Christmas Dinner (preparing in advance)

no skint not a silly question basically it melts yes but its not a runny cheese so it stays quite firm. All i do is mix breadcrumbs with chopped oregano, parsley, garlic salt, grated parmezan and salt and pepper. Roll your cheese in flour and then an egg and then in the breadcrumb mix. Pop on some greaseproof paper and freeze overnight.

The next day take it out of the freezer, preheat oven to 200 degrees (sorry i dont know what that is in gas) and fry the frozen mozarella in oil (you an use peanut oil, olive oil or any you like) until golden brown. Then place your mozarella in a pyrex (or any other heatproof!) dish along with a basic tomato sauce (chopped tomatoes, passata, garlic, basil, mixed herbs and oregano) and bake in the oven for 6-7 mins until your cheese is soft.

You might be able to use other cheeses for this but i think camembert may be too runny.

Hope this helps x

well, im pretty much on schedule! Apart from the parsnips - they are now off the menu as i completely over cooked them and they went all mushy Everything else is fine!

Just a question - im cooking my turkey tonight, so do i slice it tonight or leave it whole and slice it tomorrow?

JailhouseBabe wrote: »

Parsnips and carrots - if I parboil today so they're ready to roast tomorrow, can I just store them in a bowl/bag in the fridge?
Stuffing balls - (am only doing packet mix as I'm the only one who'll be eating them), do I mix and roll then store in fridge - or do I bake them and just re-heat tomorrow?

Yes to both questions - but can I suggest you roast your parsnips and carrots? There's no need to pre-boil them, and they come up so sweet and yummy - and hey, the oven's on anyway :-)

wallbash wrote: »

My question, how do you peel the parsnips so early, mine seem to discolour while sitting in water. So its spuds tonight ,,,,, parsnips tomorrow.

I put mine into a bowl of cold water & milk and pat them dry when I take them out. I know others use a touch of lemon juice on theirs.

Thank you to everyone for all the great tips on this and related threads.

I used lots of the ideas and the xmas meal was very easy as a result. We had chicken and gammon, both done in advance in the slow cooker. I chilled the chicken yesterday and reheated in gravy today - gravy made from the jelly. Gammon cooked overnight in the slow cooker (the coke method), glazed and finished in the oven today. The pre-frozen roasties were brilliant. So I was really only left with the vegetables to sort today and I used frozen sprouts and carrots, and (big cheat) pre-cut parsnips for roasting. My other cheat was the stuffing - used ready to go sausagemeat with cranberries that I only had to form into balls.

My mum is an instinctive OS-er and she was sooo impressed when she saw me taking the potatoes out of the freezer all ready to go in baking trays.

For dessert we had Nigella's "massacre in a snowstorm" and a buche de noel. Big cheat there too as I didn't have time to bake the swiss roll so I bought a pretty average one and iced it with the kids. DD2, who is 8, did the tree markings and was extremely proud of herself. In some ways it turned out better than when I did it from scratch as it wasn't nearly as rich. Which meant we could manage seconds!