October - December 2024 COTM: THE CHRISTMAS CHRONICLES by Nigel Slater

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
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Welcome to the Fall-Winter COTM reporting thread for The Christmas Chronicles by Nigel Slater.

To report on a recipe, please list the title in ALL CAPS. If someone else reported on the recipe before you, please REPLY to that post rather than start a new one (so all posts for a given recipe are linked together and can be followed easily via the helpful linking arrows the site software enables).

Feel free to list ingredients and summarize method in your own words, but please do not copy a recipe verbatim in your post to respect copyright. Add a link if you have one.

Pictures are always fun, though not required.

Here is the COTM archive.

Here is the other thread for Oct-Dec, for The New York Times.

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This is a lovely, lovely book, even if you don’t cook a single thing from it. As trite as the phrase may be, reading The Christmas Chronicles feels like a warm cup of something soothing, while you’re wrapped in a quilt in front of a crackling fire.

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I probably won’t buy the book because I am trying to use the books I already have (hundreds of them!)

I do want to say I really like his Christmas cake which is in the Christmas Chronicles, and has also been published in the Guardian.
@harters had recommended the recipe.

Via a Canadian Food Writer

Via @harters

I am keen to try other recipes from The Christmas Chronicles that are available online.

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I am a long term fan of Slater. I have all of his books and his recipes guide much of my cooking. In particular, I check the three Kitchen Diaries editions each month for dishes I might look to cook (or cook again). It helps to keep me seasonal to some extent. Next month, Chronicles will join the other three. Apart from the recipes, it’s a lovely read, Slater putting in to context his winter and festive eating, with little stories - like going to buy the Xmas tree and the like.

My use of the book is more limited than the Diaries. That’s because, like most folk, we have our own festive food traditions. And we’re usually away from home in January, sunning ourselves in Tenerife. But we’ve cooked a fair few since the book came out in 2017. Here’s the list:

Leeks, beans and Italian sausage – not a keeper, too soupy
Braised brisket with porcini and onion gravy – excellent
Pork, miso and pickled pears – nice, we had it with Chinese noodles
Black pudding, baked apples and celeriac mash – Good dish
Family Xmas cake – I usually buy a cake but this was good.
Rice with cream, almonds fruits – his standard rice pudding
Roast cauliflower, carrot houmous – OK but not a keeper
Terrine of pork, smoked bacon & cranberries – If you only make one dish, do this
Hot smoked fish & leek pie – good dish
Cumberland sausage, dates & pancetta. OK but not a keeper
Cranberry butterscotch pudding – absolutely delish. Cooked often
Apples, potatoes & bacon – was OK
Bread pudding with ham Comte & Taleggio – comforting
Pork belly with sausage & thyme stuffing – stuffing was best bit

By the by, I’ve just bought his latest book - A Thousand Feasts. Not a cookbook, he describes it as “Small moments of joy …a memoir of sorts”. I’m looking forward to reading it.

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Thanks for the very thorough review! I think you’re the only person I “know” who regularly cooks from Nigel Slater.

The braised brisket sounds good – I’ll check if my library has a copy of the book or if the recipe is online somewhere.

Also the fish & leek pie (I love fish pie), the terrine (have never thought to make a terrine myself), and the savory bread pudding (which I always bookmark when I see, but have yet to actually make). Stuffed pork belly? Now there’s something to read up on.

It sounds like a lovely read – I might get it for my (English) aunt now, as a precursor to the holidays.

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Shout or PM me if not and I’ll paraphrase the recipe for you. The terrine is excellent and does freeze well - I chill it overnight in the fridge, under the weight of a couple of tins and then slice into portions and freeze

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Unfortunately my library doesn’t have it. It looks a bit too meaty to make sense for me to buy. If I see a used copy I will get it.

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I might be interested in that smoked fish & leek pie!

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Okay, down the rabbithole (and I am SO HUNGRY now!)

A whole bunch of recipes with ingredient lists but no directions are here.

A nice read on Christmas countdown.

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Hot-smoked fish and leek pie

Lamb belly boulangère and here

Terrine of Pork

Oxtail with butter beans and sherry

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Creamed butter beans and spinach

Roast pumpkin with dukkah

Gnudi

Parsnip loaf, stout and onion gravy

Potato and feta pancakes

Cauliflower leek soup

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Orange poppy seed cake

Ricotta filo cheesecake

Seeded cheese biscuits

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Guardian – drinks, Figs with maple syrup and anise, Muscat prunes, Leeks, beans and Italian sausage, Marmalade pears with vanilla ice cream, Pot-roast partridge with parsnips and smoked garlic,

EYB Preview has Gnudi, Oxtail with Butterbeans, and Toasted Spelt Porridge

Epicurious has a bunch

More stuff that sounds really good.

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I really don’t like the Epicurious paywall. We were subscribers in print for about 40 years. I guess I cancelled the subscription about 7 years ago.

I’ve only bought about 5 issues since then.

I did use Epicurious.com a lot until they added their paywall. I used to even add my comments to the recipes, until I started posting on CH in 2003.

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You can reset it by deleting cookies, but yes, annoying. I do understand the reason. though, perhaps more than the NYT.

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Tried to find but couldn’t (so I will reach out to you if I’m planning to make any of them @Harters!):

  • Braised brisket with porcini and onion gravy
  • Herb-flecked, sprout-studded custards
  • Pork belly with sausage and lemon thyme stuffing
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Here’s the brisket recipe:

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Thank you! (I searched for brisket, but my eyes were probably glazed over from searching by then.)

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@Harters when you make the braised brisket recipe, about how much boiling water do you use to soak the porcini? Slater says put a kettle on - do you use the entire kettle-full?

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Just enough to generously cover it, Gretchen. I usually soak dried mushrooms in a coffee mug (coz they’re kept nearby). Half filled with water is usually fine. Don’t forget to keep the liquid to add to the dish - bags of flavour in it when it’s dine soaking.

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