Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
(UPBEAT MUSIC)
SONG: # It's Christmas time
# It's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times
# When you let yourself go
# Underneath the mistletoe... #
It's Christmas time, and we all get very excited around Christmas.
I know that I absolutely love it.
There's no better time
than when you've got a table full of your friends and your family
and you're just having a great time.
There's one little thing that we have to do before we get to that point,
and that's cook Chrissie dinner.
OK, now, Christmas dinner can be absolute breeze
or it can be an absolute disaster,
and it all depends on how organised you are.
So what I want to do is I want to give you the tools
to make sure that you absolutely succeed
at cooking a beautiful Christmas dinner,
or even a Christmas lunch, whatever it is,
people are absolutely gonna love it and it's gonna be a breeze for you.
The important thing is this - a little bit of organisation.
So you can see I've written out my menu, right?
This is what I'm gonna serve on Christmas dinner.
And this is exactly how you go about it.
You write it down in order of how you're gonna serve.
So we start off with our seafood platter,
we've got a roast turkey, a beautiful glazed ham,
we've got a couple of sides - of course you need the veggies -
a gravy and some glazes that we're gonna put on the ham and the turkey,
and we're gonna finish it all off
with this delicious chocolate-dipped pavlova that's just amazing.
That's the order we're gonna serve it in,
but not the order we're gonna cook it in, OK?
This is the important part in that organisation of Christmas.
Pavlovas - the great thing about serving pavs
is you do them the day before.
So we're gonna write down a big "day before" right there.
And the gravies and glazes, they kind of fit into that category as well -
we can get those done the day before.
So let's put a little arrow to that.
So while the pavs are in the oven
you've got something else to do in the kitchen.
The other thing that we need to do is our turkey.
So we're gonna actually brine the turkey.
And we're gonna do that the day before as well.
Now, if you haven't ever brined a turkey,
trust me, you'll want to.
If you pop it into a brine you get this delicious, moist, juicy turkey
and you're gonna absolutely love it.
So, pavlovas come in as number one,
our turkey and our gravy, two and three.
And guess what - all of that stuff can be done the day before,
which is gonna make Christmas Day a whole lot simpler for you.
The next thing that we're gonna do
is we're gonna roast our turkey on Christmas Day -
that's the first thing that's gonna go in the oven.
It's gonna take about three hours,
so we'll start three hours out of when we actually serve the meal.
It comes out after two hours and it rests for an hour.
And while that's resting, we then put our ham into the oven,
so that's number four.
Our sides we'll do around the same time, at number five.
And our seafood platter, that's really simple.
A seafood platter's a bit like cheating,
because all you're really doing
is going and getting beautiful-quality seafood,
so you go down to Coles and you get your prawns and maybe some oysters
and you get some crab legs and the lobster if you wanted to,
you cut up some lemons, you put some warm finger bowls at the table
and you let people knock themself out.
It's a beautiful way to start off an Aussie Christmas.
Alright, so now we've got our plan drawn up a little bit better here.
I'm gonna take you through each recipe,
show you how to do it, and we're gonna work backwards, OK?
So you have to pick the time that you want to serve Christmas dinner.
2pm.
Which means, if the turkey takes three hours,
we start it at 11am.
If the ham takes one hour, we start that at 1pm.
So you're just always working backwards,
and you always end up right where you need to.
So now that we have a loose plan for Christmas,
we can start thinking about the day.
You need to set your table the day before.
I want you to pull out those old Christmas CDs
or put together a little playlist so you can play some cool music,
get the candles out if you're gonna light candles.
Think about drinks.
Now, I've put together this delicious Christmas cocktail.
It's with summer berries and ginger - it's delicious.
So you can either make that or have your guests make it for themself.
Another way to do it is to put a bunch of bottles in the corner -
could be a bottle of *** or bottle of rum or some beers and wines -
and let people help themself to their drinks,
so then that's one thing off your mind.
Or get an uncle or an aunt to be in charge of the bar
and let them help you out, OK?
There's nothing wrong with allocating a few jobs on Chrissie Day.
Once you've got all of that sort of prepared,
the other thing that you have to think of
is what you're gonna serve with dinner.
So to give you some ideas with the wines,
we've got Matt Skinner coming along later on
to give us some great suggestions
as to which wines are gonna work with which dishes,
which is nice to have that taken off your mind.
We've got a bunch of stuff to do, so stick around,
I'm gonna take you through all of this,
and together we are gonna cook a fantastic Christmas dinner.
# It's Christmas time
# It's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times
# When you let yourself go... #
There is nothing that says an Aussie Christmas more
than a beautiful Aussie seafood platter.
Now that the weather's hotter,
and I think Australians are getting used to the fact
that we can be a bit more independent
in the way that we celebrate Christmas,
that we don't have to serve a hot soup or something
that came from Europe a long, long time ago.
We've got access to the most incredible seafood in the world
and Christmas time is sure time to celebrate it.
So what I'm gonna show you how to do
is put together this beautiful platter of Aussie seafood.
There's a big trick when you're serving seafood on ice,
and not many people know this trick, so listen up.
What you want to do is get yourself a nice big platter
and get a generous amount of salt, OK?
We're gonna sprinkle that salt
all the way over the bottom of the platter,
because what the salt does
is it actually stops the ice from melting, right?
It actually will hold that ice together.
So I've got a big thing here of crushed ice.
I'm gonna just spread this all over the salt,
and then I'm gonna put another layer of salt on the top of it, OK?
So you just toss that in.
And then get another generous handful of salt
and just sprinkle it over the top there.
You need a finger bowl, OK?
Now, I've got one with just warm water,
because you want people to have sort of a nice experience
while they're washing their fingers,
so I'm gonna pop that in there.
Next, beautiful Aussie seafood.
I've got a couple of different types of prawns.
I've got these king prawns here, which are wild-caught.
They're from South Australia. Beautiful, unbelievable.
And I'm gonna pop those in just like that.
And I've also got some little tiger prawns.
They're a little bit smaller.
These are the farmed ones from Queensland.
So I've got two different types.
I've got some beautiful Pacific oysters, which are from Coffin Bay.
So I'm gonna lay out some of those.
And then I've got the little Sydney rock oysters as well.
Next. Now, this is gonna be the absolute star of the show this year.
We've got these incredible big king crab legs
from the Antarctic.
Unbelievable.
So I've just gone ahead
and cut a little bit of the shell out, right, of the leg,
and you can just use scissors for that.
Pull it on out. You can pull it all the way out.
And then people can just pick that up.
And it's so sweet. Yum.
OK, so just get a couple of those legs in there.
If your platter isn't as long, break them in half like that.
Let people help themself.
I've got some beautiful Victorian sea scallops,
which are actually served on the half shell.
So I've just left them raw
and I've just marinated them with a little bit of lime
and just a little bit of lemon juice and just a drop of olive oil.
Now, I've got an Aussie lobster, which is straight from WA.
So, you know, make sure that's up your end of the table.
(LAUGHS) Get a nice big heavy-based knife
and you literally are gonna just go straight down the tail,
and then I'm gonna go right up, spin him around,
and go straight through the other way.
Look at that.
Perfecto! So you've got that beautiful flesh inside there.
I'm gonna serve that on my platter over here
with the rest of the oysters.
Now, the last thing I'm gonna show you...
I've got some limes.
Now, we all know how to cut them in wedges,
but this is how you cut them into cheeks.
You just go ahead and cut the sides off.
So you can cut two perfect ones
or you can even get three that are pretty close to perfect.
Just like that.
And then, the cheeks, you can go ahead...
The beautiful thing
about cutting them into cheeks is you don't get any pips.
So when you're squeezing...this all over your seafood,
it's just a straight squeeze, no danger of the pips.
So who would have thought that you can get
an incredible platter of seafood that looks like this
from your local supermarket?
(CHUCKLES) Guess what? You can.
All this stuff's available at Coles.
It's unbelievable quality
and it takes all the hassle out of doing that first course.
# It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times
# When you let yourself go... #
Funnily enough, if you ask people what their favourite thing
about a roast dinner or a Christmas dinner is,
a lot of people say the stuffing and the sauce or the gravy.
So what I thought I'd do is I'd show you how to make a really simple gravy
that is gonna win everybody over at the table
but take all of the guesswork and fussiness out of it for you.
The beautiful thing about a good gravy or a good sauce
is you can make it the day before
and it will actually improve in flavour in the fridge overnight.
OK, so what I've got here is I've already gone ahead and started.
I've got one and a half onions that I've thrown into a hot pan.
You can hear it sizzling away with just a tablespoon of oil, alright?
What we're gonna do is we're gonna cook those onions
until they're beautiful and golden brown
and then we've got some other ingredients here.
Some butter. So we're gonna put that butter in with the onions.
Get that butter a little bit nutty and brown.
Then a little bit of flour over here,
which is gonna help with the thickness of the gravy, of course.
I've got some thyme leaves. Beautiful. We love that flavour.
A little bit of lemon juice and just a little bit of vinegar,
just to sort of cut through so you get that nice richness.
And then, of course, chicken stock. So put the onions in first.
We're not gonna strain this sauce. There's no messing around.
It stops you from having to use that packet mix stuff.
I also wanna show you a couple of glazes that I've made.
Really, really simple. I've got an apricot glaze right here.
Fresh apricots, some shallots, I've got some cardamom,
some white wine vinegar, a little bit of white wine,
some honey and some mustard powder.
So you get all of those ingredients, pop them in.
Of course, the recipes are on coles.com.au.
They're really, really simple to make.
Now, for the ham glaze, I went in a bit of a different route
because we've got blackberries in season right now.
So, here, I've put in some blackberries,
some shallots, some sugar.
I used some black peppercorns and some coriander seeds.
Some cloves, some balsamic vinegar and a little bit of Grand Marnier.
So, again, you throw all of that stuff in,
you bring it up to the boil, let it go cool, blend it.
And there it is - you've got a beautiful glaze.
You'll see the onions have gone this beautiful deep golden colour.
Have a look at that. Fantastic.
So you really wanna develop that caramelisation
on the onions as it's cooking.
Now, the next thing that I'm gonna do is add two ingredients.
I've got some little thyme leaves here that I've just roughly chopped.
I love the smell of thyme and it's so good in a gravy,
so I'm gonna go ahead and put all of that in, generous amount.
You smell it straightaway. (SNIFFS) Delicious.
The next thing that we're gonna do is add the butter
and we're gonna actually brown the butter to get even more colour.
So, really, the process here
is we're making a roux, which is really simple.
It's not a kangaroo. It's a combination of fat and flour.
So we're using butter and flour and it's pretty much even quantities.
So we're gonna add our flour and then we're gonna cook it
until it gets a little bit more, um, darker in colour.
What we're gonna do is season with just a little bit of salt.
That's gonna help draw out some of the flavour of the onion.
And then we're gonna add our flour.
The next thing that we're gonna do is add a little bit of our acidity,
the lemon juice and the white wine vinegar.
Give it a stir and then we add in our chicken stock.
And with the first little dribble of chicken stock,
what will probably happen is it will start to seize up a little bit,
which is good - that's how you want it to go
because you want that flour to really develop the thickness of your gravy.
It's getting really quite thick, and we're gonna thin that out
with more and more chicken stock.
See that?
I'm gonna pour in the rest of my chicken stock.
And, once it comes back up to the boil,
we'll have this incredible consistency
and it's gonna have a beautiful flavour to it.
So just a little bit of black pepper.
Check the seasoning.
(SAVOURS SAUCE)
Mmm! Delicious!
So, once your gravy's this beautiful thick consistency,
go ahead, turn it off.
Pour this into a jar or into a little bowl or something,
pop it in the fridge and, tomorrow,
all you have to do is reheat and serve.
It will taste better for the night of sitting in the fridge
because all those flavours get to mingle in together.
Do the same thing with your glazes.
That's the apricot. Perfect.
And this is the blackberry.
So, like I said, get this stuff in the fridge.
Tomorrow, all you have to do is reheat them.
You're gonna glaze your ham and your turkey with these two.
And, this, you're just gonna heat and serve with the roast dinner.
SONG: # It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times
# When you let yourself go... #
So the time has come. It's the moment of truth.
Our turkey was roasted for two hours and it's now rested for a full hour.
Our ham over here was in the oven for about an hour
and it's both ready to be carved.
So the ham and the turkey, ready to go.
What I'm gonna do is show you the fastest way
to break down this turkey and carve it up.
All you do is you take your knife
and you run it straight down the breastplate,
which is right down the centre of the breast of the turkey.
And then, once you get down to the wishbone,
you do a little left turn and you go all the way down like that, OK?
So...one more time.
It's just straight down the breastplate
and then you cut left and you come out right there.
So, once you've got the turkey breast like that,
you then just grab yourself a pair of tongs or even a roasting fork
and you go, you open it up.
So we're gonna cut right through that breast
and take it off right there.
So we're literally detaching the breast and the leg
and then we have this ready to carve.
Same with the leg.
You just spin the turkey around
and if you cut through the little piece of skin there...
And then, if you have a look on the inside of the leg,
there's just some thin little bones in there
that you just wanna cut on the inside of.
Just continue your way...
..through the leg, like that.
And then it'll just detach pretty easily.
And again, to get into the knuckle there,
the best way to do that is just to cut
straight in between the thigh and the drumstick,
and then you'll just feel your way into that socket there
and you just pop that straight on through.
So we have turkey - we have a big juicy turkey thigh.
And then when it's time to carve the actual breast,
life is really simple.
And just go ahead and you can carve this as thin or as thick as you like.
OK.
Pick up the turkey breast.
So easy and so delicious.
Now, the way I like to carve my ham
is I like to show people
that I've got them a beautiful half-leg of ham here.
I wanna let them know, you know, I went to all that effort.
And then I wanna make it really easy for me to carve it.
So have a look at the meatiest part of the ham,
which is sort of around that area there.
And then the best way to do this is to cut right on through
to the bone of the ham.
And then just go down and cut along that bone
all the way through.
And what you'll do is you'll open that up...
(LAUGHS) Beautiful.
So you literally split it in half.
And you'll see there's so much meat still left on the bone here.
I take that and put it onto the platter.
And then what I'm gonna do
is just go through this and slice it up.
So you can imagine this is so much easier
than trying to cut around the bone on the actual ham.
Mm-hm-hm-hm! Delicious.
So once you've gone ahead and carved up all that beautiful ham,
just pick it on up, bring it over to your platter.
And there you go.
Spread it out a little so people can see how succulent and juicy it is.
So there you go -
you have two platters of beautifully carved meat fit for a king.
Now, if you wanna learn more about how to roast the meats
or how to make the glazes that go on the turkey or the ham,
or even how to carve,
go straight to coles.com.au
'cause I have so many tips and tricks
your Christmas will be a breeze.
# It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times... #
Alright, so the first thing I'm gonna do,
because we're starting a day out now, is the pavlovas.
This is how you make them.
Now, we know that everybody loves a good pav.
You can top them
with all sorts of different beautiful fruits that come out at summer,
whether it's peaches, nectarines, berries.
I'm gonna do mine with mangoes 'cause I just love mangoes.
This is how you do it.
You start off with your eggwhites. I've got six eggwhites.
A little bit of salt.
Just a little bit of cream of tartar.
And a little bit of vanilla extract.
And what you do is you get those ingredients
working with the eggwhites first.
High-speed.
So you can see,
once you've had a couple of minutes with your eggwhites,
you're starting to turn them into meringues.
Now's when you start to add your sugar.
I like to add it just gradually,
so I put a good shake in to start,
and then you let it keep working and just slowly, slowly add your sugar.
Beautiful meringue. Look at that. Nice and thick.
And then you get a couple of tablespoons of cornflour,
and this is what's actually gonna stabilise your pavs.
And we are ready.
OK, so once you get the majority of that out,
all you need to do now is actually form the pavlovas
on a baking sheet.
Grab yourself a couple of spoons.
We're gonna divide this mixture into even pavlovas.
Now, you don't want them too high
because if the pavs are too high,
you'll find it hard to put cream on later.
So just get your spoons and just sort of smooth them out a little bit
so that there's an actual base there to put your ingredients on top.
Of course, if you've got little kids and you want them to have a pav,
then you can make a smaller one for the kids.
Once you've got all of your pavs made,
pop them into an oven.
You cook pavlovas quite low - about 135 degrees for about an hour.
What I'm gonna show you how to do is make a little syrup
that we're gonna toss the mango through, which...
You need some of my favourite ingredients -
these beautiful little limes.
I'm just gonna roll them and get that juice ready to go.
I've got a little bit of water and a little bit of sugar.
Lime zest - make sure you give them a good clean.
So you're looking for a couple of tablespoons of lime zest
and a couple of tablespoons of lime juice.
So depending on how juicy your limes are
will depend on how many limes you need to squeeze.
Right. Bring that up to a boil and then remove it.
And that's the syrup that we're gonna pour over our mangoes.
At the same time of doing that,
I'm gonna get my chocolate,
pop it into a little bowl over some simmering water,
and we're gonna melt that nice and slowly.
And this is what we're gonna dip our little individual pavs in.
Once your syrup's been bubbling away,
simmering for about four minutes or so,
it should have reduced by about half,
which means if you started off with 500mL,
you end up with 250mL, OK?
So you wanna literally evaporate half of that liquid out of the pot
just to intensify the flavour
and also to get that nice sort of syrupy consistency.
My chocolate is beautifully melted.
So what we have here are these incredible pavs
that I popped into the oven for an hour yesterday.
I left the door ajar for a few hours, then I took them out
and I popped them into an airtight container overnight, OK?
So now they're a little bit firmer
and a little bit easier to handle, which is a good thing.
So into my melted chocolate
and just roll it around just that once
and you'll get this beautiful chocolate base to your pav.
So leave these in a nice cool place
and those chocolate bases will set and go nice and firm
and then you're gonna make the most delicious pav
when your guests arrive.
Now, once your chocolate-dipped pavs have had time to set up,
pick them up and pop them onto your serving tray, like that.
Get our syrup that we made.
We're gonna pour that over this beautiful mango.
Combine the syrup and the mango together.
(CHUCKLES) Delicious.
And then the last thing you need
is, of course, a little bit of whipped cream,
and you pop it straight on top of your pav.
Right, so once you've got your cream on,
give your mango another good old stir.
Now, I use a slotted spoon
so that all of that excess syrup runs off.
And I just go ahead, pop that...
Beautiful!
And I think that that's a perfect one to be left over for me.
(LAUGHS)
Happy Christmas.
SONG: # It's Christmas time
# It's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times
# When you let yourself go
# Underneath the mistletoe... #
I promised you a Christmas feast, and have a look at this.
I'm gonna start off with this incredible seafood platter.
The beautiful thing about this is people can help themself,
they can go for the type of seafood they like.
It's all served so it's just ready to eat.
Beautiful fresh Aussie seafood.
Then, of course, we move on to the main event.
So we've got this gorgeous roasted turkey
and I've done it with the apricot glaze
so you can see it's glistening and beautiful and golden,
very sweet, really, really good.
Now, you can serve just with a glaze or can serve it with a gravy as well.
I've made the gravy as well
'cause I know that's an absolute Christmas favourite,
and at my house, if I didn't serve the gravy,
I'd be in a lot of trouble.
Over here, for the people that don't want the turkey,
we've got this incredible glazed ham.
I made the glaze out of balsamic and blackberry.
So beautiful summer fruits and colours and smells.
I'm serving that with... It's just gorgeous.
It's triple-smoked over ironbark this year. It's so, so good.
Up here, we've got some grilled peaches
that I've served with some pickled onions, some parmesan cheese
and a little bit of baby rocket.
So we've got all those ingredients that can be served with the ham
or as a side dish as well.
For the vegies, I've got my greens.
Of course you need those on Chrissie Day.
I've gone for a bit of a gratin.
So it's a green bean, cherry tomato and macadamia nut gratin.
So you stick it under the broiler or in the oven
and you get this beautiful toasted, nutty sort of flavours through it.
It's just delicious.
Fam favourite - the mashed potato.
You can't go past a good mash
and I've got this one beautiful and creamy
and it's got a little bit of horseradish in it.
So it's got just that little bit of kick.
For dessert, we've got beautiful Aussie pavs.
I've made little individual ones.
I've dipped the bottom in chocolate so you get that delicious sweetness
and then, of course, the whipped cream and fresh mangoes
with a little bit of lime zest.
So, so delicious.
# It's Christmas time It's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times
# When you let yourself go
# Underneath... #
So one of the most commonly asked questions around Christmas time
is what are we supposed to drink with all this delicious food?
So instead of giving you my advice, I thought I'd bring in the expert.
We've got Matt Skinner who's just started working with Liquorland.
I want to hear from the expert exactly what people should do.
Look, if your Christmas Day is anything like mine,
best thing to do is just make it easy for yourself.
Mm-hm.
Make sure you've got enough glassware, first and foremost.
-That's important. -Make sure you've got enough ice.
Our laundry or our bathroom generally doubles as a bar
on Christmas Day, so fill the bath full of ice.
And then when it comes to wine, keep it simple.
So if you're going to serve white, for instance,
do you need to have two or three varieties
or can you just go for the one white that does the whole job?
Yeah, I try and look for a good all-purpose white
that's going to span the boundaries of things like seafood.
Mm-hm.
But also work really well with turkey or chicken as well.
So, first and foremost,
over here I've got Vasse Felix Classic Dry White.
You can pick this up for well under $20 a bottle.
It's a blend of semillon and sauvignon blanc.
So what you get with a semillon and the sauvignon blanc blend
is you get this lovely sort of citrus character from the semillon
and then you get all that lovely fragrance
that you come to expect from sauvignon blanc.
-So great with seafood. -Yeah.
But enough weight to be able to stack up to richer dishes as well.
-What do you think? -Yum! I love it.
-Good. Are you a red fan? -Oh, yeah, absolutely.
And I guess, you know, with things like roast pork
or glazed hams on the table, you need a red.
And you need something that's got richness
but it's not tannic, not too heavy.
So I've gone for Wirra Wirra.
This is Wirra Wirra Church Block from McLaren Vale.
So the great thing about this
is it's a cabernet, shiraz and merlot blend.
Now, a good little tip.
I always throw my reds through a decanter...
-Yep. -..just before I serve them.
The reason being is that I guess wine's a living, breathing thing
that we drink somewhere on its journey
between grape juice and vinegar.
So if you can give it a little bit of oxygen along the way,
it's going to be all the better for it.
It's a little bit like when you go home,
basically you jump off the aeroplane at the other end
and the first thing you do is you want to freshen up,
you want to change your clothes and have a shower.
-Wine's a little bit the same. -Been in that bottle for a while.
Been cooped up in that bottle for a while
and the first thing you need to do is give it a little bit of air.
Don't need a really fancy decanter. Just something sort of simple.
-Could you even use a jug? -You could use a jug.
And how far in advance should you decant the wine
before you actually drink it?
The way we make wine now here in Australia these days
is most wine makers know that within minutes of you leaving the shop,
you're going to have the screw cap off and it's going to be in a glass.
So, you know, wine's really approachable.
So I do mine about 20 minutes before I serve.
-Cool. -Alright. Have a look at that.
So the great thing about these is that they're full of fruit.
And, again, if you have a little taste,
they're soft, they're really easy to drink.
But if you've got a range of different flavours on the table...
-Yum. -..so turkey, pork or ham...
Even moving into things like roast beef or lamb
which we often do in the Weber, fantastic with that.
-Delicious. -Sweet wine. Something to finish.
-OK. Sounds good. -Right. Moscato.
Now, I'm a bit moscato fan.
This comes out of the King Valley in Victoria.
This is Brown Brothers moscato.
Great thing about this variety is that when it's produced,
it's generally pretty light in alcohol, around about 5%.
Right.
So not like your normal 13% or 14%.
It's great at the start of a meal just to sort of spark your appetite.
But perfect at the end with desserts as well.
Now, even if you were just going to do a fresh fruit platter,
it'd be fantastic, but great with pavlova.
So if you pop your nose in, things like pears, green apples,
just a hint of sort of honey to the wine as well.
Anything with those sort of slightly Asian dressings
where you've got cornerstones of sweet, sour, salty and spicy,
that's where this wine works really well.
-And also great with a pav. -Great with a pav.
-Tried with a pretty good one. -Especially great with a pav.
Now, if there's one style of wine
that represents Christmas for me in Australia,
it's sparkling red.
Made the same way that champagne is made.
But obviously can't be called champagne
'cause it's not from Champagne.
But remember, a hiss is better than a pop.
-(HISS) -And much safer.
-Is it really? -Yeah, absolutely.
So many people get struck by stray corks every year. They're dangerous.
Have a look at that. Incredible colour.
See, this sparkling shiraz, to me it's like the Vegemite of wine.
You either love it or you hate it. And I'm a Vegemite lover.
The great thing about sparkling shiraz
is you've just got to put it into context.
With Christmas Day, it makes perfect sense.
If you pop your nose in there, it's really quite fruit cakey.
Mmm. Yeah!
It's got this lovely deep plum and sort of sweet spice notes in it
which are great with plum pudding.
Or if you've got those lovely little mince pies on Christmas Day,
fantastic with this.
When do you start serving the wine?
Right from the outset or do you serve something else first?
I reckon it's always really important
that when people walk through the door,
you've got something to hand them,
whether it's a glass of bubbles, a cocktail, something like that,
I think it's a great way to arrive and it also buys you a bit of time.
If things are going pear-shaped in the kitchen...
Which they won't be if you follow my recipes at coles.com.au.
..hand them a drink, get them to move into another room,
and you get back to the kitchen and fix up what's going wrong.
# It's Christmas time It's Christmas time
# Stand up, stand up for the best of times
# When you let yourself go
# Underneath the mistletoe
# Well, it's Christmas time It's Christmas time... #