Yuletide Feasting

Merry Christmas everyone! After all the merry-making of the holiday season, I’ve finally found the time to update you on the festive feasting. I’ve had an abundance of lamb, turkey, canapes and such at various abodes…but today’s entry will be about a simple Christmas dinner I cooked for my close friends. Now let me tell you the story behind my dinner…this year, I thought of giving my friends something different from the usual presents and such, so I devised a question to ask them on the pretext of it being for Charlinary.com:

“What is the 1 thing you could eat every day for the rest of your life?”

These were their answers:

• KIS: Masala Chicken from Samy’s Curry
• KW: Apple Pork Rib Soup
• KY: Boon Tong Kee’s Chicken Rice
• R: Vegetarian Bee Hoon from a Whampoa hawker centre stall

I actually had a fifth guest, but asking her the same question out of the blue would’ve roused suspicion, so I decided on prawns for her. Chicken rice and vegetarian bee hoon were excluded from the menu and replaced by Cajun Fish and Bangers & Mash respectively in order to suit the festive menu. Here’s my menu for the night:

Appetizer
Gambas a la Plancha

Baby Spinach Salad with Cherry Tomatoes & Bacon Bits

Soup
Apple Pork Ribs Soup with Sliced Pear

Entrées
Masala Chicken & Papadum from Samy’s Curry

Bangers & Mash

Cajun Fish Fillet

Dessert
Gingerbread Boy & Girl from Chocz (image taken from Chocz)

It has always been my wish to have a nice quiet dinner with my friends, and I’m glad we managed to have one this Christmas. Thank you all for being present and I hope dinner was to your liking. Rest assured that there’ll be more dinners to come…to my other friends out there, you’ll certainly get a taste of my cooking (once I’ve improved). You can expect recipes from me this 2009 so happy reading! May you all have a awesome year ahead!

/ the images above were taken by KIS & KY.

char’s cooking I

Just thought I’d share some photos of the food I’ve prepared for friends and family…

 My very own Aglio Olio (I’m not much of a purist) that I made for a picnic a while back. It’s got red, green, and yellow capsicum with bacon, prawns, mushrooms, linguine and chilli flakes.

this one’s 1 of 3 appetizers I did for a recent boardgames night at my place…it’s baby potatoes with sour cream, bacon bits, and caviar on top.

The second appetizer is prawn toast! This one took me eons to prepare because I had to blend the prawns into a paste and put in all the chestnuts, egg whites, garlic and chopped parsley. It’s topped with sesame seed and tastes better than it might look…and last but not least, my bacon rolls…this one was the easiest to cook. All you need is strips of streaky bacon, fried egg (sliced into strips) and sliced japanese cucumber. Simply roll it all up. In fact, the vegetables and egg can be substituted with other things so you can get creative with your ingredients.