Christmas Flog

This past week has been an endless array of feasting - starting first on Christmas Eve, when we had a party of 12 at home, celebrating Christmas as well as one of our guest's 35th birthday. Followed of course by 3 days in Penang with non-stop sampling of local food. So now I have major food poisoning symptoms (on top of bad sunburn) but it was worth it!!!

"Go, eat your food with gladness, and drink your wine with a joyful heart, for it is now that God favors what you do."

Ecclesiastes 9:7.

Took a day's leave prior to Christmas Eve, just to run around and get ingredients. Swiss butchery ran out of prime rib more than 2 weeks before Christmas and I had to run to the Butcher instead. More expensive, but quite worth it since I had my heart set on doing a rib roast this Christmas. Plus my grand saga of The Chicken Livers - sent significant other to buy 500 g of chicken liver from market, and true to form, instead of 500 g, he bought 1 kg, and then pops it into the freezer...exactly what I had told him not to do. So the next day I had to trundle off to the market myself to get the fresh liver and to make the XO chicken pate...anyway here is my menu for that night:

Appetizers:
Grilled shrimp and baby spinach salad with truffle oil vinaigrette
Home-Made XO Brandy Chicken Liver Pate on Crostini
Smoked trout with crème fraiche and lumpfish roe
Mozarella and tomato stacks drizzled with balsalmic vinegar
Pears and Parma Ham

Main:
Rosemary and Thyme encrusted standing rib roast
Truffled mashed potatoes
Green beans sautéed with shallots and slivered almonds

Dessert
Cheese platter
Haagen Daz Ice cream cake (courtesy of ENT surgeon friend)

Wines
French Cabernet Sauvignon 1998
Canadian “sticky” dessert wine


The next day, made a thyme roasted turkey with caramelized onion and balsalmic dressing, mushroom and celery stuffing and spiced cranberry sauce. Turkey took a little long to cook, and actually, I preferred my maple syrup roast turkey recipe from last year and will probably go back to that next year. The cranberry sauce and the balsalmic dressing were quite snazzy, however. At least I am not cooking for the new year. Significant other is closing clinic and giving his staff a treat at Hanabi, which amazingly has not jacked up the prices over the festive season ($300 a head buffet at the Lines!!!). So I will lay low this weekend. Just have a cell group party tonight, where I'll finally make my toffee date pudding with my little pudding bowl that I got in Sydney.