Countdown: Tony Jackman’s personal top 5 recipes of 2025

My personal picks for the top five recipes of 2025 take us on a bit of a world tour, from Italy to Brazil and on to France and Italy – or more accurately a hybrid of the two nations – before we end up in Durban (or perhaps South India) with a roast chicken that ranks in the top tier of the hundreds of chickens I’ve roasted in my lifetime.

It’s a strange route but that’s the order in which I have ranked this entirely subjective list of what I think were my best recipes of 2025.

Let’s start in Italy, and fifth position, building up to my Number 1 pick for 2025. Don’t peek – rather enjoy the build-up…

#5

Italian wedding soup, a delicious happily-ever-after

Names can be misleading: this soup has nothing whatsoever to do with weddings – not even Italian ones. The only marriage in an Italian wedding soup is between the vegetables, meatballs and pasta it contains.

“Italian wedding soup” is a translation of minestra maritata (soup marriage), but it’s the sofrito, the Italian equivalent of France’s mirepoix (onion, celery, carrots), that are spliced with meatballs and small pasta in a broth, that make the marriage work. So it’s a rather saucy ménage à trois, rather than a conventional marriage.

#4

Picadillo and Brazilian rice – my favourite find of the year

Savoury mince. That’s the nub of what this really is. But there are different kinds of savoury mince, in many parts of the world. On toast, for breakfast. Cape Malay curried mince. Underneath mashed potato in a cottage or shepherd’s pie. Even our own bobotie is a variation on a theme of savoury minced meat.

But in the Latin-American countries, they have something called picadillo. It’s a ground (minced) beef dish with plenty of spices, often with green olives in it, sometimes raisins too.

And the Brazilian rice that goes with it is just sublime.

#3

Florentine chicken, a French-Italian hybrid

Chicken breast fillets are cooked with spinach (beloved of old Fiorenze) in a cream sauce, and finished with Parmesan, in this classic dish which belongs in the repertoire of every home kitchen.

The term Florentine refers not to chicken or even the cream sauce in this preparation but to a dish made with spinach. Sole Florentine as made by Auguste Escoffier, grandpère of the French kitchen ranking system, is a famed example.

#2

Seven-hour lamb shank and date tagine

I didn’t think I’d be able to fit these four large lamb shanks into my tagine, but with a bit of careful rearranging, there they were, out of sight behind the conical lid.

This dish is pretty luxurious, thanks to the price of lamb, and this is not a cheap cut either.

#1

Curry-butter roast chicken, a melding of two favourites

This recipe marries two of our favourite things in one dish – a perfect roast chicken with all the flavour of a good curry.

It starts with mixing your own masala from equal quantities of a range of spices. These are then mixed into softened butter (not melted).

Once the bird has been cleaned and dried, this compound butter is smeared all over the skin, as well as underneath the breast skin so that the flesh can absorb its colour and flavour.

And that, dear TGIFood people, is a fine way to treat your friends and family this festive season. Happy happy, merry merry. See you at the other side of the Christmas tree. DM