Bila Orang Tak Selalu Blog, Blog!: Christmas and the Meal

Showing posts with label Christmas and the Meal. Show all posts

Thursday, July 31, 2008

The Delayed Christmas Story- Part 3: Sweet Dreams Before Christmas

Preparing for Christmas was a lot a lot of joy, mainly because the whole day was spent basically in the kitchen, with lots and lots of food breaks in between. The next morning, Nadia and I greeted Auntie Laila/ She, of course, was already up and about in the kitchen, excited about the day after. The Christmas feast things were all laid out in front of us, and we got started right away after a light breakfast of crumpets, chucked away in the oven for a bit with a slice of (was it) Cheddar (?) Well the essence is, crumpets and cheese go well together, let me tell you that ;)

Never thought I'd blogged about crumpets, gosh. But frankly, that WAS the first time I had it. I had to wait for someone I consider British enough to introduce me to it; wouldn't be caught dead eating it cicah sambal or something.. would i? hehe. That, or I simply haven't gotten around to grabbing a pack of 'em at Sainsbury's.

After Breakfast, we prepared the "winter" vegetables. I mean I have had been cooking for Christmas before when I spent my first ever Christmas chez les Bellards in Winter 2004, but they were French and they liked MEAT. Meat with acidic, sweet fruity sauce. Not that that alone was a fair judgement for French culinaire in general, but... I would like to think the British were more traditional and wholesome in preparing complements for the protagonist of the day; The Turkey! (more later!)
They consisted of

Parsnips
Carrots
Brussel Sprouts (My first experience cooking and paying much attention to them, think I have eaten them before, somewhere, sometime)

Nadia takmo kalah; rushed to susun2 the carrots nicely.

I later found out that I LOVE THEM. People growing on this side of the world tend to have bad childhood experiences with them (like Broccolis which I so totally didn't and couldn't understand until now), but for lucky me, I met BS much later in life, when I can appreciate the special gout and very very particular taste of its juice when cooked succulently enough. Here's a quick tip to preparing Brussel Sprouts I found, though I prefer how Auntie Laila does it; boiling them with out having to half (or quartering them), ie; as they are.

Turned out preparing the vegetables were really simple so Nadia and I took our day off of the kitchen to explore a bit of Auntie Laila and Uncle Brian's place; the Redstone House, a wonderful house to call a Christmas getaway.

While occasionally going back in checking out how the vegetables were going.. ;)

The parnsips cut into battonets, chopped up and s ready to be grilled.

A glimpse of the prepared carrots

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The Delayed Christmas Story- Part 2: The Stuffing Story

Till late in the evening before a scrumptious dinner of (greasy) but really really good and traditional fish and chips, (or was it after, can't really recall) we were already on our way to making that big Christmas Feast we were planning for 25th December. Auntie Laila decided that Nadia and I would be of help with the Bread Sauce and the stuffings for the Turkey (!!!).

To make bread sauce, we started of by sticking cloves (lots if u like) into a ball (?) of skinned onion and boiled it on milk. You would think at first whaaa?? but you wouldn't believe if I tell you how much the uncut onion with sticking cloves in it is able to infuse its tastes and spicy twang flavour into the milk.

With Auntie Laila's lush sprigs of fresh bay leaves (which has an awesome! smell) and ground nutmeg, I was loving how something as "dairy" and "sweet" as milk has turned spicy and savoury.

Grounding nutmeg the traditional Kampung way- with Pestar and Mortle's help

The thing about western cooking I love is how distinctly (from Asian cooking) the spices are prepared. Asians LOVE mincing and dicing and knocking and chopping up onions and garlic and ginger so as to ensure flavour seeps through into the cooking while sticking up dried spice items into a ball of onion and throwing leaves into a concoction does nothing less than just the same thing. (Please note that this is very much an amateur level observation, merely from my minimal unprofessional experience)

Again, I ripped off Delia's recipe for bread sauce ;)

Cut the onion in half and stick the cloves in it – how many you use is a personal matter; I happen to like a pronounced flavour of clove. If you don't like them at all, you can use some freshly grated nutmeg instead. Place the onion – studded with cloves – plus the bay leaf and the peppercorns, in a saucepan together with the milk. Add some salt then bring everything up to boiling point. Take off the heat, cover the pan and leave in a warm place for the milk to infuse for two hours or more.

When you're ready to make the sauce, remove the onion, bay leaf and peppercorns and keep them on one side. Stir the breadcrumbs into the milk and add 1 oz (25 g) of the butter. Leave the saucepan on a very low heat, stirring now and then, until the crumbs have swollen and thickened the sauce – about 15 minutes. Now replace the clove-studded onion, the bay leaf and the peppercorns and again leave the pan in a warm place until the sauce is needed.

Just before serving, remove the onion and spices. Reheat gently then beat in the remaining butter and the cream and taste to check the seasoning. Pour into a warm serving jug.

And so we started off rolling the sage and onion stuffing and raspberry (if I recall correctly) into balls. As I learned, they weren't even stuffed at all (I thought we would chuck these into the body of the bird). Anyhow, courtesy of Mr Paxo, we didn't have to get our hands dirty making these from scratch ;) (A classic, "just-add-water story!) Well, ok, we did get them dirty MAKING the round balls, but hey it was good good fun! Well worth the sticky hands.

We then glazed the stuffing balls with melted butter. This, as I later discovered while eating them on Christmas day, gives the crunchy golden "fried" effect to the stuffings after they are, well not so literally of course, "thrown" into the oven.

Gorgeous, gorgeous little things aren't they?

Next, the day before Christmas in Part 3! ;)

Monday, July 21, 2008

The Delayed Christmas Story- Part 1

I had pictures from last Christmas sitting in my hard disk for the longest time ever, and every time I was reminded of them, I told myself I was going to what was due of me for the longest time- and yet always found a reason to delay it further. Now, almost 25th July, a good 7 months after Christmas 2007, I finally convinced myself I had no other reason to laze off and got my butt to start typing away about the most gorgeous Christmas meal I've ever had- Christmas in France was amazing, if only I knew and understood half of what I was eating!!! ;) And of course, it was too long ago that I didn't have the conscience to photograph those wondrous salmon medallions and red berry sauced poultry...aahhh.
Lol, anyhow, this time, Christmas was at Uncle Brian's and Auntie Laila's and they were THE BEST PEOPLE to spend Christmas with if you want a true true traditional meal. And I am talking about Christmas puddings, cakes, roasted vegetables, bread sauce and apple ciders. (Well they had proper liquor, ones I can't get my hands on- but no worries! the rest of the meal made up for it!!)
So on the first day, when Nadia and I arrived at the Redstone House (Auntie Laila and Uncle Brian's place in Ashford near Canterbury), we were greeted with delightful little things called mince pies. For newbies like me, mincemeat, in this sense, are not at all beef! The mincemeat fillings of mince pies are actually a mix of dried fruits and spices (wiki definition: mincemeat). These little tarts are soft, crumbly short-crusted pies, powdered with icing sugar.

Here's a quick recipe: Delia's Christmas Mince Pies ;)

Make up the pastry by sifting the flour and salt into a mixing bowl and rubbing the fats into it until the mixture resembles fine crumbs. Then add just enough cold water to mix to a dough that leaves the bowl clean. Leave the pastry to rest in a polythene bag in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes, then roll half of it out as thinly as possible and cut it into two dozen 3 inch (7.5 cm) rounds, gathering up the scraps and re-rolling. Then do the same with the other half of the pastry, this time using the 2½ inch (6 cm) cutter.

Now grease the patty tins lightly and line them with the larger rounds. Fill these with mincemeat to the level of the edges of the pastry. Dampen the edges of the smaller rounds of pastry with water and press them lightly into position to form lids, sealing the edges. Brush each one with milk and make three snips in the tops with a pair of scissors. Bake near the top of the oven for 25-30 minutes until light golden brown. Cool on a wire tray and sprinkle with icing sugar. When cool, store in an airtight container.

This recipe is taken from Delia Smith’s Christmas.

Auntie Laila had the most amazing kitchen ever, small but just nice and comfortable to prepare a cottage feast. What I love most is the fact that it is situated RIGHT in front of the main door to the house, ie: You enter the house and face the kitchen glass-paned door! It only shows how the kitchen is the most important and also welcoming room in the house- a prospect I absolutely adore!

For example, I love this ancient (but still bright, shiny and well-oiled) weighing machine that we used to weigh up ingredients to make a Pavlova (or Meringue). It was my first time making Pavlova, so I was excited! She chose to make Brown Sugar Pavlova, a basic nevertheless able to give you the traditional old cottage-ish flavour, and then decorate it lushly with nectarines and fruits. (Uncle Brian was happily sent off to Sainsbury's many times to get stocks of fresh berries and breakfast things for this!)

So we were off to making my first Pavlova! Of course, carefully not to taint the fragile egg white batter with water, we used the food processor to do the beating of the brown sugar and egg white.

We then had to use good old hand muscles to beat them carefully as to avoid the batter to fall. The battle was between Auntie Laila, me and Nadia (to see who would last longest), and the experienced and still awfully strong Auntie Laila won!