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When it comes to Christmas, Monsieur Chéri and I go back home ‘up North’ but on the day of indulgence, we spend it with our own families (there’s a whole county between our family homes).
Every year, we have a pre-festive dinner just the two of us, and this time Stowell’s Light kindly provided the drinks.
We were given two bottles of Stowell’s Light Shiraz Rose and having never tried low-calorie wine before, I was expecting something sharp and watery. In fact, I really enjoyed the Shiraz Rose, which is a well-balanced fresh wine, bursting with strawberry, raspberry and cherry fruit flavours and very easy to drink.
It’s also a lot lighter at 5.5% alcohol and has just 60 calories for a 125ml glass, which is 30% less than a typical glass of wine.
Now on to the dinner…
I’m just not that into turkey, so I made my favourite Ham in Coca Cola – a Nigella Lawson recipe modified and done Chérie City style!
The best approach to cooking Christmas dinner is to find a balance between home-made and convenience. With all the prep needed for the main course, I chose some of the supermarket’s poshest hot canapés to start – butternut squash arancini, camembert and cranberry parcels and Thai vegetable parcels.
For the main course, I served the Coca Cola Ham (glazed and roasted with honey and wholegrain mustard) with sage and apricot stuffing, yorkshire pudding, hassleback Charlotte potatoes, cinnamon stewed red cabbage, oven-glazed carrots and steamed sprouts.
I never have enough room for a cheese course, but for the sake of a complete Christmas dinner, I chose a small oak smoked cheddar and served with cheese crackers.
The highlight of the meal was the Heston Blumenthal Hidden Clementine Christmas Pudding. I missed out on this limited edition Christmas pudding when it sold out nationwide last year and managed to grab one quickly this time.
While regular Christmas puddings can be a bit dry and dense, this one was moist, zesty and syrupy from the candied clementine. As I exclaimed on Twitter earlier, “Heston’s Hidden Clementine Pudding is like the business class of Christmas pudding, it’s pretty hard to go back!”
I added some extra thick cream laced with ginger and whiskey, which made it even more indulgent and heavenly.
With all the heavy excesses of the Christmas dinner, I was glad that we went light with Stowell’s, as this meant the post-dinner crash was much easier to cope with. Roll on Christmas Day!
For more info, visit: www.stowellslight.com
Please remember to drink responsibly and avoid drinking and driving.
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