Mark Moriarty has long established himself as a culinary wunderkind, from joining the now two-Michelin-starred The Greenhouse in Dublin in 2013, to being named the San Pellegrino UK & Ireland Young chef of the Year in 2015, and being listed on the Forbes magazine 30 under 30 for innovation in the arts sector.
But his most impressive move for us? What he calls "glass-shatteringly crisp" roast potatoes.
The Holy Grail of all Christmas banquets, big or small, we're always looking for ways to up our roastie game, so we were delighted to chat to the Tesco Finest Ambassador about all things Christmassy and foodie.
Read on for his top tips for prepping your Christmas dishes, the best way to cook turkey, his showstopping Brussels sprouts recipe and - of course - the recipe for those potatoes.
What makes a great Christmas dinner for you?
For me, it's about doing a couple of simple things really well. I like to have things that are done in advance so that on the day I’m doing a lot of finishing or reheating.
For me, Christmas Day is pretty much my only day off so I want to spend as much time with people relaxing.
I like to have the roast potatoes almost 50% cooked, Brussels sprout sauce almost ready to go, I cook my ham overnight so it’s pretty much just adding a glaze and putting it into a hot oven. Salads, sauces, all ready to in the weeks leading up to it. I’ll even have stock or gravy frozen. I rob it from the restaurant, personally, but you can have it made.
Veganism and vegetarianism has come on in recent years, any Christmas recipes we can try?
I was at Taste recently and I did starters for entertaining, little tartlets. We use an oil-based tartlet mix in the restaurant and they’re vegetarian-friendly, but you can buy them. You fill them with a mix made from mushroom cooked off in a sauce with some white wine and ground coffee from a coffee capsule, which goes really well with mushroom. It makes it taste really intense, really meaty. Then finish it with compté grated on top with some walnuts.
Best way to cook a turkey?
This time of year I just find it hilarious, there’s people on radio, there are articles, there are books about this. If you’re using a turkey, take the legs and the wings off and cook them separately. What happens is if you try to cook all the turkey in one go, all the breast meat and the crown is overcooked.
Make a brine, which is like a salt bath. It’s 100g of salt to one litre of water, dissolve the salt, put the crown in the mix and leave it for two to three hours. Take it out, dry it off, roast it with a little bit of butter on a tray in the oven, set to 200 degrees so it goes nice and golden brown.
The brine stops the turkey from releasing all its juices, because turkey is a notoriously tough bird to cook properly.
My best piece of kitchen equipment for the home cook is a probe. You stick the probe into the breast right at the bone and set an alarm for 75 degrees. When the alarm goes off, take the turkey out and carve away.
Best way to cook roast potatoes?
I peel them, cook them in boiling salted water for about three to four minutes. The outside starts to slightly cook, while the inside remains raw. I drain them off, return them to the pot and put a cloth over them for three or four minutes. Then I add some polenta, which is a derivative of corn meal. You add that to the potatoes and you toss them about vigorously. The outside that's cooked forms a crust with the polenta.
I stick them in an oven at 200 degrees with some duck fat. You can use plain vegetable oil if you want. I cook them for about an hour, turning them every 10 minutes, and what you get are the crispiest roast potatoes you’ve ever had. They’re glass-shatteringly crispy.
Are there other festive flavour combinations we could be trying that are a bit left of centre?
I like anise flavours. I’ll always glaze my ham with wholegrain mustard and star anise, which is a fragrant, almost liquorice flavour. If you can get liquorice sticks which have this lovely sweet, almost smokey liquorice flavour and they go really well with salty foods.
I don’t particularly like Christmas pudding but what I do make is a type of sticky toffee pudding, because it’s my favourite dessert. I make it with a really nice caramel sauce with some black pepper in it and really heavy vanilla ice cream.
Chestnuts are another one, both sweet and savoury. Cooked off in a pan with some madeira and some butter, added to your ham and turkey.
What are your own Christmas recipes?
It’s not a very structured dinner, so the starter is usually when we’re having a glass of wine standing up. This year I’ll be doing some bread with chorizo cooked down in sherry, put in a bowl tapas-style. For dinner, I’ll be doing a glazed ham. I cook my ham overnight in the oven, wrapped in tin foil, bone-in. I cook it at 90 degrees for 12 hours, we glaze it for the last 10 minutes because it saves on the washing up.
We’ll be doing rib of beef this year. Sometimes I do a beef wellington, but there’s a 30-day dry-aged rib of beef I’ll be roasting on the bone in the oven, to just about medium, nice and pink throughout.
What’s a showstopping dish we could make this year?
A lot of people don’t like Brussels sprouts but the way I do them is probably my favourite part of the dinner. They end up being the showstopper almost. I have them pre-cooked the day before, just in some salted water with a little bit of sugar in there as well, which takes out a bit of the bitterness in the sprouts. I chill them down so they’re nice and green.
I cook out some bacon lardons with garlic and onions in a pan, add some white wine and let it reduce down. I add some cream so it's like a classic velouté sauce. I let that cook down and finish it with loads of tarragon, parsley, lemon zest and then grated parmesan cheese and it goes into this deliciously moreish thick sauce. I add some lemon juice to lighten it up and a touch of black pepper.
Then I slice in half the sprouts I cooked the day before and I add them in, and serve them in a big bowl with loads of crispy bacon lardons on top.
Any tips or tricks we can steal from the restaurant?
Things like making the gravy in early December and having it in the freezer. We make sauces in the restaurant, so our sauce bases are basically 50 litres of stock reduced to what’s called a demi glaze. We freeze them and add them to things to finish them off.
Everything doesn't have to be made on the day because there’s too much mess, to be honest. I hate all the washing up.
The sprouts can be pre-done, and even that sauce could be made and in a container in the fridge. I’ve no problem saying there are certain things that are absolutely fine to go through a microwave. We do crushed carrots and parsnips with mustard, and that can be in a container then you just lash it through the microwave and add a little bit of seasoning.
One less pot or one less process you have to do on the day gives you more time to actually enjoy it.
For me, being a real chef chef, I like to keep it as tidy as possible so I like to set up a chopping board and I have lots of different reusable containers, it could be a takeaway container. I get everything chopped up and into my containers and I clean my board down, I’ve a separate little bin so everything’s going into the bin or compost bin as I go. We call it mise en place, getting everything ready for a busy service.
