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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.