Stress-Free Holiday Fare: 5 Tips for the Festive Season
We made it! 2024, with all its challenges, has almost left us, so slip into your shorts and flip-flops (or Speedo and bikini if you dare!), and let’s make the best of the festive season. It’s a time for family, conviviality, and togetherness – certainly not for slaving away behind the stove. Therefore, I want to share a few tips that can free up precious family time…
1. Festive Menu Planning
With a bit of planning, the most wonderful time of the year won’t see you spending hours in the kitchen cooking to feed your extended family. Concentrate on preparing one meal per day (always more than what is needed, so you have leftovers tomorrow). For the rest, ensure there are ample staples in the fridge and pantry for everybody to help themselves or that you can make quick, 15-minute meals for rumbling tummies.
For lunch, you can’t beat a delectable basil or red pepper pesto and feta pasta. Leftover rice becomes a beautiful summer salad with hands full of chopped gherkins, cherry tomatoes, and torn flat-leaf parsley. Add grated carrot and chopped spring onions, along with thinly sliced gammon or braaied chicken, tossed into the salad and drizzled with Ina Paarman’s Creamy Caesar Dressing for the ultimate low-effort, high-impact meal.
That days-old ciabatta you have – the one that is now stale and dry? It makes the perfect croutons when sprinkled with Ina Paarman’s Garlic Pepper Seasoning, tossed in olive oil, and then grilled in a pan until toasted. Use these crunchy bites with sliced red onion, cherry tomatoes, and a ball of broken-up buffalo mozzarella, toss with Ina Paarman’s Creamy Herb Dressing, and serve with braaied lamb chops or slices of last night’s steak.
Leftovers are key to easy and fuss-free festive daytime grazing!
Minty Summer Salad
2. Summertime Cooking
As South Africans, we are lucky that our festive season falls in summertime. So, we need to plan for summer feasting – ditch the stove and oven, and take the cooking outside. The braai is your friend and the perfect setting for everyone to come together and cook.
Let’s settle this now: wattle and steamed-up, wet bags of wood should not come anywhere near a braai! You will never get the proper result while battling a cold fire when you should be focused on getting that perfect char on your tikka masala-marinated chicken kebabs. Use good, hard wood and, if need be, top up with charcoal (not briquettes) to keep that fire hot.
It is easy to cool down your fire, but if it is cold, you will have some hangry in-laws! We follow an all-or-nothing braai approach, cooking the whole meal on the fire. To do this, you need to prepare ahead. Here are a few things to try this festive season:
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Vegetables on the fire. Throw away the aluminium foil and toss halved carrots, courgettes, peppers, whole spring onions, and quartered aubergines marinated in olive oil on the braai with a good sprinkle of Ina Paarman’s Garlic & Herb Seasoning, and grill on a hot fire until the veg is well-caramelised with a good char. Make sure the fire is hot, otherwise the veggies can turn to mush. When off the coals and still hot, toss in balsamic vinaigrette and crumble goat’s cheese over the veg for a delectable, fire-roasted vegetable salad.
- The most ridiculous, best, scrumptious, unbelievable chicken skewers ever! Start by marinating 1 kg of deboned, free-range chicken thighs in one packet of Ina Paarman’s Tikka Masala Curry Cook-In Sauce, mixed with half a cup of plain yoghurt. Let it sit for 24 hours and then skewer. Grill these on a hot fire (you want some good char here) and serve with some flat bread toasted on the braai.
Tikka Kebabs
3. The Gammon
Need I say more? One of the most versatile cuts of meat and oh-so-good. I can write a whole festive season’s worth of recipes using the humble smoked pork buttocks. We don’t do gammon on Christmas, but we have it throughout the holidays.
So, keep a cooked gammon in the fridge, as it lasts – and it makes a great protein for anything from breakfast to lunch. It is ideal for those nagging youngsters who are always hungry. Think gammon, mustard, and cheese sandwiches. Crisp iceberg lettuce quarters with thinly sliced gammon, a glug of Ina Paarman’s Creamy Blue Cheese Dressing, and a handful of crushed nuts. Warm potato salad with spring onion, cubed gammon, and honey mustard dressing. Omelettes with crispy fried gammon and a spoonful of red pepper pesto. The list goes on and on!
Dress her down or give her some makeup. This is one that definitely needs to reside in every festive fridge.
Glazed Gammon
4. The Christmas Feast
This is the one day where everyone enjoying your beach property is going to lend a hand. It is not the day that the matriarch should be working her fingers to the bone. Christmas lunch is an all-hands-on-deck affair. Delegating is the order of the day.
Meringue Terrine with Berries
Get the kids to help set up the table. The older ones can help prepare the salads and build the delectable, awe-inspiring Meringue Terrine with Berries you made the day before. The men can braai, browning the pre-cooked chicken flattie (a huge time saver!) while keeping an eye on the garlic and herb-marinated, deboned lamb shoulder.
And suddenly, like a well-orchestrated event, the whole family is sitting at the table. Bread gets broken, and the delectable feast commences!
Kids helping out
5. Packing & Traveling
In years gone by, we used to pack food as if we were awaiting an apocalyptic event. We would pack three weeks’ worth of meat and groceries. Until we discovered how fulfilling it is to buy local and fresh.
Now, we travel with only the essentials and the first days’ worth of meat. We are lucky to have a holiday property in the Tsitsikama and realised that we could have top-quality meat and dairy from the region at very low prices. We now enjoy farm chickens the size of small turkeys, the most amazing dairy cow steaks that can compete with any wagyu beef out there, and the creamiest unpasteurised milk that does not last a day in our family.
So, travel light, explore the region you are in, and support the locals. You might just be surprised by how good fresh-farmed produce tastes, and it is also a great way to teach the youngsters that food is not grown in a polystyrene packet.
Enjoy the festive season and each other’s company!
