Tuesday, November 27, 2012

First Christmas dinner for 2012

xmas dinner

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For the last 5 years since we graduated from university, a group of us uni mates will meet up for a big Christmas dinner reunion. We rotate houses and do it potluck style to minimise the cooking stress on the host. The host always provide the main course while the rest cook/bake/buy the starters, desert and cheese. This year was our turn and we had our Christmas dinner last weekend - the earliest we had ever done so far as conflicting diaries dictates.

In typical fashion, Scott took over the kitchen as he doesn't trust me (to put it mildly, we have different 'style' of cooking - he is an anal cook, while I am from the 'bish bash bosh - agak agak' school of cooking). Tempers are bound to flare and unsurprisingly some choice one-liners were exchanged in the heat.

Me: * carefully lines the roasting tray with aluminium foil then puts the roasting rack on before heaving the turkey on it*
Scott: Where in the instructions does it say use a roasting rack?!?
Me: It doesn't...I didn't want the turkey to swim in it's fat half way through
Scott: Where in the £$%^&*()" instructions does it say use a roasting rack?!? *Tries to put the turkey in the oven, rips the aluminium foil, spat some abuse, takes it out and removes the roasting rack
Me: £$%^ £$%^ &*^$!!
Scott: %%& *^%£ !£$%!!

Should the turkey be roasted on a roasting rack or not? Is it in the instructions? Trivial but yes....different 'style'.

In instances like this, we practice our fail-proof 'time-out' session (marriage tip #1: 5 minutes of not speaking really does work instead of carrying on with the verbal abuse, Marriage tip #2: husband always apologies first), calm down before our first guest arrive and pulled out the stops on the main course.

We served:
- turkey (of course)
- duck (a surprise 'bird' for the evening)
- roast potatoes, celeriac and carrots
- roast maple Brussels sprouts with pancetta
- red cabbage braised with pears
- homemade stuffing
- naked sausages (meaning not pigs in a blanket but your bog standard sausage-ha!)

We had Mediterranean tart to start, apricot pie & chocolate cake for dessert and a huge platter of cheese with Port. The aim is to reach food coma before the music starts to burn off some calories. We often have an interlude between dessert and cheese and do Secret Santa. This year's top present goes to the horse head and Wayne Rooney's mask. It provided endless un-PC dancing moves involving the horse and Wayne with strong cocktails being originally mixed by your's truly Scott.

The party ended rather abruptly when the porter rang the doorbell at 2.30am and told us off for singing 'Jenny from the block' a wee bit too loud. Bring on 2013 xmas reunion!

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