Early Christmas Dinner
This morning, I'm suffering from the food equivalent of a hangover, having eaten way, way too much last night. The g-d and g-s came round for a meal, before they went off for Christmas proper, she to her boyfriend in Boston and he to his parents in Wales. the original plan had been to exchange presents and then decorate the tree and put up the lights (where I could make use of the g-s's height), but in the end we just exchanged presents, overate, made cannibal jokes* and showed each other unsuitable seasonal stuff on YouTube**, so I'll do the tree today.
I went a bit mad on the food, as usual, even doing a (for me) fancy-schmancy starter, of hard-boiled quail's egg, with black olives and zata'ar, swhich the g-s hoovered up almost without noticing. He then asked for more olives and ended up eating them straight from the tub. So much for gracious living. I'd copied the main course was baked ham with roasted root veg, drawn mainly from this meal in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/04/jack-monroe-budget-christmas. Minus the horrible-sounding chicken liver and raisin casserole, obviously and with Cumberland sauce for the ham. There was also braised red cabbage with caraway and apple and a winter coleslaw with sweet white cabbage and walnuts, so it was all pretty seasonal, healthy and cabbage-based. For pudding we had one of my Christmas puddings done like the ones Heston Blumenthal devised for Waitrose, with a clementine embedded in the middle. This was surprisingly good; lighter and not as overwhelmingly orangey as I had feared, the cooked orange made a tasty marmaladey relish, and it cost a good deal less than the £15-odd that Waitrose are charging.
*The g-d says I'm not allowed to watch Hannibal any more - I think it was the evil chocolate reindeer I gave her...
**The winner was this. Sorry.
I went a bit mad on the food, as usual, even doing a (for me) fancy-schmancy starter, of hard-boiled quail's egg, with black olives and zata'ar, swhich the g-s hoovered up almost without noticing. He then asked for more olives and ended up eating them straight from the tub. So much for gracious living. I'd copied the main course was baked ham with roasted root veg, drawn mainly from this meal in the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/dec/04/jack-monroe-budget-christmas. Minus the horrible-sounding chicken liver and raisin casserole, obviously and with Cumberland sauce for the ham. There was also braised red cabbage with caraway and apple and a winter coleslaw with sweet white cabbage and walnuts, so it was all pretty seasonal, healthy and cabbage-based. For pudding we had one of my Christmas puddings done like the ones Heston Blumenthal devised for Waitrose, with a clementine embedded in the middle. This was surprisingly good; lighter and not as overwhelmingly orangey as I had feared, the cooked orange made a tasty marmaladey relish, and it cost a good deal less than the £15-odd that Waitrose are charging.
*The g-d says I'm not allowed to watch Hannibal any more - I think it was the evil chocolate reindeer I gave her...
**The winner was this. Sorry.
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