Christmas Dinner! :)

Aloha! :)

I'm going to share more recipes/cooking methods today! :D I and my house mate had a Christmas potluck over at our place and we (and our friends) cooked up a really yummy storm! :) It was so delicious, every bit of our food. :)

We had such a fantastic dinner menu:
- Appetizer 1 (Prawn & Potato Salad) - made by my house mate.
- Soup/Appetizer 2 (Pumpkin Soup) - made by yours truly. :)
- Appetizer 3 (Garlic Bread) - made by friends.
- Main Dish 1 (Tomato & Mushroom Pie) - made by friends.
- Main Dish 2 (Roast pork & Crackling with Applesauce and Gravy) - made by yours truly. :)

Of course, I'm only able to share those that I cooked and the others, I'm pretty sure you can find online recipes of them! :P

25th December 2012

Appetizer 2/Soup
Ingredients used: Carrots (2), Pumpkin (1), Potatoes (3) & Milk (125ml).
Equipment used: Saucepan & blender.

First, I chopped the pumpkin into half, and poured olive oil all over the pumpkin before placing it in a oven tray and roasting it in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees, for 30 minutes. Next, I chopped up the carrots and potatoes into small pieces, so that it will cook faster, and after the pumpkin is done, I placed all of them into a big saucepan and added enough water to cover the vegetables before bringing it up to a boil. Lower it to a simmer, once it starts boiling, and then wait till all the vegetables are mushy and soft and coming together to look like soup. Note: You may have to replenish the water once the level drops below the vegetables.

After all the ingredients comes together, I turned off the fire, and slowly poured the milk in while stirring with a wooden spoon. Wait till the soup is cooled down and then pureee the entire lot in the blender! And you will get:

Golden Creamy Pumpkin Soup (with Garlic Bread). :)

Once you are ready to serve the soup, sprinkle black pepper on top (optional). :) 

Main Dish 2

Roast Pork with Applesauce & Gravy. 

My recipe (Takes 3.5 hours in total)

I omitted some ingredients like the allspice in the applesauce, and I used canned gravy mix instead + roast drippings from the pork. And I didn't add potatoes because there was already a potato salad in the menu. :) I basically prepared the roast pork the same way as I did for the roast lamb (see the previous blog post), but I added more salt for the skin because I wanted a really nice crispy crackling. 

It was a really awesome recipe, just that it took much longer than I expected! 3.5 hours, close to 4! But the end product was so, so worth it! :) I loved the apples that accompanied the roast pork, so good! :) But that did take more time than I expected and lots of patience, luckily I had friends that were willing to do that with me! ;) 

The final dish:

Roast Pork with Apples, Applesauce & Gravy. :)

Featuring the rest of the dishes, no recipes because I'm not the one who cooked them. :) 

Appetizer 1

Prawn and Potato Salad

So, so proud of my house mate who did this dish! She was a little hesitant on cooking for the day because she said her cooking skills wasn't that good. But this tasted so yummy! :) 

Main Dish 1

Tomato & Mushroom Pie

The complete Set Up:

Christmas Day Potluck :)

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY JESUS!! :)