Delia Smith's Christmas

In this collection of the very best of her Christmas recipes, Delia Smith demonstrates how you can easily cope with the whole gamut of Christmas entertaining while still having plenty of time to relax with your family and friends. Whether this is the first time you have had Christmas at your own home or have been doing it for years you'll find this book will be indispensable every Christmas for years to come. Delia gives advice on how to choose the very best produce, from turkeys to chocolates, from glace fruits to smoked salmon. She shows you how to organise yourself so that you've got plenty of time when everyone arrives - with her help you can prepare many dishes in advance, and her 36-hour countdown to Christmas lunch will ensure that nothing goes wrong for that most difficult of meals to get right. She gives lots of unusual ideas for all sorts of Christmas parties from fork buffets to drinks parties including Roast Goose with Potato, Sage and Apple Stuffing, and Iced Christmas Pudding topped with glace fruits marinated in Madeira. Over 100 new recipes include 5 different kinds of Christmas cake and foolproof ways to ice them, a complete vegetarian Christmas including Cheese Terrine with Apricot Chutney, and recipes for Christmas gifts such as Chocolate Truffles. Christmas is the time when you most want everything to run smoothly - with Delia Smith's Christmas at your side you can relax and enjoy it.

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A Christmas Cracker - Rated
As a Christmasaholic, I look forward to getting this book down from the shelf at the beginning of November, to start all the fun bits before the hassle starts. (Though you'll need plenty of space in the freezer.)
I'd really recommend the Christmas chutney and the spiced apricot & orange chutney, sausage rolls, mincemeat and - best of all - the light glace fruit cake. So would all my friends and family! And there are some great veggie recipes.
Her Christmas lunch schedule, giving you all the timings, is brilliant, although you can actually do a lot more of it a day or so in advance to leave more time on the day.
I'd recommend this as a great present - but maybe not a Christmas present!

Take from it what you need - Rated
Typically Delia: as ever one is overwhelmed by choice (six different Christmas cake recipes anyone?!) and a lot of her recipes are fiddly (prepare your ingredients in three different bowls and spend half the day doing it). That said, this book does provide a wealth of information on Christmas food and how to go about timing it (starting at the end of October with the Christmas cake!). There is also a lot of information about traditional Christmas food that is useful when it's all too easy to buy everything in packets these days. All in all, a useful book if you can take what you need from it and ignore the rest of her waffle.

Buy this if you have nothing else to do at Christmas! - Rated
The recipies in this book are not bad but are difficult to follow with no step by step lists, just massive paragraphs of text and there wasn't enough pictures for my liking. If Delia had her way we'd all be preparing and cooking for Christmas in October! Oh... and she doesn't believe in cooking ahead and freezing. Talk about sucking the fun out of Christmas.

Buy, Buy, Buy - Rated
Bought this book last year, I have tried the pickled shallots in sherry vinegar and they went down a treat, its sausage rolls this Christmas Eve, washed down with Delia's mulled wine, can't wait!!!!

Santa's in the Kitchen! - Rated
In my attempts to be a 'modern man', I need all the help I can get. Delia, thankyou, thankyou and thankyou again. This book comes out every year with the tree, decorations, drink and viewing of Zulu, Guns of Navarone, The Great Escape and Scrooge.
It is a classic and never been bettered. I have it on good authority that this book still causes shortages of certain ingredients in the shops. If it's near the end of November get your pureed chesnut NOW! Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without Delia.