After speaking at length with a French person about traditional English cuisine the other day (conversation - abridged - went something along the lines of "you don't have any good food", "yes we do"), we thought we'd start off December by pointing you to some classic British food you could dish up for the festive season.

Where better to start than Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls's ten bird roast...or what is sometimes known as "bird in a bird". A feat of such immense magnitude that it will have your guests with mouths open when you present it on the table. With the ability to feed up to 30 (or a family of 6 with 2 hungry teenagers), the dish requires that you basically stuff as many varying sized game and poultry one inside the other and cook till its done (again, this is the abridged version).

We want to see a sweet version for the desert menu. Pud in a pud. Now that would be something.

You can get the full recipe here from the River Cottage website.