Merry (almost) Christmas Dear Reader! Today we're celebrating the festive season with friends for a spectacular dinner with a stunning fruit glazed ham, glorious caramelised garlic and parmesan roast potatoes, a prawn cocktail trifle, a wonderful Christmassy salad and the pièce de résistance: a Merveilleux or French reverse pavlova!
Quicklinks to recipes:
Caramelised Garlic and Parmesan Duck Fat Roast Potato
Merveilleux Reverse Pavlova recipe
This year we had our Friends Christmas a week early which was so lovely that I'd like to make it a tradition. Despite my entire family being in Singapore now and Mr NQN's family being vegans I still want to have the Christmas dinner with all of the delicious food like ham, goose and all the trimmings. A couple of months ago Valentina and I talked about having a Hawaiian Christmas as we both came back from Hawaii and the weather and food lends itself to an Australian warm weather Christmas. While it wasn't strictly Hawaiian, it was more a loose guide. We had Valentina, her husband Peter, Queen Viv and Monica and Marco over. Unfortunately Miss America was working due to staff shortages and Nina and Garth were both sick.
Our renovations have pretty much finished just in time (just the rangehood to arrive) which was fortuitous. One of the final touches were the floor to ceiling curtains that really transformed the area and gave the room a feeling of grandness. "I feel like a grown up," I said to Mr NQN. Our builder Peter suggested that it made the room so elegant that we needed to get a grand piano "like Liberace."
Because we had such a big space I wanted to get a big tree. We bought a 2.1 metre prelit tree that sparkled although I think I may need to buy more Christmas decorations now that we have such a big tree. My theme this year was pink and green that were inspired by the gorgeous Christmas crackers I bought from In The Roundhouse. I wanted to make this Christmas a real grown ups Christmas so we also set the table with some beautiful plates and bowls from In The Roundhouse - aren't they gorgeous?
I served my charcuterie chalet with drinks prior to dinner. Nobody wanted to cut into it at first instead skirting around and eating the bocconcini snowballs but once Mr NQN took a knife to it and cut open the roof everyone had a slice of the salami sliced roof. This was so much tastier than I could have imagined and the bread stayed fresh and the cream cheese meant that you didn't need to dip it into anything, it was a ready made snack. I served it with extra crackers and cheese a glorious "Jean Perrin Le Secret des Lys", an incredible creamy cheese I bought from Penny's Cheese Shop in Potts Point.
The main event was a pineapple ham with an amazing double smoked maple infused Australian ham from Sunshine Meats. When they delivered it I wasn't home and Mr NQN messaged me alarmed at its magnitude weighing in at just under 10kgs/22lbs. It only juuust fit into my oven. I saw a chef make a pineapple topped ham using overlapping thin pineapple slices and it reminded me of my upside down pineapple cake so I applied the same technique to this ham. After carefully removing the rind I basted it in a pineapple jalapeno jam and then candied some thin pineapple slices and secured them with cloves. Yes it was a bit of effort doing the pineapple but I loved the effect and it kept the ham so moist.
The reason why I love doing ham is that it only takes an hour in the oven at 180C/350F for a 9 kilo ham so it's actually really quick (we buy hams already smoked so it's already fully cooked). I know some people heat their ham up for longer but it isn't necessary because the ham is already smoked for 12 hours and fully cooked. This was the juiciest and most moist ham I've ever had!
I also made a salad that I became OBSESSED with while in Hawaii. The kale, sweet potato, cranberry and pomegranate salad is not only delicious and in season for us now, but it's also Christmassy looking with the kale looking a bit like holly leaves and the pomegranate like holly berries.
We always like to serve seafood at Christmas and we used the trifle bowl to serve up a prawn cocktail with peeled prawns around the rim with salad and sauce in the centre. This was so easy and a fun way to serve prawns without taking up too much table space on a platter. Plus nobody has to peel prawns this way and the table remains cleaner. I also don't want prawn juice or bits on my new curtains LOL.
While I love turkey, it's so large that with the two of us we couldn't handle the leftovers from a 10kg/22lb ham and a whole turkey (even with giving our guests care packages to take home). So the day before I decided to outsource one item to the professionals so we bought a roast goose from Taste of Shunde because I love their roast goose so much and I don't tend to make goose at home. Mr NQN picked it up that afternoon.
There's no Christmas without roast potatoes and I combined my crunchy duck fat roast potato recipe with two of my favourite things: caramelised garlic and parmesan. I love caramelising garlic but normally I wouldn't bother for an everyday lot of potatoes but for a special occasion like Christmas it would be perfect. I roasted three heads of garlic until soft and sweet, mixed it with the melted duck fat and coated the par boiled potatoes in it. Then I covered it all with loads of parmesan cheese and roasted it all on high heat. The end result was crunchy, potatoes flavoured with parmesan and caramelised garlic bound together with crunchy melted parmesan.
That morning I baked some bread-I've been busy working hard trying to make a version of the Cheesecake Factory's brown bread. Stay tuned Dear Reader! I think I've almost got it!
Valentina brought over some delicious avocado egg rolls (spring rolls) with the most divine dipping sauce a la The Cheesecake Factory. I can't wait to remake this for you. She also made a delicious pineapple salsa in half a hollowed out pineapple.
She also brought over some Kalua pork that she smoked in some banana leaves that she procured from her neighbour! The meat was so tender and had a lovely flavour from the leaves.
Dessert was Valentina's delicious pineapple upside down cake that we ate with vanilla ice cream. That brings me to a cake that I made but I didn't serve because I didn't want to take away the spotlight from Valentina's cake. My Christmas dessert is called a Merveilleux which is essentially a French reverse pavlova. It's uses two meringue discs sandwiched with cream and then layered with cream on the outside and white chocolate shavings.
Usually it's made with dark chocolate shavings and coffee flavoured but I made mine passion fruit and white chocolate flavoured and made all the chocolate curls by hand (and that was the hardest part). It's also fantastic because you can freeze the whole thing and then defrost it that morning and serve it up that night so you can make it ahead of time.
I was also very, very excited to receive Matilda's beautiful Italian Christmas cookies. Her biscottini and ciambelleette are made using a family recipe handed down from her mum and many generations before her from her hometown of Civitavecchia, the port of Rome. Matilda bakes them with her daughter Stephanie and Gabriella and for the last 10 years or so she has sent me a box of her treasured cookies for Christmas. They're part of our family Christmas and everyone in my extended family looks forward to them. Marco tried some and he gave them a big thumbs up.
What I love about a friends Christmas is that while you can't choose family, you choose your friends. There's no arguing politics with your mad uncle and you don't have to brace yourself for argument so Friends Christmas is a relaxing affair. While everyone at the table sees each other at my Halloween party it's different sitting down properly and talking. I love my friends and I loved that everyone is interesting and interested in each other and I absolutely love our conversations - they're spirited, meaningful but happy!
Also can I just say that having a chef friend like Monica comes in very handy around Christmas time too? She carved the enormous ham like an absolute pro (she had a lot of practice carving meat at a catering job).
The two boys Teddy and Milo were very well behaved. Teddy remembered Queen Viv as she always comes over with Miss America and Miss America always feeds Teddy pate under the table. "I'm afraid it's a case of mistaken identity," said Queen Viv to Teddy.
As for my sweet little cuddle bunny Milo I couldn't really give him a cuddle because my dress had a lot of netting to it so he just curled up and napped on my actual feet under the table. They did nab some prize pieces of goose meat so I think they're in full support of Friends Christmas too!
So tell me Dear Reader, do you have Friends Christmas? How many Christmases do you have?
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