I do a pastry from the Dorchester Hotel I discovered years ago in the sunday times. Butter and sugar creamed together in food processor like sponge mix, then egg whizzed in and then the flour added gradually. Comes together very soft so you chill it before using and it melts in the mouth like the shortbread style above.
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Current plan chez nous is beef wellington.
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Christmas eve we’ll be at my brother’s place with their offspring and ours. The 25th I’ll probably do roast beef and C pud, although I have done both lamb and pork. A goose is nice but spendy.
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Great! Thanks Stella!
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Are you a non-rolling-pin person like me ???
My wife does things like pastry. I think she uses one.
Well, this pastry really works well being done by hand… the whole village look forward to my Christmas baking sessions.
At first, they were shocked to discover that an English person could actually produce something so scrummy…
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This is the pastry I use for my tarte citron.
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We are going to friends from Munich who have a house nearer.
I am making smoked salmon pate and Jim makes the melba toast.
I think we will be having venison with dumplings.
Not sure what comes next.
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I have a rolling pin with tapered ends, so that you don’t get that furrow in your pastry.
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Well I think its because we ladies had cookery lessons at secondary school and learned the basics off by heart including the chemical side of things and how they react with each ingredient etc. I got a domestic science O-Level plus for two years running, the speech day prize for the subject. My mother was a fabulous cook having a large family and could turn her hand to more or less anything and produce a lovely meal.
that’s wonderful… and I’m sure your French neighbours are in awe at your prowess…
Sadly, I never did cookery or anything nearly as useful in school… but learnt by trial and error and TV… plus guidance from older colleagues…
Nowadays, I love turning my hand to French recipes … but my neighbours do enjoy a “taste of Olde England” from time to time.
sounds great… nowadays, my hands won’t allow me to remain in control of the rolling-pin… so it runs amok… 
If you can find a strong water bottle that does not have ridges, you can fill it with water and use that as an emergency rolling pin, using very cold water to fill it will also protect the pastry from going hard due to the fat melting which too much handling will do. My OH grandmother treated shortcrust pastry like bread dough, you couldn’t eat it let alone cut it with a knife when cooked it was so hard, she did not understand about keeping it cold as possible.
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We’ve obviously got our own favourite pastry recipes and methods.
I don’t put egg in mine and I use rock-hard butter… so perhaps that’s why the more I work it the better it tastes… the proof is in the eating… yummy.
Mind you, with my hands I’m not exactly battering it to death…
We had domestic science lessons at Lancaster Girls’ Grammar School with Miss Haigh.
My godfather’s sister went there and the range she used was still there when Miss Haigh started.
We learnt the alimentary canal twice, once in biology and then again domestic science.
It was Tony Blair that stopped cookery lessons in schools. He replaced it with nutrition which bored the pants off everyone and they learned nothing practical. Just like his stupid idea that every one should go to University and burden themselves with debt and come out with a useless degree.
I used to get called out of lessons to make lemonade for the Headmistress, who I disliked intensely.
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I went to a boys school at 16, and wasn’t allowed to do woodwork/metalwork so the 6 girls were sent to do cookery. First lesson was to catch and kill a hen - it really started from basic principles.
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You could have enhanced it with a pretty sprig of hemlock 
I’ve no idea how to make Lemonade… what’s your advice and/or do you have a secret recipe ???
So did I, a Grammar school, and we weren’t allowed to do either. I really do regret that sexist mindset nowadays, really struggling with cooking and DIY.
My grammar is pretty good though. 
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