich duty), and this is the way to cook it to make your life easier.

1 Preheat the oven to 250c/gas 9 and let your gammon come to room temperature. Line a large roasting tin with a layer of foil, and then sit a wire rack on top of it. Tear off a large piece of foil (big enough to wrap around the ham) and place this over the rack on the roasting tin.

Tear off a second, large piece of foil and place on top, but in the opposite way to the first, so you have 4 corners of foil ready to wrap your ham in. Sit the gammon on the foil and then pour the black treacle over it, straight on to the rind, letting it run down both sides. Don’t worry too much about spreading it over the ham, as once it’s in the heat of the oven, it will coat the ham well enough.

2 Now, lift up the sides and ends of the first layer of foil and make a seal at the top, leaving some room around the gammon, then seal the ends. Then take up the other piece of foil and do the same. You are trying to create a good seal around the gammon, so pinch together any open gaps that remain.

Finally, tear off another piece of foil and put over the top of the whole parcel, making sure it’s well sealed. Put carefully into the oven and let it cook for 30 minutes, then turn the oven down to 100c/gas ¼ and leave for a further 12 to 24 hours.

3 The following day, take the gammon out of the oven and open up the foil seal. It will have made some liquid, which you can reserve to moisten the carved meat later. Carefully lift the gammon out on to a board, snip and remove the string and peel off the rind to leave a good layer of fat.

4 Increase the oven temperature to 200c/gas 6. Using a sharp knife, cut a diamond pattern in the fat layer, drawing lines one way and then the opposite way, about 2cm apart. Stud the centre of each diamond with a clove, then mix together black treacle, demerara sugar and Dijon mustard in a bowl and spread over the fat on the ham.

It will dribble off a bit, so just spoon it back over the gammon before putting back in the oven for 20 minutes, by which time the glaze will be burnished and blistered in the heat.

5 Remove from the oven and transfer to a board. Let it rest for 10 to 20 minutes before carving into thin slices.

Fully loaded potato-skins

The first time I did these – having longed to write my own recipe for fully loaded skins – I didn’t bother with the bacon.

I was eating them alongside meat, so it didn’t seem necessary. But then I figured, without bacon they’re only partially loaded, and that wouldn’t do at all.

So here I’ve gone, as you can see, the whole hog.

However, in the seasonal spirit, you might want to serve them without the bacon, or with the crisp bacon bits in a separate bowl for sprinkling, since it seems unnecessarily antagonistic to make potatoes that your veggie friends can’t eat at a party.

1 The day (or up to 2 days) before you load them, preheat your oven to 200c/gas 6 and bake the potatoes (pricking them first) for about 1½ hours, or until the skins are crisp and the insides fluffy.

2 As soon as you can bear to tackle the hot potatoes, cut them in half lengthways and scoop the insides into a bowl. Put the husk-like skins of the potatoes on a tray and, when cool, cover until you are ready to fill them. Let the potato cool in the bowl, and then cover until needed.

3 When you are ready to fill the potatoes, preheat your oven to 200c/gas 6. Grate the cheese and add 200g of it to the cold potato insides, along with the sour cream. Add spring onions, salt, pepper and Worcestershire sauce. Spoon the potato filling into the skins, and lay each half on a baking tray so they fit snugly together. Sprinkle over the remaining cheese, giving each potato skin a light covering, and cook for 20 to 30 minutes until golden.

4 Fry the bacon rashers in oil (or grill) until crispy, then crumble them and sprinkle half a rasher’s worth over each potato skin to make them fully loaded.

Golden fish pie

Saffron adds more than just depth of colour, it headily redeems the bland, cotton-woolly fish you buy in those plastic-wrapped polystyrene trays at the supermarket — useful when you can’t get to a fishmonger.

1 Peel the carrot, halve it lengthways and then cut each half into 3 or 4 and put the pieces in a deep frying pan with 125ml water, the wine, a good pinch of salt and bouquet garni. Bring to the boil and then turn off the heat and let cool.

2 Cook the potatoes in salted water and mash with 80g of the butter. The best instrument for this is a potato ricer; it’s cheap and you don’t need to peel the potatoes, the skins stay behind as you push the potato through. Set aside until you’ve cooked the fish and sauce. Alternatively, if it suits better, you can cook the fish and sauce first and set them aside, and do the potatoes after.

3 Put the white fish in the carroty water and wine, bring to simmering point and poach for about 3 minutes. Remove to a plate and add the salmon and poach for about 3 minutes. Add to this the white fish, strain the liquid (keeping the bouquet garni) into a measuring jug and make up to 450ml with cream.

4 Melt 45g butter in a saucepan and stir in the flour and mace. Cook, stirring, for a few minutes then, off the heat, stir in the cream mixture slowly, beating all the time to prevent lumps. When it’s all incorporated, put back on the heat and throw in the sodden bouquet garni. Keep cooking and stirring until thickened — about 5 minutes — then add the contents of the sachet of saffron and cook, stirring, for another 5 minutes. Set aside for 10 minutes (or, if you’re doing this in advance, let it cool altogether).

5 Butter a 1.25-litre dish and put in the cooked fish and the prawns. Pour over the saffron sauce (take out the bouquet garni) and mix in. Cover with the mashed potato. Make sure the potato completely covers the pie dish so that no sauce can bubble up and spill over. Grate over some nutmeg and cook in an oven preheated to 190c/gas 5 for 20 to 40 minutes, depending on how cold the pie was when it went in. Eat with peas. You must.

Drunken devils on horseback

When I was a child, this is the sort of thing my parents would have eaten at co*cktail parties; parties my mother would go to in her white patent boots, angora mini-dress and false eyelashes — hairpiece, too — and lips slicked in pale, shimmery colours with names such as Moist Madder Pink.

It seemed ineffably glamorous — I can smell her wafting scent of face powder mixed with Guerlain’s L’Heure Bleue now as I think about it — but also inexplicable: how could anyone want to eat a prune (the devil) or oyster (an angel) wrapped in bacon?

And why they were on horseback was just as baffling. Now, I know (or think I do) that ‘on horseback’ is a corruption of ‘hogsback’, to indicate the bacon.

1 The day before your party, soak the prunes in the Armagnac in a covered bowl.

2 On the day of your party, preheat the oven to 200c/gas 6. On a board, spread out a rasher of bacon and cut in half to give 2 shorter pieces of bacon, or use a whole pancetta slice. Then take a soaked prune from your bowl and roll it up in one of the half-pieces of bacon, or a pancetta slice, securing it with a co*cktail stick. Repeat this process with the remaining prunes, wrapping each one in bacon, and place them on a lined baking sheet.

3 Cook the drunken devils in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes, then let them cool a little, to avoid burnt fingers and mouths, before plating them up to serve.

Inside tomorrow's Daily Mail: Mouthwatering treats and delicious desserts