Skye McAlpine’s well of Christmas knowledge runs so deep that you might think she has the answer to every dilemma surrounding her own family’s festivities. The food writer and chef, 41, who is sharing her expertise in her new book, The Christmas Companion, admits that there is one sore point at the McAlpine family celebrations: gravy.
“We don’t have gravy for Christmas lunch, which I know is controversial,” she tells HELLO!. “My mother, who does Christmas lunch, doesn’t believe in gravy.”
The book, which features 360 pages of recipes and tips for wrapping and decorations, includes an entry for “make-ahead gravy”, but notes that “making gravy the ‘proper’ way is a step too far” when trying to marshal all the elements of a Christmas meal.
“I wouldn’t mind having gravy,” she says. “My husband is the one who really misses it. He feels quite aggrieved.”
Skye, whose father was the late Conservative peer Lord McAlpine – her mother, Romilly Hobbs, was his political secretary before they married – was born in Britain but moved to Venice at the age of six after the IRA attempted to kill her father by bombing their home in Hampshire.
She, her husband, the financier Anthony Santospirito, and their sons Aeneas, 11, and Achille, four, divide their time between a five-storey Victorian house in London and a flat in “a crumbling old palazzo” in Venice.
She is diplomatic on the topic of whether Italians or Brits do Christmas best. She admits that she can live without gravy and bread sauce (the rest of her family eschew it) but would “feel sad if I didn’t have Christmas cake or panettone”.
Her family intertwines traditions from both countries, with Skye cooking a big dinner on Christmas Eve before everyone goes to midnight mass.
“We always have panettone – we’re panettone-obsessed. It’s different from Christmas cake, so it’s nice to have it as well,” she says. “I think there’s plenty of room for both of them. I love to have panettone with brandy butter. It’s quite eccentric, but I really like it.”
For the nervous host, the biggest draw of Skye’s book is the hacks that require no effort but make you seem like Jay Gatsby hoping to impress Daisy Buchanan.
“I’ve always loved gold as an instant Christmas zhuzh,” Skye says. “My mother scatters gold coins over the table. A few years ago, I discovered edible gold leaf and I’m obsessed with that, because it makes things shiny and special. You can add it to anything. I’ve put it on baked potatoes, because sometimes a baked potato is exactly what you want to eat and it’s a way of making it suddenly festive.”
An even simpler trick is her recipe for crisps and caviar. “It’s the best. It’s so easy – all you’re doing is taking things out of packets – but it feels so sophisticated,” she says.
“My other favourite is zhuzhing up Christmas crackers. I find it really hard to find nice crackers that don’t cost £75. If you buy plain ones and cut off their bows, you can do lovely big bows with tails hanging.
“You go from something that looks mass-produced to something that looks really expensive. You can open them and put in personalised presents. They don’t need to be crazily expensive – just some lip balm, hand cream or a little chocolate.”
Although Skye’s book shows a command of festive entertaining, she is anxious not to add to the pressure that people feel to make Christmas perfect.
“I wanted to try to move away from expectation. We can feel this pressure to have a perfect Christmas. I wanted to set out a lot of shortcuts and take away a lot of the guilt.
“I do love it, but my husband jokes that there are always tears at Christmas,” she adds. “I’ve come to accept that as part of the happy cycle of Christmas. Emotions are heightened. If you’re feeling excited or sad or there’s been a loss, you feel it more.”
Skye says that her family don’t always share her enthusiasm for fancy festive preparations. “There’s an element of slight rolling of the eyes,” she says. “I think Christmas is something that people appreciate even if they don’t realise it. It’s quite a selfish act, in a way. I would be really sad if I didn’t get that chance [to make Christmas a big occasion].”
Skye McAlpine’s The Christmas Companion, published by Bloomsbury, is available now priced £28.
Pick up the latest issue of HELLO! on sale in the UK on Wednesday 10 December to read the full interview. You can subscribe to HELLO! to get the magazine delivered free to your door every week or purchase the digital edition online via our Apple or Google apps.
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