Merry Christmas 2011

 

 Decided to cook a Christmas dinner because well, commitments.

Our Christmas ended up to be a two day feast. This is one of it and another was the following day at my elder sisters house. She had her in-laws over and we had fun.

But preparing this dinner was not easy task. :\

My grocery list for stuff we don't have includes the following.

Had to buy them early because nothing is open during Christmas day.

2 small brown onions, halved, finely chopped
55g (1/3 cup) unsalted pistachio kernels, finely chopped
245g (3 1/2 cups) fresh breadcrumbs (made from day-old bread)
2 eggs, lightly whisked
1/3 cup finely chopped fresh continental parsley
    250g dried maccheroni pasta (see note)

1 1/5kg Chicken
    4 cooked chicken drumsticks
    100g baby spinach leaves
    300ml light thickened cream

4 strips bacon
1 bunch of chives
sour cream
    3/4 cup semi-dried tomatoes
    1 1/2 cups grated parmesan cheese
    1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
 2 cups (500ml) thickened cream
    1 x 250g packet Arnott’s Choc Ripple biscuits
    Raspberries or seasonal berries to decorate

(probably my longest grocery list every)

 

According to Sam, it rains every Christmas lol and so this year it hailed while we were prepping. 

Hailing is really quite common here.

 Nearing the end it was so messy. -_- couldn't stand the clutter.

 Stuffing at its second stage. I like how the cranberry makes it look so colourful. 

 I'm super crazy over sun dried tomatoes.So good.

I usually put whatever I want inside it. Left over roast chicken, sun dried tomatoes, bacon, whatever you like really.

 We had a lot of problems with the stuffing because we didn't have a food processor to chop up the bread to make breadcrumbs. So we resorted to a variety of measures.

 Using a microplane and scissors.

At first I thought we wouldn't succeed because of the amount of ingredients we had to chop, dice, peel, wash, and cook looked so overwhelming. Thank goodness we prevailed at the end.

Looking forward to this sort of challenge again. well not so soon.