No-oven Christmas menu

With drinks: Smoked salmon toasts with dill cream; Mini cherry tomato, mozzarella and basil skewers; Olives, tapenade and breadsticks. To start: Homemade salmon gravlax, lemon cream. For the main: Beef and porcini stew with homemade mash. For the cheese course: Cheese board. For dessert: Vanilla raspberry ice cream yule log.

For 6 guests, the big picture: fresh salmon fillet (420 g), stewing beef (1.2 kg), Brie de Meaux (140 g) and vanilla ice cream (60 cl). The full grocery list, aisle by aisle, is right above.

In two trips. Three days before, the stuff that keeps (15 items: produce, dairy, bakery, pantry and frozen). Then the day before, the fresh stuff (14 items, like stewing beef, fresh salmon fillet and smoked salmon). You'll dodge the last-minute crowds.

To sit down at 8:15 PM, the first step of the big day starts at 6:15 PM: take the cheeses out of the fridge (they should be at room temperature). Every step of the game plan is timed backward from when you sit down to eat.

This menu is pork-free and oven-free. It's not vegetarian: for a meat-free table, there's a full vegetarian menu. A kid counts as half a serving in the quantities.

Yep, from 2 to 12 guests: change the number at the top of the page, and the quantities, the grocery list, the budget and these answers all follow.