Catering for a Crowd

The only time of the year I had turkey was at Christmas.

It was exotic to me as a child and I can honestly say that it is not one of my preferred choices.

Turkey has become the most popular meat of the festive offering. It harks back to the seventeenth century I believe when it replaced the goose as the most popular Christmas day fare.

Turkey seems to me to be a bit tricky, you have to thaw it properly (or you will poison your guests) it takes ages to cook (I have known of people getting up at 4am to put it in the oven) and then you stuff it with breadcrumbs and herbs and serve it with fruit sauce, I am not a fan.

But people the world over are, and in the United States they have turkey for Thanksgiving and then barley a month later they have it again for Christmas. Go figure.

Catering for a crowd isn’t easy. In my family I have vegetarians, vegans, meat lovers (no greens) nut allergies and MSG sensitivities; it was looking like I was going to be serving lettuce cups for Christmas lunch.

How do you cater for all these different dietary requirements? Well, a celebrity chef to the rescue. He has it all covered. What a god send his books are. I love them.

I spent quite some time trawling through his books finding the required recipes to fit all the nutritional prerequisites and I came up with (if I do say myself) some rather exotic sounding culinary delights, including, roast vegetable frittata, watermelon and feta salad, ricotta, silver beet and kale pie, baked capsicums, spicy fish with bean salsa, jewelled pumpkin and pistachio salad and a (not so festive) chicken, plum and chilli tray bake.

Come to think of it, none of it sounded like a Christmas lunch menu but it was going to cover all the bases I needed and as I have said before turkey is overrated.