Thinking Ahead to Christmas food.

 RHYS BOWEN: Apart from buying gifts this is the season when our thoughts turn to food. In my earlier days I participated in cookie swaps. All those hours making cookie dough, cutting into shapes, rolling it, frosting it etc etc. I made Stollen, whcih I adore but nobody else does. It seemed we were overflowing with sugar/butter and everything else bad for us. Now I find there is less interest in sweet things. We always have a Christmas brunch with eggs, bacon, sausage etc, then at four o'clock we have tea (of course, we're British) with lots o cookies, cakes etc but I find not that many are eaten.  Then in the evening we have the big Christmas dinner with turkey and ham and all the trimmings, followed always by apple crumble and Christmas pudding (just for John and me). 

As we have fifteen people descending on us I always try to plan ahead, to make hearty soups and easy dinners that I can free before hand. This is complicated by the fact that I have three gluten free family members, one lactose intolerant and one who doesn't eat meat. I have planned to make a big cocoanut fish soup, a paella one night, but need other ideas. All the pasta dishes I make for a crowd could be made with gluten free pasta, I suppose. But I like the idea of hearty soups. Last year I made a chicken soup with aromatics and chicken breast and then finished it with lemon and spinach. It was quite yummy.

The one thing I always have to make (tradition) is small mince pies and sausage rolls. These are very simple... short crust pastry cut and put into muffic pans, mincemeat inside, brushed with egg white and sugar and then baked. For the sausage rolls I've recently switched to puff pastry and Jimmy Dean's sage sausage meat, the closest I can get to English sausage. 

So any suggestions for easy meals to feed up to fifteen people will be most welcome!