Recipes and Menus for December

Saucy Dressings aims to complete this post – four weeks’ menus and recipes, plus a few spare by the end of 2018.
Every year an additional week’s menu, with the links to the individual recipes, is added.
For food in season in December, follow this link.
For music to listen to while cooking in December, follow this link.
You might also be interested in these posts:
This featured image is Druids Bringing In The Mistletoe by Edward Atkinson Hornel – on show at the British Museum’s exhibition on the Celts in 2015.
Week’s menu for December: number 1

“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time of home”
Edith Sitwell
This month is all about Christmas…. and making it as easy and stress-free as possible. In between cooking sessions why not relax and treat yourself to the sparkling winter ballet, A Winter’s Tale, with the wonderful Royal Opera House performance with Sarah Lamb and Edward Watson. You can buy the whole ballet direct from Amazon, and you can see excerpts in the clip at the bottom of this post.
Sunday supper:
Monday evening poultry:
- duck in cola with
- orange carrots and
- pak choi
OR
- mulled wine-soaked slow-cooked chicken with
- best ever baked potatoes in their jackets and
- a green salad
Tuesday evening:
- leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening meat:
- roast veal with
- celeriac and
- Brussels sprouts with apple
Christmas day menu:
- lunch: smoked salmon with cucumber salad and soda bread
OR
- lunch: with the Chief Correspondent’s Preferred Cucumber Salad
- dinner: beef Wellington with Charismatic Christmas brussels sprouts and dry stone wall potatoes
OR
- dinner: Christmasy chicken with a raisin and vermouth sauce; carrot and coriander salad; rice; shredded dressed baby gem
- pud: Cartmel sticky toffee pudding… OR vanilla ice cream with dates and brandy
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
OR
Friday evening fish:
OR
Saturday lunch:
OR
FOLLOWED BY
OR
Week’s menu for December: number 2

“It is now December, and hee that walkes the streets, shall find durt on his shooes, Except hee goe all in bootes…Now plums and spice, Sugar and Honey, square it among pies and broth.”
Nicholas Breton, Fantasticks: Serving for a Perpetual Prognostication, 1626
Saturday lunch:
- Smoked salmon – and many ideas for leftovers
OR
OR
OR
AND
Sunday supper:
- Two versions of chilli con carne – one with mince and the other with stewing steak – and a whole selection of accompaniments involving avocados, cabbage salads, and tomato salsa
Monday evening meat:
- Gammon…. and all the trimmings
- warming, comforting, creamy, carrots with ricotta and spices
OR
Tuesday evening:
- leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening poultry:
- Partridge with
- Titanic salad
Thursday evening dinner party:
- starter: instant leek tart with galangal
OR
- starter: spanakopita Christmas presents
- main course: mulled wine chicken with perfect baked potatoes in their jackets
- pudding: Vin Santo and biscotti
OR
WITH COFFEE
- Sweetmeat: lovechild between Ferrero Rochas and Nutella
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
- The ten best champagne cocktails
- Cheesy, blushing biscuits
Friday evening fish:
- Dover sole with
- rösti and
- Italian marinated peppers – all covered in the Dover sole recipe
Week’s menu for December: number 3
“For some the best hour will come with the walk homewards in a gathering dusk, the winter sunset aflame in the west, and, as Dorothy Wordsworth put it, ‘the country very solemn in the last hour of twilight; it calls home the heart to quietness”
Agnes Jekyll, Kitchen Essays
Saturday lunch:
- quick Christmas snack (brie with cranberry sauce and new baked bread)
OR
- Minty winter salad and peas, ham and feta…and leftover turkey if you have any…
OR
FOLLOWED BY
Sunday evening pasta:
- my daughter’s morel, vermouth and chicken liver sauce for pasta
Monday evening meat:
- cranberry and stilton-stuffed fillet of beef
OR
- manful braised celery with gammon and a middle-eastern saffron sauce
Wednesday evening poultry:
- chicken with spinach, with
- dal makhani and
- crushed lemony potatoes
Thursday dinner party:
- with drinks: carpaccio of octopus with tapenade
- starter: polenta, gorgonzola, chutney
- main course: pork fillet alla Valtellinese with
- vegetables: roasted carrots and parsnips with pomegranate and orange glaze and kale-ettes
- pudding: Poor knight’s pudding
OR
Thank God it’s Friday cocktail:
- maca martini
OR
- Pink Delilah cocktail of rhubarb gin and blood orange liqueur
WITH
- Spanish almonds with cranberries
Friday evening fish:
Week’s menu for December: number 4
“If turkey is so damned exciting why do we eat it but once a year?
Those vast swathes of white arid flesh, the very definition of dreary dyspepsia, are things to endure rather than enjoy.
But, like Lear raging against the storm, my words are lost in the torrents of seasonal sentiment.”
Tom Parker Bowles
Saturday lunch:
OR
- Creamy leek and apple gratin – comfort food incarnate with pork sausages
FOLLOWED BY
OR
- Speculaas
Sunday supper:
- herb and cranberry sausage loaf with
- Christmasy, starry, red cabbage
OR
Monday evening meat:
- Polish Bigos
OR
Tuesday evening:
- Leftovers or night out!
Wednesday evening poultry:
OR
Thursday evening dinner party:
- with drinks: special successful walnuts
- starter: twice-baked cheese soufflé
OR
- starter: masterful sformatino di ricotta with black truffle sauce
- main course: baked sea bream with middle eastern carrots and mild patatas bravas
- pudding: crêpes Suzette
Thank God It’s Friday drink:
- perfect Christmas cocktail
OR
….. and to nibble at with it: