Christmas Dinner 2007

Instead of the usual Bread & Butter Pudding, we decided to use Kiwi to replace sweet sultanas and raisins (because we ain’t got them, and Aimran suggested we use it!!). This is how it looks like before being baked, kind of interesting… Let’s see what comes out.

The End Result: Didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted it to be. Needless to say, though, that the family had some of it anyway, so appreciative :'( Not sweet enough, and the Kiwi… well, let’s just say we’d stick to sultanas and raisins next time =.=;

My full-proof sweet potato pie. For the ingredients, refer to this post. Safe, savoury and sweet, potato, sweet potato and cheese ALWAYS makes a great easy snacking alternative 😀

The Assorted Steamed Vegetables in Butter Sauce is a clever mix of yellow corn, green pea pods and brown chestnut mushrooms sprinkled with home-made butter sauce to give a festive flavour to our Christmas Dinner set!

To freshen up and provide brighter festive colours, the assorted steamed baby carrots and plum tomatoes with a fluff of alfalfa on top provided the freshness in taste that wakes you up into the christmasy mood!

Normally Yuletide Turkey is meant to be WHOLE and THEN you insert the STUFFINGS into its cavity (once you remove the insides, that is). However I was faced with a problem of wanting to use the stuffings, but all I had was two huge-ass major monkey ballslarge turkey thighs. What was I supposed to do?

Then it hit me. My recollection on something called the “chi bao kai” came up, and EUREKA, I thought of putting the stuffings OUTSIDE the turkey, have that wrapped up into the aluminium foil and then oven cook it from within! Of course, I first had to let the thighs be cooked separately so that you get that amazing oven-baked turkey texture 🙂

The stuffing, made of herbs, onions and cashew nuts, is then cooked OVER the 3/4 oven-baked turkey thighs and huge onion rings *click*, all within the comfort of an aluminium bag made to release steam so that the turkey doesn’t get soggy. That way, the turkey meat will also absorb the flavours from the stuffing, thereby giving it the intended aroma and taste. The last few minutes of baking was open-aired at the top to brown it, along with sauteed red onions for sweetness.