Have an English dinner for Christmas

I don’t have a drop of English blood in me, but when I think about Christmas dinner, my imagination heads directly to England.

For some reason, it’s always Victorian England I picture. Christmas to me is horse-drawn carriages in the snow, gas lights flickering merrily, rosy-cheeked children on wooden sleds, men in top hats and women in silk dresses over crinoline with a bustle in the back.

They gather around the fire nibbling on hot chestnuts and discussing Dickens’ delightful new novel while (or whilst) waiting for dinner to be served.

And when dinner comes it is sumptuous: a fragrant, perfectly roasted joint of beef, golden Yorkshire pudding, beautiful root vegetables — it being too cold to grow anything green — and a suitably English dessert, such as trifle.

Only I don’t like trifle.

So I decided to make a traditional English Yuletide dinner with an equally traditional but non-trifle Yuletide dessert, mincemeat pie.

Don’t freak out. Mincemeat pie is made by stewing together a large variety of dried and fresh fruit, flavored with holiday spices and, if you like, a hit of alcohol to encourage the flavors to blend.

At least, that is what I always thought. But I don’t have a drop of English blood in me, as I believe I have mentioned, and I did not know that mincemeat originally did have minced beef or venison in it, and is still often made with beef suet. And yes, it is served for dessert.

I decided to go with the all-fruit version.

But dessert comes last. I began instead with the beef, a standing rib roast. This is what I actually make every year for Christmas Eve, at least since I have been married, because it is absolutely the best thing I know how to cook.

It is also one of the very easiest.

I prefer to grill my roast — over indirect heat, please — because it is the combination of the fire and the beef that makes the dish so spectacular. If you don’t have a grill with a lid, roasting it in the oven is absolutely the next best thing.

Cookbook writers and online recipeteers always try to come up with various rubs and marinades to make a standing rib roast better. Pay them no attention. A standing rib roast is perfect as is; adding anything more than a generous amount of salt and pepper merely diminishes the epochal greatness that is a simply cooked rib roast.

Mine was outstanding, beefy and juicy with just the right hint of smoke. I made sure to cook enough for leftovers too, so there are plenty of jaw-droppingly delicious roast beef sandwiches and roast beef hash in my future.

Naturally, an English Christmas dinner featuring beef has to be — has to be — accompanied by Yorkshire pudding. It follows as night follows day, or as mash follows bangers.

Yorkshire pudding has nothing to do with what we Americans think of as pudding. “Pudding,” especially when preceded by “Yorkshire,” is one of those British words that only prove the English don’t know how to speak English.

Yorkshire pudding is popovers, a puffy and rich form of what is technically a roll but is so much more exquisite than that.

You make a batter not unlike that for pancakes, but with more eggs, and pour it into a hot muffin pan with equally hot oil (or beef drippings) in the bottom. The batter puffs up impressively as it bakes and turns a lovely golden brown.

The taste is wonderfully buttery, which is odd because it has no butter. And there is absolutely nothing that goes better with a standing rib roast.

For my vegetable, I first thought of pease porridge, a dish so quintessentially English that it has its own nursery rhyme. You’re saying it to yourself now.

But pease porridge is just yellow split peas that are boiled and then mashed into mush, served with butter or maybe ham. Surely, your Christmas table deserves something better than that.

Instead, I made Roasted Carrots and Red Onions, a dish created by roasting carrots together with red onions. A little bit of olive oil (actually, it’s kind of a lot of olive oil) and some salt are the only other ingredients you need.

And yet, the dish is hearty and hugely satisfying. It is appropriately British, it’s a light counterpoint to the heavier dishes of the dinner, and it is festive enough for the holiday meal.

Dessert, you may recall, was mincemeat pie. This is a dish that really deserves to make a comeback in this country.

The mincemeat filling is subtle and multilayered, a complex whirl of flavors that blend together in perfect harmony: fresh apples, apple cider, candied cherries, brown sugar, dried apricots, dried cherries, dried cranberries, dried currants, dried figs, orange zest, orange juice, golden raisins, regular raisins and butter, spiced with allspice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves and flavored with dark rum.

All of these ingredients are simmered together until they dissolve into a kind of unity, a whole that is very much more than a sum of all of its many parts. It becomes a distinct flavor of its own, mincemeat.

A great filling deserves a great crust. Here I returned to my favorite crust, devised by Ina Garten. It uses both butter and shortening, so you get that wonderful buttery flavor as well as a light, flaky crust. It is superb, and even better with mincemeat filling.

A Christmas dinner like this one just might help bring peace on Earth and good will to men.

Standing Rib Roast

Yield: 6 to 9 servings. Adapted from “How to Cook Meat” by Chris Schlesinger and John Willoughby

1 (3-rib) bone-in rib roast, about 5 to 7 pounds

3 tablespoons salt

3 tablespoons cracked black pepper

About 1 hour before cooking, take the meat out of the refrigerator and rub generously all over with the salt and pepper. If roasting in oven, preheat oven to 400 degrees. If grilling, set up grill for indirect heat.

If grilling, cook 80 minutes to 2 hours, depending on size and desired doneness. If roasting in oven, cook 90 minutes to 21/4 hours. Place a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the meat, without touching the bone. The meat is ready to be removed when it is 120 degrees for rare, 125 degrees (or a little less) for medium rare, 130 to 135 degrees for medium.

Tent the meat with aluminum foil for 30 minutes. As it rests, the internal temperature will rise an additional 5 degrees, resulting in the proper level of doneness.

Per serving (based on 9): 647 calories; 50 g fat; 22 g saturated fat; 171 mg cholesterol; 46 g protein; 3 g carbohydrate; no sugar; 1 g fiber; 2,325 mg sodium; 40 mg calcium

Yorkshire Pudding

Yield: 12 servings. Recipe by Gordon Ramsay, via food.com

4 large eggs

11/2 cups whole milk

11/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons vegetable oil or beef drippings

In a blender, combine the eggs, milk, flour and salt. Blend until well combined and place in the refrigerator until ready to use (allow to rest for at least 30 minutes).

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Put 1 teaspoon of the oil or beef drippings into each section of a 12-hole muffin pan and put into the oven on the top shelf until very hot, almost smoking.

As soon as you take the tray from the oven, pour in the batter in each indentation to 3/4 full (it should sizzle) and immediately put back into the oven.

Bake until the Yorkshire puddings are well risen, golden brown and crisp, 15 to 20 minutes. Don’t open the oven door until the end or they might collapse.

Per serving: 129 calories; 7 g fat; 5 g saturated fat; 65 mg cholesterol; 4 g protein; 12 g carbohydrate; 2 g sugar; 1 g fiber; 134 mg sodium; 46 mg calcium

Roasted Carrots and Red Onions

Yield: 4 servings. Adapted from a recipe by Elaine Lemm, via thespruceeats.com

1 pound
carrots

1 red onion

2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt, preferably flaky

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Peel carrots and cut into 2-inch pieces. If they are fatter than your middle finger, cut them in half lengthwise. If they are too thin, they will shrivel in the onion.

Peel the onion and cut into 6 pieces.

Scatter carrots and onions on a rimmed baking sheet. Pour oil over vegetables and turn to coat. Sprinkle liberally with salt.

Roast in center of oven until caramelized but not burned, about 35 to 40 minutes. Serve hot or cold.

Per serving: 117 calories; 7 g fat; 1 g saturated fat; no cholesterol; 1 g protein; 13 g carbohydrate; 7 g sugar; 4 g fiber; 118 mg sodium; 44 mg calcium

Mincemeat Pie

Yield: 8 to 10 servings (filling recipe makes 2 pies). Filling recipe by Rick Martinez in Bon Appetit

2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and chopped

1 cup apple cider

1 cup candied red cherries

2/3 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup dried apricots, chopped

1/2 cup dried cherries

1/2 cup dried cranberries

1/2 cup dried currants

1/2 cup dried figs, chopped

1 tablespoon finely grated orange zest

1 cup fresh orange juice

1/2 cup golden raisins

1/2 cup raisins

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick)
unsalted butter

1/2 teaspoon ground allspice

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup dark rum

1 double pie crust, recipe
follows or store-bought

1 egg, optional

Note: For best results, make filling 1 to 2 days before baking pie.

Simmer apples, apple cider, candied cherries, brown sugar, apricots, dried cherries, cranberries, currants, figs, orange zest, orange juice, golden raisins, raisins, butter, allspice, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, salt and rum in a medium pot over medium heat and cook, stirring occasionally, until almost all of the liquid is evaporated, 25 to 30 minutes. Transfer to a medium bowl, cover and chill 24 to 48 hours to let flavors develop. Filling may be frozen for up to 3 months.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Roll out crusts to 1/8-inch thick, if needed. Place 1 crust — the larger one if using homemade — on the bottom of a 9-inch pie pan. Spread half of the filling over it (refrigerate and use the other half for another pie or use as jam and serve with goat cheese on crackers or small pieces of toast). Place the other crust on top and crimp edges or press fork around edge to seal crusts. Cut several vent slits in top crust and a small hole in the center. If desired, beat egg with 1 tablespoon water and brush over top crust (you will not need the entire mixture).

Bake on the middle rack in the oven until golden brown and the filling can be seen bubbling inside, about 45 minutes to 1 hour. Cool on a wire rack at least 1 hour before serving.

Per serving (based on 10): 455 calories; 24 g fat; 13 g saturated fat; 52 mg cholesterol; 6 g protein; 57 g carbohydrate; 25 g sugar; 4 g fiber; 273 mg sodium; 31 mg calcium

Perfect Pie Crust

Yield: 2 (10-inch) crusts. 8 to 10 servings for a double crust, 16 to 20 servings for 2 crusts. Adapted from a recipe by Ina Garten, via the Food Network

12 tablespoons (11/2 sticks) very cold unsalted butter, see note

3 cups all-purpose flour, see note

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

1/3 cup very cold vegetable shortening, see note

6 to 8 tablespoons (3 ounces to 1/2 cup) ice water

Note: If you have time, measure out the flour and the shortening and place them in the freezer 20 to 30 minutes before you start; dice the butter and put it in the freezer 10 minutes before beginning.

Dice the butter if you haven’t already and return it to the refrigerator or freezer while you prepare the flour mixture. Place the flour, salt and sugar in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse a few times to mix. Add the butter and shortening. Pulse 8 to 12 times, until the butter is the size of peas.

With the machine running, pour the ice water down the feed tube and pulse the machine until the dough begins to form a ball. Dump out on a floured board and roll into a ball. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Cut the dough, making one piece slightly larger than the other. Roll the larger piece on a well-floured board into a circle, rolling from the center to the edge, turning and flouring the dough to make sure it doesn’t stick to the board. Fold the dough in half, place in a pie pan, and unfold to fit the pan. Repeat with the top crust, or cut it with a pizza cutter or sharp knife to make strips for a lattice.

Per serving (based on 16): 202 calories; 13 g fat; 7 g saturated fat; 23 mg cholesterol; 3 g protein; 19 g carbohydrate; 1 g sugar; 1 g fiber; 148 mg sodium; 7mg calcium