JANET STREET-PORTER: Tier 4, 2021, mutant strains – bring them all on

View
comments

Is this the worst Christmas ever? As most of the country enters Tier 4 from Boxing Day, l’m trying to look on the bright side, find light in the gloom, things to be cheerful about.

After all, I’m not spending the next two days holed up in a smelly lorry cab parked on a disused airfield, resorting to wet wipe washing and petrol station sandwiches.

One moment of gorgeousness (sorry to brag) was been my victory in the Masterchef Christmas Cook-Off on BBC1 this week.

I beat three other former contestants – Dev Griffin, Vicky Pattison and Christopher Biggins – with my wacky festive feast of venison meat pudding and damson fool, and was rewarded with champagne, flowers and (best of all) the title of Christmas Champion.

The reward for two days of chopping, peeling, sweating and boiling. No wonder my face looked like an overcooked flapjack.

I’ve got previous form with Masterchef. Ever since I lost out to Ade Edmondson in 2016’s final, I’ve nursed a grudge against the judges, former greengrocer Gregg Wallace and chef John Torode.

Ade beat me with a plate of dreary white fish surrounded by symmetrically arranged beautifully pared down vegetables. Very posh, very perfect, very Masterchef. Buttock-clenchingly dull. The Michelin equivalent of the missionary position.

I had submitted more challenging and rustic fare – a confit-duck shepherd’s pie which did look a bit of a mess on the plate but most importantly it was my invention and secondly it tasted absolutely brilliant.

My desert was another JSP invention, chilli and vanilla ice cream – hot and cold all served in one of my art deco cocktail glasses.

When Ade won, I ungraciously blurted out ‘it should have been me’ (unfortunately I’ve never been a good loser)… and (not surprisingly) I’ve been waiting years to be asked back to avenge my defeat.

This ghastly year, of all years, my Masterchef dream came true.

Getting the invitation to compete was like Christmas, birthday and a wild party all rolled into one. Like so many of you, cooking has been my lifeline during the pandemic, it’s kept me sane.

I’ve never eaten ready meals, preferring to cook from scratch, cutting recipes out of magazines and newspapers and sticking them in folders.

I cook a new dish each week, trying to stretch my expertise and experience with new flavours. A little bit of positivity amidst all this negativity, and all the rules and dictats from our useless government.

I can’t face any more failure so I do NOT bake bread, make biscuits, cook fancy cakes or whip up puff pastry. Life’s too short for all that fannying around – let the lockdown ‘renaissance men’ do all that show-off stuff.

My cooking is inventive, but never photogenic. I don’t have a gloaty Instagram account.

You won’t be enjoying the sight of my larder or even my spice rack. Some things have to remain secret. I don’t swan about seductively like Nigella, it’s not in my DNA.

From the moment I accepted the Masterchef invite, I started practising my menu. I cooked the venison pudding over and over again until I was sick of it. I knew how to churn it out in record time.

Then, the day arrived for the real thing – Masterchef Christmas Cook-Off was filmed in September, in a heat wave.

When we were ordered to wear Festive sweaters, I refused. Let Panto King Biggins sport a knitted reindeer, I wasn’t about to resemble Su Pollard from Hi-de-Hi!

The other (more docile) contestants complied, and then spent two days sweating and scratching as the sequins in their attention-seeking novelty sweaters became a subtle form of torture when exposed to a hot stove.

I opted for a red (hair and socks) and green (top, skirt and trainers – all pre-worn designer kit from the back of my vast wardrobe) colour combo – it’s festive enough in my book.

Round one involved whipping up something from a surprise ingredient, in my case, a jar of fruity mincemeat.

I knew the others would play safe and opt for sausage rolls and savoury tarts – so I played a blinder and came up with an exotic savoury meat and fruit filo pastry snack – just like ones I’d tasted in Marrakesh on holiday.

It looked showy but was a doddle to cook. Luckily, Gregg was very appreciative although he was starting to get on my nerves with comments about how my ‘presentation’ had improved since my last appearance. I had to self-censor for fear of being ejected for insubordination.

The next round, in which Biggins and I had to cook something called ‘pork wellington’ created by John Torode, was a disaster. We were supposed to be a team, but we divas spent a lot of time shouting at each other, and the end results looked reasonably OK but our pork was underdone.

As for puff pastry, I have no idea how to roll it as thin as a chef, other than by sitting on it. My Pork Wellington looked like a badly stuffed draught excluder. At this point I went home depressed.

That night I dreamt of cooking my festive feast, with Gregg Wallace sneering on the sidelines. My pudding wouldn’t come out of its tin, and the crew collapsed laughing.

I arrived on Day 2 looking even worse than when I left the studio at the end of ten hours the previous evening. But this time, I was better prepared than my previous attempt to gain the title. I had put in loads of practice.

My main course was a modern version of a meat pudding which I had researched online. I used puff pastry compressed into a bowl, and filled it with a lovely stew of venison and fruit, in a rich wine sauce.

This combination of fruit and meat is very traditional, and I tried to use as many seasonal ingredients, like sprouts, red chicory, and squash as I could. For dessert I whipped up an old-fashioned damson fool with egg whites and cream. Winning was a big shock, even with all that preparation.

And so, my year ended on a high note. Boris, you can stuff your tiers. Matt Hancock, I’m taking a break from your never-ending bad news. I haven’t ordered a Chris Whitty tea mug and Jonathan Van Tam is not my new pin up.

I haven’t even got a Masterchef trophy, just the knowledge that I finally – at the age of 73 – won something I had dreamed of for years.

So Tier 4 – bring it on! I’m not making a Christmas meal using toilet rolls, wet wipes, dried pasta or tea bags so no queueing in the rain will be necessary.

Just don’t ask me to eat a bloody venison pudding for a few months.