Special Edition Christmas Dinner!!!

First of all, Merry Christmas!

And what Christmas would be complete without eating so much that you can't move?

Here, to help you achieve that goal is the food that I prepared for Christmas dinner this year, and how I went about preparing it... Apologies if some of the pictures seem to be of half eaten foods... I got excited when I finished cooking and started eating before I remembered to take pictures!

Chocolate Covered Cherries

Chocolate cherry...

These weren't a part of christmas dinner as such, but more of a sweet snack to have during the day.

They are very easy to make, you will need:-
Cherries
200 g Cooking chocolate (dark is best)
Half a glass of red wine (possibly rum or brandy could also work)
Equipment needed:-
1 large saucepan
1 bowl that fits into the saucepan
Tin foil
1 plate

To melt the chocolate you half fill the saucepan with water. Place the chocolate into the bowl (break it up first) and then place the bowl of chocolate into the saucepan so it is floating. No water should go into the bowl. Place the saucepan over a high heat and allow the water to boil. Stir the chocolate occasionally until it is melted. Add the wine (or rum or brandy) at this stage and mix it well.

After this you just dip the cherries into the chocolate. Hold them by the stems as you dip them in, and make sure the cherries are well covered. Place the chocolate covered cherries on the tin foil on the plate. When you have filled the plate (try not to let them touch each other) place it into a freezer (or fridge if a freezer is unavailable). Remove them from the freezer after half an hour and they should be ready to eat. If you want at this stage you can place them in the fridge to keep...

Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut squash soup.

I won't give you the full recipe for this here. It is very similar to the recipe that I used for the Spooky Halloween Pumpkin Soup.

For pumpkin I replaced with butternut squash, which has a beautiful flavour and texture. Apart from the squash I added 2 large red peppers (capsicums), one fresh red chilli, and one onion.

The steps to make this, and the seasonings are otherwise the same as in the pumpkin soup recipe which can be found here.

Christmas Dinner

Christmas dinner is something that strikes fear into the hearts of many right thinking people. I am here to tell you that you don't have to be afraid. I will take you through my methods step by step.

Ingredients

I will try to give you all of the ingredients, but there are many, and I may forget some. If I do I apologise in advance. This is the ingredients for 2 people. To feed more people scale up the numbers:-
1 Chicken (mine was small, but for you it depends on how many people you feed.)
150g blue cheese
Stuffing mix
Butter (lots)
Bacon (around 200 g)
1 onion
5 potatoes
Half of a sweet potato
1 large carrot
150 g long beans
4 brussel sprouts
an egg
2 tablespoons sour creme
Salt
Pepper


Chicken and stuffing

Carved chicken and stuffing.

The stuffing first. I used a normal stuffing mix, which may seem to be cheating, but I don't mind. I mixed it as normal and added about 100g of cubed blue cheese and mixed this in well.

I'm sure that if you make your stuffing from scratch, then the addition of blue cheese will have a similar effect. Don't worry if you don't like blue cheese, it just makes the taste of the stuffing much deeper. I also chopped a couple of cloves of garlic and added that to the stuffing mix.

Once the stuffing was made I stuffed it into the cavity of the chicken. The reason that I used chicken was that I was only cooking for two. If you are cooking for more then you can use a traditional turkey, and just use more stuffing and blue cheese.

I placed some butter under the skin of the chicken, and also placed some garlic cloves under the skin. I then added salt and pepper (freshly cracked) to the outside skin of the chicken.

I sliced an onion and a potato into 1cm slices and lined the oven dish with these. I placed the chicken on top of the onions and potato slices. Then I covered the chicken with long slices of middle bacon.

Carrots and beans. Also roast potatoes.

Before I placed the chicken into the oven I added some potatoes for roasting. I diced some potatoes into roughly 2cm squares, boiled them for five minutes, and then coated them in oil and placed them in the spaces around the chicken.

With everything ready I covered the oven dish with tin foil and placed the whole thing into a pre-heated oven.

Timing is Critical

This is a critical stage. Once the chicken (turkey) is in the oven the countdown to serving has begun. Calculate how long you want to roast your meat for, then set yourself an alarm for about 45 minutes before that time. I slow roasted my chicken, so I put it on a heat of 170 for about 2 and a half hours. So my alarm was set for 1 hour 45 minutes after the roast went in to the oven.

In this time you don't have to do anything. You can take it easy, have a few drinks and join the family in doing whatever christmassy things you are doing. Or alternatively you can prepare some of the vegetables for the next phase.

This involves chopping potatoes, and peeling and chopping sweet potato for the mash (I like keeping the skin on normal potatoes for mashed potato). Peeling and slicing carrots. Chopping long beans. And peeling and cutting a cross into the stem of brussel sprouts (thats right... I said brussel sprouts!).

Brussel sprout! It can taste good!

When my alarm went off I first of all took the chicken out of the oven, removed the tin foil from the tray, and the bacon from the chicken. I basted the chicken in the juices and then placed the oven dish back into the oven. I kept the bacon aside and sliced it into 1cm strips.

I then brought a pan of water to the boil and added the brussel sprouts. I boiled them for around 5 minutes, and then removed them from the water (keeping the water for later). I then sliced them in half and kept them aside with the bacon.

Into the boiling water that I still had from the sprouts I placed the diced potatoes and sweet potatoes. I placed this onto a high heat. On top of this pan I placed a steamer with the carrots and long beans. If you don't have a steamer then you can use a collander, and place a lid on top of that. These should take about half an hour to cook.

While I am waiting for the potatoes to cook I took a frying pan and fried the brussel sprouts with the bacon and some butter. This should take no more then 10 minutes. When these are done you can put them all into an oven proof dish and place them in the oven.

Around this time you will want to take out the chicken (or turkey). It will want to sit for about 15 minutes so just place it on a large plate and set it aside while you finish off everything else. Turn off the oven at this point (but keep it closed because you will be using it to keep everything else warm.

The remains of mashed sweet and normal potato.

Take the roast potatoes from the oven tray and place in a heatproof dish. We want to keep some of the potato and onion that was lining the oven tray, but place half of them with the roast potatoes. The roasties can then be returned to the oven to keep warm.

Place the oven dish over a low heat, as this is the base for the gravy. The steamed vegetables and the boiled potatoes should be done by now. Turn off the heat for them. Take the steamed veg and place in a heatproof container and add to the oven.

The water from the potatoes should be added to the oven dish for the gravy. To the potatoes add an egg, some sour creme, a lump of butter and some salt to taste. Then mash all of this up with a masher. Texture is a personal preference, I prefer a coarser texture for my mash. Once this is done then again, add to an oven proof dish and put in the oven.

Thats just gravy.

The last thing to be completed is the gravy. If you like you may add some gravy mix, or cornflour, but this shouldn't be necessary, the potatoe should add all of the thickness necessary. If you have chopped frozen spinach then you can add this at this point, and it will improve any gravy.

If you have a blender then add all of the contents of the oven dish to the blender and give it a short blast. If you don't have a blender then the masher should be good enough.

Place the gravy into something that pours well (a gravy boat for example).

At this stage christmas dinner is ready to be served. My personal preference for christmas dinner is to place all of the food in the middle of the table and allow everyone to help themselves. Either way, you will have to carve the chicken, and take out the stuffing and add it to plates. And tuck in!

This is what your plate should look like at the end!

Cheese Cake

You can't forget dessert, though you may need to leave a couple of hours before you try to eat it!

I made cheese cake for dessert on this occasion. This is kind of traditional in my family for christmas. Once you try it you will understand why.

The recipe for this can be found here. As you can see I have used the kiwi-fruit topping option.

And that is my christmas meal! Not over complicated, but utterly delicious! Maybe you could try it for a sunday roast one day...