Running a shop over the festive period involves long hours with little time to prepare for my own Christmas. Not that I’m complaining - in fact I’m extremely grateful that we were busy considering all the economic gloom. I did manage to decorate the Christmas tree the evening of the 21st - at least it was done for Christmas Eve - the rest of the house had to wait until Christmas day morning! Having worked 14 days without a break we were feeling pretty wrecked and selfishly engineered it that we were on our own Christmas day to enjoy a quiet relaxing day, just pottering around, with family visiting on Boxing Day.
We decided to have our meal Christmas day night and I drew on my culinary skills from a previous life as a successful restaurateur and prepared a fairly light dish of a large puff pastry case filled with seafood in a light creamy sauce accompanied by roasted tomatoes on the vine. I cheated and used Just Roll pastry - it really is just as good as making your own. The fish came from our excellent fish stall which is under the market house in Tetbury each Wednesday. Having prepared a béchamel sauce, I sweated off in butter finely chopped red onion , reduced white wine, tarragon leaves - to intensify the flavour I always add a Knorr fish stock cube and finish with a good dollop of double cream. A dear friend kindly gave us a posh bottle of champagne from Harvey Nicks, which proved to be the perfect accompaniment to this Christmas day supper.
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