John Whaite served up tasty pimped up Christmas sides dishes with carrots cooked in pomegranate molasses, red cabbage cooked in blackcurrant cordial and deeped fried matchstick parsnips on Steph’s Packed Lunch.

The ingredients for the blackcurrant purple cabbage are: 1 small red cabbage (around 900g), 1 red onion, 40g unsalted butter, 150g blackcurrant cordial (undiluted, I use Ribena), 80g balsamic vinegar, 2 star anise flowers (optional, but lovely) and 1tbsp light brown muscovado sugar.

For the parsnip matchstick fries: 3 parsnips, peeled, Oil for deep frying and Fine salt.

For the roasted carrots: 6 carrots, peeled, 2tsp rapeseed oil, 1tbsp pomegranate molasses, plus extra for drizzling, 1tbsp light brown muscovado sugar, 30g unsalted butter and 20g pecans.

See recipes by John in his book titled: Comfort: Food to soothe the soul available from Amazon now.