Porchetta on Christmas Day
Happy New Year!
I am home alone for a few days with only Elva, our darling cat-on-loan, for company. Post-Christmas, I love the stillness of minimal kitchen activity. The gentle re-heating of soup on the hob and the crisping up of a halved (English) muffin in the toaster is about all I can handle. I am giving myself a break after so much cleaning and clearing up after recent big meals and family meet-ups.
Over the last two weeks of December we hosted a number of dinners, all with different food and with different friends and relations. Sometimes we used recipes from Christmases past and sometimes we tried out new dishes. A summary of each main course is below, with the accompaniments and desserts in the next post. Numbers around the table ranged from 5 to 12.
13/12 : Pulled Pork Shoulder
This was a 6 kg pork shoulder (from the Ginger Pig) slow-roasted for 16 hours. We pulled the pork off the bone together as a communal activity after returning from a carol concert. With such industry I didn’t manage to take a photo of the pulled pork, but here is one of the crackled skin which I broke into pieces for everyone to share around the table.
18/12: Roast Leg of Lamb
I don’t have a photo of the lamb leg as I was busy cooking and cleaning up before our guests arrived (I am usually alone in the kitchen with very little or no help). We had a roasted cauliflower and butterbean hummus as side dishes, so here is a photo of all three items assembled for a meal the day after.
20/12 : Baked Whole Sea Bass, Harissa Chicken and Vegetarian Bastilla
I was busy removing the baked fish from the bones and didn’t take a photo, but here is a photo of the fish in the market. Nottingham Cousin made Harissa Chicken and I also made a Christmas Vegetarian Bastila.
21/12: Seafood Hot Pot
Clever children: Juniors 2 and 3 and Brasenose Girl hand-made prawn dumplings for the seafood hotpot. I had also bought scallops and prawns from Borough Market when I went shopping for the sea bass the day before, and made a stock with the prawn heads (my dad would have cried as he love sucking on prawn heads) and shells, along with the head and bones from the sea bass.
23/12: Roast Goose
You can never go wrong with a bird from Goodman’s Geese. This was again a very generous gift from Shoe Lady and Investment Banker Friend. A goose is rich in flavour, feeds a large family and then goes on giving: at the end we made fried rice with the rest of the chopped up goose meat, simmered 2 litres of stock with the bones and saved 1 litre of goose fat for a future roast potato fest.
The goose comes with written instructions, which you can also find here. The Goodman family and farm must have fed many, many happy families over Christmas, but I think they must have had only one goose ordered all the way from Singapore!
25/12 Porchetta and 27/12 Honey and Mustard Glazed Ham
I usually get my meat products from the Ginger Pig but thought to try The Newt this year, as I have ordered baked goods and ready meals from them previously. The porchetta and gammon were packed pristinely and delivered directly to our door. The quality and taste were outstanding. There were lots of leftovers for meals in the days after, and anything we could not finish was sliced and frozen. The porchetta will make a lovely topping for a bowl of soup noodles and the ham will be happy with chicken in a pie. I don’t have a photo of the whole ham but here is one of my dinner plate with some sliced ham and vegetables.
The ample leftovers have served us very well, ending up in further rounds of the same deliciousness. It’s now back to some simpler dinners. But not for long, as I have a few new cook books to inspire me for the next three communal gatherings to celebrate the end of Christmas (Epiphany, where we will eat Galette des Rois), a family birthday and Chinese New Year.
Photos of the Christmas vegetables, side dishes and desserts in the next post.