Happy Christmas
Published:
December 25, 2008 at 12:34am
Very best wishes to you all. I’m off to grapple with those stocking-fillers (in my family, Father Christmas keeps calling until the day you leave home) and then it’s up tomorrow to cook lunch, which will probably be eaten around 3pm by the time everyone wakes up and gets their act together. I’m roasting pheasant for the first time since there’s just a few of us this year and that makes it manageable. I have some Malta-reared beef fillet on stand-by in case I make a hash of it.
I have a professional (and personal) interest in food, so do please let me know what you ate for Christmas lunch, whether it was timpana/lasagne and turkey or something different.
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Pheasant with foie gras sauce. Qmmm. And truffle-flavoured mashed potatoes. Double qmm qmmm. And oysters preceding the whole lot. Hmm hmmm.
Hello Daphne,
I passed by to wish you a very merry Christmas… May you, and all your family, have a brilliant day. Xxx
Regarding food… both my parents will be cooking (both love it) and supposedly we are having lasagne for primo and a kind of big roll of meat, stuffed with other ingredients as a secondo. Then the dessert will follow…
Again, all my warmest wishes,
[Daphne – Best wishes to you, too.]
Nixtieqlek Milied hieni.
I am taking care of the lentil soup. We are eating lentil soup, lasagne, roast beef and if there is some room left, gateau.
We had goose. In France they celebrate Christmas, and thus have their Christmas meal, on Christmas Eve. Not sure if goose is traditional, but I tell you what, they don’t half eat here. It’s not my first Christmas meal in France, but I still can’t get used to amount of food. So many courses, that by the third course you’re full, and they haven’t brought out the bird yet!! It’s all about discipline though. You have to try and not eat too much in the first few courses.
I ate fish and chips at a promenade cafe on Bondi Beach. My wife had the steak sandwich. Not much Christmas fare as you know it – or even as we know it in past Christmas lunches – but nice atmosphere just the same with young locals resplendent in Santa hats and beachwear; backpackers and tourists alike enjoying the convivial, festive day in a relaxed manner. We didn’t venture onto the beach proper as our attire was on the conservative/casual side rather than for sand walking, but it was as usual full of bronzed bodies savouring the midday sun.
I ate some toast with butter and some tea with a drop of milk. I might make a chicken sandwich in the afternoon and fix myself a plate of pasta tonight to eat while watching a movie.
All the family is gathering for Christmas lunch. We usually have it at 2pm. This year like always it is going to be: toast with duck pate, brodu, roast turkey with all the trimmings (stuffed) with bread sauce, Brussels sprouts, and Yorkshire pudding instead of roast potatoes, then trifle laced with sherry……..we end up plastered with the sherry that mum throws in. Then in the evening we gather again for mince pies, mulled wine and Christmas logs. VIVA d-dieta ghada!
HAPPY CHRISTMAS to all.
Chicken Veronique (link:http://www.schwartz.co.uk/recipedetail.cfm?id=2089)
Daphne,
For us, it was a bit untraditional. We had baked fresh clams oregano and duck confit quesadilla. For dessert – a piece of warm apple and sun-dried cranberry crisp with coffee ice cream.
Merry Christmas to you and your family. You have become a member of our family.
[Daphne – Merry Christmas to you and yours, too.]
Hi Daph
How did your lunch go?
Thank God no turkey this year…don’t like the damn bird…
We went to my aunty’s and she cooked beef with mushrooms and chestnuts…delish.
[Daphne – The pheasants turned out amazing. I didn’t roast them, after all – tried another way instead and it worked very well.]
Good morning Daphne and all. I see everybody had a late start today :) In any case, I hope you had a lovely Christmas. I thank you for the Christmas wishes the other day. I noticed my message had a large number of typos. It certainly looked like it was written before the last dash out of the office to finish off shopping for stocking fillers:) (And at the moment I”m melting chocolate on the stove – so there might be a couple more here).
Anyway Christmas lunch for us consisted in a lovely apple and chestnut soup (divine), my mum-in-law’s excellent cannelloni (for which she prepares everything herself) and beef Wellington – again divine. Dessert consisted in a lovely pear baked in some heavenly concoction which transports you to another dimension as soon as it hits your taste-buds.
Am preparing dinner for tomorrow evening – 15 people coming over. Have not yet finalised menu but I’m doing shortly a spot of grocery shopping to fill in the odd gaps in my ingredients list.
I also have a personal interest in food – whence my continuous battle of the bulge derives (apart from faulty genes, I have to admit).
I hope everybody is having a great time and I really hope that nobody is foolish enough to drink and drive.
Merry Christmas and a wonderful new year to everybody!
[I have a professional (and personal) interest in food, so do please let me know what you ate for Christmas lunch, whether it was timpana/lasagne and turkey or something different.]
Fillet of beef slowly braised in red wine with pimento, coriander, juniper and laurel
Red cabbage with fillets of orange
Potato/celery puree with cranberries
Vanilla/wild cherry yoghurt ice-cream
Gewürztraminer d’Alsace
ps: How did you find Christmas time to update your blog? Did you hire a chef de cuisine or was Marie Benoit kind enough to cook for your family?
[Daphne – I didn’t go anywhere near my computer yesterday.]
A very belated Merry Christmas to you Daphne, as well as to all your bloggers. As an expat your blog is a great way of keeping informed on things Maltese.(Even if I don’t agree with you all of the time!)
We had capon with all the trimmings. I find turkey to be really dry, boring and tasteless. Am interested to know how you cooked the pheasant or are you going to include the recipe in your magazine?
[Daphne – You’ll need one heavy-bottomed frying-pan for each bird. In each one, heat butter and olive oil. Cook the birds in this, turning them from side to side, until they are golden-brown. They give off plenty of juices. Meanwhile, chop carrots, onions, green olives and mushrooms. Stir the carrots and onions together with chopped fresh sage, chopped fresh rosemary needles and some fresh bay leaves. Dice some smoked ham, or any other cooked ham and mix it in with the carrots, onions and herbs. If you haven’t any cooked or smoked ham, dice bacon and fry it lightly before stirring it in. When the birds are browned all round, remove them from the pans. Pour all the juices into one pan and stir the diced veg, herbs and ham mix into this. Let it simmer until everything is softened and nicely cooked. In another pan, fry the mushrooms with garlic in some butter. In yet another pan, fry the chopped olives in olive oil. When all are done, mix together the mushrooms, olives and ham/carrot/onion/herbs. Put the birds together into a very large and deep clay ovenproof dish, so that they are not touching each other. Pour the mixture together with the ample juices over and around them. Cover the dish tightly with aluminium foil, and put it into a preheated oven at gas mark 3 for 90 minutes or until you are ready to eat. Even if you leave it longer, it won’t dry out. The meat falls off the bone.]
Gluhwein all round followed by
baked mushrooms filled with Gozitan sausage & topped with mozzarella, served with lemon mayonnaise
then
roast turkey, roast wild boar fillets with mustard crust,
mange tout, ratatouille, lentil salad, potatoes, baked onions
and for dessert
sliced oranges in spicy wine with fresh cream plus Christmas pudding (no brandy butter …. ran out of time)
Thanks Daphne. I will try this some time.
I had an AirMalta in-flight Christmas lunch:
Slightly stale roll with excessively salty salami avec added artificial colouring, and slice of processed cheese. Dry one-inch diameter “mincepie” for dessert.
We should have mutinied and taken over the damn plane.
“Grazzi talli ghazilt li ttir ma’ AirMalta.”
There’s no other airline flying to this rock, luv.
Lorna – “my mum-in-law’s excellent cannelloni (for which she prepares everything herself)”
Let me guess:
You’re either a newly-wed, or have a one-in-a-million mother-in-law. (None of my long-married female – and I stress the female – friends/acquaintances would ever dream of praising their mother-in-law, let alone do so publicly.) I daresay, however, that (knowing her) our bloghost would probably be an entirely different kettle of fish.
For us it was different this year.
First it was:
Broccoli cream cheese & pear and almond soup.
Then: luxury nut & seed Loaf with cranberry, apple & brandy sauce, rosemary roast potatoes with garlic, carmelised parsnips & baby onions, lemony leeks and sprouts. Finally, plum pudding with custard. May sound boring to many of you, but it truly was a delicious vegetarian feast.
Happy New Year to you all.
Ours is more of a traditional family/extended family meeting so food with such a number of people is not more than passable but who cares – I get to meet relatives whom I do not have the time to meet during the year and catch up with the family news. Every year a few drop out (pass away) and others arrive on the scene. Hope you all had a marvellous Christmss and spared a thought for those who are less fortunate than us.
We had:
Pea & mint soup
Moroccan spiced lamb shanks (grilled)
Pork cutlets in honey mustard sauce (oven-baked)
Baked aubergines (with cumin, coriander) + home-made mint yogurt
Zucchini with molten goat’s cheese
Roast potatoes & onions with chilli flakes
Followed by a cheese board and home-made qaghaq ta l-ghasel and Christmas cake
A Happy New Year to all:)
I’m sad to say I left most of the Swedish Christmas food behind, with the exception of some Swedish meatballs and some rice porridge in the morning, which I then add some whipped cream to, to make ris à la malta. Apart from this turkey and pasta.
God jul!
[Daphne – I think we should explain that ris a la Malta is the traditional Swedish Christmas dessert, which is similar to English rice pudding, but with the juice from imported Maltese oranges stirred in, hence the name. Of course, Maltese oranges no longer come from Malta, but from Tunisia – another field in which we’ve failed miserably at capitalising on our assets.]
Dear Daphne
I wish you and your loved ones and all your bloggers the true meaning of Christmas today and always and a prosperous new year
Anthony
[Daphne – Thank you, Anthony; and the same to you all, too.]
Hi.
This year I opted for a change in menu – from bland old turkey to fish. We had smoked salmon, tuna and swordfish carpaccio with some king prawns and Parma ham.
Next we had salmon ravioli. I wanted to have those large fresh ravioli from Pavi, but I hadn’t been there for a while and was disappointed on Christmas Eve to find out that the fresh pasta shop at Pavi had closed down. Had to settle for the small frozen packets. Turned out delicious anyway.
As main course I cooked some salmon fillets with a herb and sun-dried tomato crust, some fresh veg and broccoli. I had prepared some croquettess too, though we forgot these in the oven!
After some cheese and crackers, it was time for my dad’s pudding and M&S’s delicious Christmas cake.
May I wish you and your family a prosperous New Year.
[Daphne – The same to you, too. It’s incredible how many things get forgotten in the oven and refrigerator in the confusion.]
We have decided to skip pasta at Christmas. After all, we eat lasagne, timpana etc regularly so there is no need to wait for Christmas lunch for them.
Instead, we make a lavish antipasti course (definitely not something we make regularly!) which we all now look forward to.
Each year we wonder whether to have the dessert or cheese first. I`m under the impression that the UK and continental Europe have different preferences. What`s your opinion?
Very best wishes to you Daphne and to your contributors. Keep up the good work on the blog – we all look forward to new comments! Plus, I learn so much and hear news I never would have heard otherwise.
[Daphne – Serve the cheese between the main course and pudding/dessert, or not at all.]
Ours consisted of turkey soup, turkey and asparagus lasagne, baked turkey, Christmas pudding and mince-pies. All the best to you all.
Happy New Year to you and all your readers…
Our Christmas lunch was non traditional.
Parmiggiano souffle (using left over egg-whites from another dish)
Whitebait & onion rings (mainly for the younger ones)
Cream of butternut pumpkin soup
Fillet steak with baked potatoes and vegetables
Cheese board with Roquefort, Parmiggiano & Chevre
Creme brulee (using blow torch Christmas present from daughter)
Averna
Look forward to controversial writings next year…..have a great one!
Merry Christmas!
Well, Daphne, at least we share some likes. I not only have a personal and professional interest in food, it’s my hobby and I eat too much of it…..incidentally, how the hell do you remain so thin!!!
Ours was a traditional Mother Debono (Mum, I salute you, cooking for 25 people, with no help allowed, is no joke at 69, you are a tower of energy!) Christmas lunch. Started off with Parma ham and melon as a canape with the pre lunch drinks whilst watching the Pope deliver his blessing (a family tradition dating back…oh, ever since we had TV). Then the fun started. A nice aljotta for starters, (as we always have fish on Christmas and New Year’s Day, another tradition much followed in my Matrice) followed by Mum’s excellent cannelloni with home-made bechamel, followed by roast stuffed capon, a baron of beef with Yorkshire pudding and a duo of date and confittura stuffed pork belly and suckling piglet (divine) with roast potatoes (mum does them in goose fat, something she learned form a St Dorothy’s nun in the 1950’s) and baked duo of broccoli and cauliflower, with Maltese sausages on the side, followed by a huge Christmas pudding (the suet one) and home-made custard, followed by a Christmas cake that my mum had been feeding with single malt for the last month, log and assorted pastini, washed down with copious amounts of wine (the only choice I am allowed to make, so I chose a Barolo and my current favourite, Greco di Tufo Mastrobernardino), after-dinner sherry (a Fino made by a friend in Jerez de La Frontera, who sends me a cask every year) washed down with copious amounts of our last reserve of Whittard’s Earl Grey tea. No wonder I am more like a bloody roly-poly than usual. It’s enough to last me a week. Incidentally my mother then whips up the most amazing pies from the leftovers, something that she does tomorrow.
We usually have pernici (don’t know what it’s called in English, Daphne, maybe you can enlighten me, I think they are a type of quail) from the guy who takes care of our fields, but he didn’t have any this year.
Incidentally, Daphne, do you hang the pheasants before cooking them. I believe you have to hang them by the tail feathers until they fall off. Is this true?
[Daphne – Mario, I am no longer thin. I don’t know what pernici are – but they are not quail as those are summien. Pheasants have to be hung, yes, but only when you’ve just killed them yourself. The ones you buy over the counter are ready sorted. I got mine from the butcher at Arkadia, Portomaso. They’re flown in fresh from France.]
Pernici is the Italian word for partridge (singular: pernice).
In Maltese it’s hagel (singular: hagla).
Well thinner than me is thin ……I plan to starve next year or ask joe Chetcuti for stomach reduction surgery on Arani Issa…….something I need to do otherwise I will kill myself with fine food. I’m sure it will make someone happy in this blog if that comes to pass. ………