It’s going to be a slow roast kind Christmas for MasterChef SA 2022 winner Shawn Godfrey who is looking forward to Christmas at home around the pool and a big family table.
Gqeberha-born Godfrey, who shares his culinary and family adventures on his Instagram page The Roasted Dad, now lives in Cape Town with wife Lianne and their children Aiden, 7, Olivia, four, and two-year-old Harvey.
“Normally we all go back to the Eastern Cape and the family converges either in Gqeberha or Plett, but this year the whole family is coming to us for Christmas,” he said.
“We are having a staycation this year.
“They are all converging in Cape Town, so we are excited about that.
“We also have some friends coming over, as well as my sister and her family and my parents.
“On Christmas Eve they will all come to our house and on Christmas Day we will do a whole pool relaxed vibe.
Christmas Eve will be the actual party. I have three children, so Christmas is so big, it’s so massive.”
Godfrey has fond childhood memories of magical Christmases and replicating these for his children is a priority and, though he will be doing the bulk of the cooking, he-does not consider it to be a tiring chore.
“I think having three kids is exhausting as it is! But we are such a family orientated family.
“Our kids and the fun they have is everything to us and that is energising. Just seeing the joy on their faces and what they experience...
“I have such good memories of Christmas.
“One year was always in Gqeberha and one year was always in Somerset West with my aunt and we would bring the caravan and stay on her lawn and so I always have strong memories of Christmas and have always said to Liana all I want is a big table, lots of people and family and I want to make the memories for our kids.
“For me it’s about big tables. Don’t be precious about it and it mustn’t be all stiff and starchy and stressful. It just needs to be a relaxed Christmas.”
Because this is the first time the family is celebrating the festive season at home, Godfrey is excited about decorating a tree.
And in true foodie fashion, this one will have an edible component.
“We will have a real tree with lots of decorations because it’s our first year at home.
“I also want to make little gingerbread Christmas tree ornaments.
“There is an online recipe for gingerbread cookies that can last 30 days, so those are your Christmas decorations.
“You put numbers on them and the kids eat the cookies. It’s an advent calendar on your Christmas tree!”
When it comes to the dinner and lunch table, Godfrey’s friends and family can look forward to his expertise and passion for creating appetising dishes.
And when it comes to succulent meat, he’s going slow.
“Basically I’m doing recipes I’m busy creating at the moment.
“I’m doing a slow-roasted turkey, so it’s a 12-hour turkey and a slow-roasted, eight-hour gammon and a deboned leg of lamb.
I’ve been focusing a lot on recipes that are slow-roasted.
“I find most of them dry out unless you do it really slowly. So I’ve been working with recipes that are a little bit more tricky and converting them into more practical elements.
“I’ve been trialling them and will be putting them into practice at Christmas.
“I’ve learnt that with Christmas meats, one should start the day before and take all the stress out of the day you’re actually serving it.
“In previous years I relied a lot on Google and found the recipes are so precise.
“A lot of the time the weights are different, the meat is different and then you don’t actually get the perfect result.
“So I’ve been trying to work on recipes this year that you can do the day before and get them to fall off the bone.”
And for the perfect side dish, who can resist a crispy roast potato?
“I’ll be doing duck fat potatoes — that’s my go-to.
One of my original recipes that I love working with is Nigella Lawson’s flour- and semolina-dusted potato.
“You parboil them, then get a container, add olive oil, semolina and flour and you shake the container and this knocks off the potatoes’ edges so they have rough edges.
“Then you put them in duck fat and cook really slow for two hours and they are absolutely divine.
“I normally do two per person. I also always do malva pudding — it just wraps up the year.
“I reinterpret them with a little twist and do a different malva every year.”
Malva pudding is all good and well, but surely the Christmas dessert trolley must include trifle?
Godfrey agrees, but insists this is not his department.
“My sister, Liezel Searle, is the trifle queen. So I will not take her place as the trifle queen.
“From childhood we’ve always done different things and she was always the trifle queen.
“She does it with black cherries and chocolate cake and cream.
“So it’s not a very colourful trifle. It reminds me more of a black forest gateau.
“She knows what she’s doing there. I’m going to leave it up to her.”
While Christmas Eve is a traditional dinner with all the trimmings, Christmas Day at the Godfreys will be a day of sun, swimming and salads.
“We normally do a lot of alfresco stuff and I love salads.
“It’s more relaxed on Christmas Day. If you look at all my recipes on @roasteddad you’ll notice a lot of alfresco recipes. They’re hearty salads, but cold and nice for summer.
“For me Christmas in SA is normally 30°C and then if you’re trying to chow hot turkey and gammon, it’s too hot.
“So our family has started migrating to doing the hot food on Christmas Eve and then alfresco the next day.
“Sometimes we do leftover meat and there’s always so much pudding left over.
“So it’s basically salads and desserts.”
At his house, some gifts are from family and others are from Santa, so that it doubles the fun for the wide-eyed little ones.
“On Christmas Eve we do one present and we tell them that present is from us.
“Then Father Christmas — probably me — arrives on Christmas night, so on Christmas Day there are loads of presents from him.”
DispatchLIVE
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