As Christmas approaches, we wanted to hear from one of Britain’s most respected food writers, Diana Henry, on how she approaches the festive table. A long-standing HG Walter customer, Diana shares our belief that great cooking starts with great ingredients, and that Christmas is best approached with calm, planning and a sense of pleasure rather than pressure. With decades of experience and an instinctive understanding of flavour, she brings clarity to the festive chaos - from getting ahead in the days before Christmas to building rituals that make the day itself feel generous and unhurried. We sat down with Diana to talk about her Christmas table: why goose remains her bird of choice, how she keeps the day running smoothly, and the dishes she looks forward to long after the plates have been cleared. What’s your go-to centrepiece for Christmas? It has to be the goose, because that is what we’re all focussed on. It’s stuffed with prunes and apples – it’s a German recipe – and bread and is served with little baked apples. Any clever tips that help things run smoothly? I think this really is the best way to spend your time in the days running up to Christmas Day – make as much as possible in advance. Make the cranberry sauce, brandy butter and the pudding, obviously. I also make the gravy using stock made with the goose neck and chicken stock (I start making chicken stock and freezing it whenever we eat chicken in the run up to Christmas). The gravy is usually the last thing to be done when you are trying to get everything else into serving dishes. That’s another thing – choose the serving dishes you’re going to use on Christmas Eve and put a label on them to indicate what it will be used for. It means other people can help you. I get the glassware out as well – you might find, if you are using old and valuable glasses, that they need to be washed. My table is in the kitchen – if I had a separate table I would set it on Christmas Eve (that’s what we did at home with my parents). Getting ahead is really key. Then you can concentrate on the champagne. Do a timetable for the day with an ideal time at which you’re aiming to serve. Include the resting time for the goose in this. How do you make the day enjoyable, not stressful? Any traditions or rituals? We all love Christmas music and have that on constantly (the choral stuff, not constant Slade!) I refuse to panic – if things are going slowly, I just run with it. I have a time on which I’d like to serve the meal but what does it matter if we’re running late? Bread sauce is the thing that my children have strong opinions about – not enough nutmeg, too much nutmeg – so we all taste that as it’s being made. For breakfast every year we have the best sausages and bacon I can find and we have the Christmas meal at about 7pm. Are there any unexpected flavour combinations you love at Christmas that people might not think to try? I do red cabbage every year which is flavoured with plum jelly and star anise. I adore the dish. The vegetables is the area in which I will try new things. I could go on adding to them but you have to be strict about not adding more. I think keen cooks always want to add just one more thing. What do you love cooking in the days after Christmas? Like everybody else we love sandwiches – it’s important to remember to buy leaves for these, it’s easy to forget when you’re busy with everything else. Goose doesn’t provide as much meat as turkey so you don’t have to go on finding ways to use it up every day. I am always glad to cook southeast Asian dishes in this period – I long for completely different flavours, sharp, hot, fresh – and usually make soup as well. These are days of soup, salads and the rest of the sweet things. I also love eggs in this period, eggs fried with chilli flakes and sage, with parmesan on top, and warm eggs mayo with hot sauce!