FOOD : Home by Nico, Christmas Box

Ho Ho Ho, Santa’s Little Helper is here! Let Home by Nico take all the stress out of preparing and cooking Christmas lunch or dinner this year.

REVIEW OF HOME BY NICO, CHRISTMAS BOX

Christmas Dinner use to be a big event in our family. Everyone traipsed around to Mums, after having spent the previous week confirming and reconfirming what everyone was buying and bringing to the Christmas meal and who would prepare what and when. It was chaos. It was happy, laughter filled chaos that always resulted in copious amounts of bubbly consumed as our stress levels reached their peak due to the overcooking of the brussels, the sogginess of the cauliflower cheese and the five varieties of roasted meats that had appeared although it had been agreed that we would only cook lamb and beef this year!

A joyous occasion where we stuffed our bellies to near bursting, tucked into a boozy trifle and always found space a mere two hours later for a turkey sandwich.

This year Christmas will be very different, and would have probably ended in us ordering a curry if such things as ‘At Home Boxes’ didn’t exist.

Chef Nico Simeone, Six by Nico and Home by Nico, has most definitely paved the way in the creation of the most successful ‘At Home Box’ throughout lockdown and thankfully will continue offering these tremendous kits that take all the hassle out of shopping for Christmas Dinner.

Always beautifully packaged and presented, this large green box (which you half expect an elf to pop out of) contains a three course meal, a snack (very important for the cooking process), an amuse, three sides and three sauces, for two people for £100.00 delivered straight to your door on 22nd or 23rd December, ready for your Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas Day lunch/dinner.

We start off with (besides the nuts that I ate way before I remembered to take photos!)

Amuse of Celeriac Veloute with hazelnut and apple dressing and ham hough croquettes. A fine way to start your meal. The veloute was quite thick and salty, but they do advise to add some cream or water, which we did. The ham hough balls from the oven dipped into the veloute and the dressing made for a lovely savoury, salty starter.

Starter of Scottish Smoked Salmon with cucumber, buttermilk and dill. This only requires plating up and is great whilst the main is cooking away nicely in the oven. The salmon was beautiful and worked well with the cucumber and dill. However the cucumber, dill and buttermilk all came in one packet; had I thought about this, I would have removed the cucumber from the dill buttermilk and drained it a little to try to retain the crunch from the cumumber.

Main of Bacon Wrapped Turkey Ballotine with freekah, apricot and pine nut stuffing with pigs in blankets. Accompanied by an array of side dishes - Spiced Red Cabbage, Potato & Truffle Gratin and Sprouts & Pancetta; and sauces of Turkey Jus, Bread Sauce and Cranberry Chutney.

Sides dishes were all superb especially the brussels; the truffle potatoes were insanely delicious (we cut ours in half and pan fried the edges to caramelise them before popping them in the oven), the turkey ballotine was soft and buttery and the stuffing lovely and nutty with a hint of sweetness.

Dessert of Spiced Sticky Toffee Pudding with eggnog custard, toffee sauce and stem ginger. This was delicious but not a traditional STP. The ginger really runs all the way through this and is complimented with the smooth silky custard. For me there is NEVER enough sticky sauce, but all in all this was a gorgeous pudding to end the meal on.

The food portions are very generous and there is no way you are going to be leaving the table hungry. The box comes with a leaflet of step-by-step cooking instructions and even informs you want equipment you need before you get started.

So deck the halls, lay the table, light the candles and order Christmas by Nico. It’s fairly easy to follow (you will need some cooking know how); the only down side…. you need to do the washing up - no ‘Cleaning Elves’ are included in the box!

Home by Nico, Home X www.home-x.com/products/christmas-dinner-by-nico

My Spoon Award : Gold Spoon 9/10

I was invited by Home X, Home by Nico to review their Christmas Box. The box was complimentary but the views are very much my own.