OK - it’s turkey, but not as we know it. Cooking whole turkeys is hard work - I think you get better results from cooking the breasts and legs separately so why not make it into two meals? The breast will do for Xmas dinner but leg meat is so rich that it is almost a meal in itself. The agrodolce (Italian sweet and sour) flavours of the red cabbage complement the rich leg meat perfectly - as they would goose, or even slow roast pork. So, in the hope that you will extend your turkey experience to two meals... if you buy a whole turkey and have it jointed you will also get the carcass and all sorts of stock, soup, risotto options.

Ingredients

A medium sized turkey leg, boned with all
tendons removed, stuffed and rolled up with
a couple of rashers of streaky bacon (the
whole caboodle is available from our
butchers’counters).

1 red cabbage, quartered, cored & shredded
1 large onion, finely chopped
a good knob of lard/goose fat/beef dripping
2 tbsp dark brown sugar
2 Bramley apples
3 tbsp cider vinegar
250ml turkey stock

Method

1 For the cabbage: In a heavy saucepan, gently sauté the onion in the fat for ten minutes, add everything else except the apple, put the lid on and cook in a 140ºC oven for 2 hours. Put the turkey leg on a baking tray and put it in the oven also. Take out the cabbage pan, stir the grated apple into the cabbage. Turn the oven up to 200ºC to crisp up the turkey skin while you finish the cabbage...

2 Nigella Lawson’s ‘red cabbage cooked in the Viennese fashion’ has virtually gone viral on the web with good reason. Mix a sieved tablespoon of flour with 4 tbsp of crème fraîche and a teaspoon of English Mustard powder (my addition) in a large bowl and mix in the red cabbage (a ladle at a time). Return it all to the saucepan and cook, on the hob, for another 10 minutes over gentle heat. Check the seasoning - hopefully the acidity of the grated apple will come through - and the cabbage will be lusciously creamy. Take out the turkey and allow to rest for a few minutes before carving.

Chez Watson, bread sauce and potato crisps round off the meal, both for the carbohydrate element and communal dunking but it does make for a very messy plate. C’est la vie!!