Holiday Special

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I always think that Christmas at the River Cafe is when I can pull out the true headonist in me.

It's a chef which I think is.

Like which we never see any other time.

But you can pull out all the stops, and I think you can go for like food that's so rich and so over the top, it can never be too much. And the lead up to Christmas, when everyone is just out for their sort of Christmas meal. You can use caviat you can use white truffles. I mean, I do like the idea of gold leaf, but I've never said.

That to you.

I mean, we haven't used gold leaf for you. But you can pull out all the stops. You can cook with champagne. You can make risottos with champagne. You can cook veal with rolo, you can cook game, you can do anything you want. There's no holes barred, and it's just decadence all the way.

And I just love that you.

Take it in celebration. People here, you come in today, have come in and it's five o'clock and there are people still having lunch, you know, and they have all the time. If I see one more espresso martini, have you ever had one? I've never had an espresso.

I could order you one now.

Yeah.

What do you feel about cooking and Christmas?

I really like the fact that everyone's in, you know, really up for it, and I think that's what I like the most.

You know, of course, I like love all the food.

I love the fact that we're making Billito Misto and the cottaquinas have just arrived from Parma, and I really readiship.

Do you remember, like in the cafe, I was thinking about the bagpipe, the guy who brings.

Of course he'll be coming any day.

Because we have because we buy our He's Scottish, but very much.

Actually the grabs come from the South Coast, but the man that delivers them is Scottish. So suddenly it will be the restaurant will be packed with about, you know, one hundred and fifty people, all having a rowdy Christmas lunch, and suddenly in the from the back of the kitchen you hear the harm of the bagpiper and it's like is that him?

And then he comes in.

He's obviously had a few whiskeys on the way round London playing the bagpipes, and then he walks up through the river Cafo playing something like mullufkin tire on the on the bagpipes, and then everyone claps in cheers and him and he gets another brandy or whiskey and it goes.

This is really fun.

It's really good fun.

Do you have a special recipe for someone listening away a technique or a hint resting a turkey?

Well, we're really lucky because of your Thanksgiving celebration.

We we have a kind of run through.

We've already had a run through, so I can assure you that all the whole kitchen is very keen on dry brining turkey at the moment, much more then chaking it.

Dry browning is so dry.

Brining just means sorting the turkey, you know, maybe like even three days in advance, and then you know, eventually roasting it however you want to do that. But the other very common popular thing is to brin it in a wet Brian you know, maybe with water and salt, and I think the flesh gets rather wet. But the dryway it is really succulent and it really works a treat do you have.

I think what I do at home is because I like to have lunch, maybe two or three I put the turkey and at midnight go to bed. I do, and I don't have to say. I like, it's quite nice to get up on Christmas morning and smell like your lunch already, and obviously stuff it both ends and then put it on low. You're not too low, it's always a bit of a guestimate low, and then crank the oven up to color at the end.

What about the stuff?

Is the nicest stuffing I ever had, Shah made, hands down. Once you made the stuffing with fennel and chestnuts and not sausage. I think it was panchetta and bread that had been soaked in milk.

And it was like, it's really I mean stuffing.

The word delicate and stuffing don't but it was really nice.

It was so good.

It was nice inside because it has juice in it, doesn't it as well? And obviously don't be afraid of butter because it's still December, so you can still eat rich until January and then then worry about it.

That's what I do.

There's another question, which is if you were too. This is from somebody called fe and she's written what is your favorite alternative to a traditional turkey?

Which is what about a nice lobster thermidore?

Well, that's what you know, that's what I have. I don't do thermidora, but we always have lobsters because traditionally our family always went away at Christmas, so we had the whole family over and as I knew they were all going to have turkey, the minute we went on to Mexico, we would have lobsters.

Do you have I would, Well, one of my aunts in Palma, she used to always boil a capon.

Yeah, a really big, really really big chicken.

And stuffing inside no, not that I remember, no, And then you'd have that. She'd use the broth first of all, with the little pasta, and then afterwards you'd eat this boiled bird, do you know, with whatever?

Really, but that was quite nice.

It was a bit different, but still, you know, a great big poultry thing.

I've heard of that, but I think Richards mommed again back to her and stuffed it and then boiled it. Yeah.

Most unusual one I've had is in Portugal with the in laws, which is probably not one for your Christmas Day listening. But it's a really famous Portuguese dish, which is chicken cooked in blood.

Wow.

Yeah, and you Portuguese dish chicken.

Blood the chicken blood really.

And I'm not kidding you.

You go to the house, you'll have the chicken ready to go, like an avym bottle that the butcher will give you full of blood. Then they cooked the chicken in it. I thought it was cocover. I was like, well, this is exciting, and then it was you get rid of the kind of richness of it. If you think livery flavors with vinegar. It's a really proper celebration. But it's quite a punchy dish, not for the fainthearted.

Have you had it, You've had it? Did you like it? Yeah?

I tasted like you know, if you eat chicken livers and all those rich chickeny flavored things just taste the same.

This is a kind of an obvious, I suppose thing. But goose.

You know, I remember when you're having goose, and I didn't really know what to do with it. And I asked Rose like and you know how something that she was very specific. She was like, you cook it with tomatoes, on the top in brandy, very specific and oh my god, it was so Joyce Marna.

It was real. I think again Rose really loved Joyce Marna, and she made it think about just so little meat on it.

Ross asks every this will make you love Brussels sprouts recipe I see involves bacon. Should we just admit that sprouts are terrible and the only way to eat them is to disguise them with something better.

I think that's doing sprouts of disservice. People cook funny things that they undercook. But I think if you cook it like how you'd cook a green vegetable the River Cafe, where you cook it long enough that it's sort of soft enough and with seasoned water, and then you don't have to cut it with knife. You could almost just cut it with a fork, so and then then it's perfect. And if you happen to be lucky enough to have any new season Sextra Virgin knocking around from a subscription,

Yeah, I like sprout. I have no problem.

I think that the more the thing that I mean, Okay, it's fine with bacon or whatever, but I think garlic and olive oil.

Yeah, that's the thing. You can't say that a cabbage, cabbage and garlic, you don't like it.

Something with flavor, Joseph, Why would you ever put flavor in Christmas life?

No?

Delicious, chacious, that's almost the same as cutting them.

Finally, what raw I'd rather?

I think I'd rather have a raw savoy cabbage than a raw Brussels sprout, that's for sure.

What do you think about sprout?

Ruby?

I like them, actually, you know, I like everything about them, and I like you. I like them cooked a long time and then just slightly mashed. I like not having I don't really like any vegetable with a knife and fork. Have you ever had a disaster Christmas? Yeah?

I have.

What was so one year I ordered all the I was going to do a roster myster actually, so I ordered some pigeon and some rabbits and probably ham and I took them back to my flat and I was I was renting a flat at the time, and it was this fridge was really small and it was freezing outside. So I just left them outside, thinking that they would be fine. But the fox obviously got them. Oh, so we didn't have We just had to have the pastor not the not the arosto.

That year, it was really stupid.

What time do you have Christmas?

Like?

Kids open the presents first.

Or you know what, we don't have a we don't have a routine. We do it differently every year. I wish that we did it on Christmas Eve.

My Italian family's always Christmas Eve. He went to Mass, you know, then you went to midnight Mass and you had the dinner first. Do look back at Christmas as a kind of happy memories around in your family? Was that the day? That was?

Because my mom was obviously she was such a great cook, and she used to do really cook like a victim or in Christmas. I'm convinced that I was like really lucky to have had that as part of my culinary tradition. So she would make mince meat, she made a Christmas pudding, she made the Christmas cake, and she would be start gearing up for it in October, so making the minsmits go in the cupboards. She'd phone us even when we're in university and say do you want to stir the Christmas pudding?

I'm doing it on the phone. You can have a.

Wish when she started preparing like a month four with this, not the.

Vegetables or things, but.

And like to dress a house and put you know, holly over all the pictures.

You see her mother did that with her probably, I think so, so do you do it with your children?

I like the idea of it. I wish I was that the woman my mother was, but I unfortunately.

Live in London in twenty four somehow cut a few more corners and you might want to, don't you think?

Somehow we have a questioned here. I went from somebody called Delan, what is your favorite Christmas dessert? And do you have any tips from making it?

I think I can't answer that because I'd be like Stilton.

That would be that's perfect desert for me.

We get the amazing stilton from nil Chard here and they are literally insanely good.

Do you just want to I love it.

I've got this massive from Stilton dome in my house that my dad bought in the about seventies and it fits a whole Stilton.

Under it, a Stilton dome just for still.

Made out of bone china, and it goes it's like a bell that goes over a whole Stilton.

And when I was a child. My dad used to take the lid off it and.

Put my head inside it so I could get used to the smell of the stilton.

Do you have one of your favorite Christmas dessert and a tip from making it?

I mean, I'm really predictable. I like Christmas pudding, plum pudding. I don't have any tip for making. I like making everything, and I'm awful, you know, like trying to cook with the kids. I'm like, move over, kids, and I might want to do it. But actually this is one thing that I really like other people to make. And my grandmother used to always make it, my English grandmother. And actually Christmas pudding is one of those, you know, obviously

You could see.

It relates to people that like panforte and those kind of things that they might actually be quite partial to.

Plum pudding.

What about you, Ruthie?

Oh, for me, I would always wanton. I think I really liked the idea of azone. We make it an ice cream, don't we. My mother in law data always made that with the Christmas cake current the Daughta's Christmas cake.

I remember seeing you making that. I've seen you do a masterclass in that in the kitchen, showing a young chef how to make it with the love.

Ruthie's maybe cape a couple of times.

Hid every year with data she would. I think she started out as an Italian in London, making it traditionally the English way, and then she just decided as she got older, less fruit, more chocolate. She put more chocolate and more nuts and more chocol She'd say, this year, I've even done less of that candy fruit and more more of the nuts, you know, the autends and the chocolate,

I quite like after Christmas lunch. I always have Christmas supper, you see, so if you have lunch, you can get another meal in and so often in the evening I always order a side of smoked salmon, So about ten o'clock at night, sit down and just having smoked salmon and a bottle of really beautiful cold Sunset or something like that, and it's just it's kind of helps you digest. For Christmas lunch, have another meal.

Yeah, I'd love to have a nice, particularly nice bottle of wine that I'm saving just for that occasion. So then you're really looking forward to having it. But the other thing that I put aside like that is probably some vincanto.

I really like vincanto.

Okay, is there a present you're wishing for this Christmas?

I'm a you know, a bit of a square who found the right job. So I look forward to my olive oil at Christmas. I'm going to get a present, you know, for sure from my father.

Of olive oil. And I just you know, would get a present.

Of because he makes olive oil.

And you know his big passion is to try and supply the family the years olive oil. Where does he make He makes alive in Tuscany, in central Italy where olives are really nice.

So that's a special present.

Okay. So as I started out by saying, this is our River Cafe present to you for Happy Christmas. So from Sean, from Joseph and from me, Happy Christmas, Christmas, christ Christmas.