Every Christmas Eve, I will invite my buddies over to my house for incredible feasts that always end with everyone 'da-paoing' something home. This year, reinforcements came in the form of a Sheraton Towers Christmas Hamper, lovingly given by a family friend. With more dishes whipped up by my mom, we stayed full all the way till Christmas Day itself!
Clockwise from top left: Brown Gravy, Strawberry Sauce, Mashed Potato, Long Beans, Apple Sauce
As with all feasts at home, you can count on my mom's kitchenware to make things pretty. Her latest Le Creuset garden collection nicely held all the accompanying sauces and side dishes that came with the hamper. The creamy mashed potato stood out well while we particularly loved to pair the thick apple sauce with meat cuts!
Black Pepper Duck Breast (Promo: $7 for two), Salmon Sashimi ($22.00/kg)
We ordered takeaways as well to save more hassle of cooking! The pre-cooked duck breast from Nex's NTUC Xtra turned out amazingly well with its moist, tender meat and strong pepper flavour. Most of my buddies loved sashimi so we always order a huge slab of sashimi grade salmon from Fassler, much cheaper when you slice it yourself!
Bisol Bel Star Prosecco, Mariestads Export
We needed some alcohol to make things merrier! The hamper champagne was light and bubbly, while a friend brought Swedish beer that could fight with Hoegaarden in terms of smoothness!
Creamy Pumpkin Soup, Hand-beaten Prawn Rolls
In the past years, Green Pea Soup and Borsch Soup had made their appearance. This time, pumpkin took centrestage as Mom boiled and blended a huge one, adding fresh milk and cream to make it rich and thick. Intensively good!
Now I declare this as the best prawn rolls ever. Why? Because we used fresh market prawns, de-intestined, flattened and mashed them with the side of a chopper, before hand-mixing with water chestnut and lard. The result was the crunchiest, most flavourful prawn rolls which you can never find outside as commercially, it takes a hell lot of work and they always cut costs by adding large quantities of minced pork. Disappeared as soon as they were served!
Honey Glazed Gammon Ham, Roasted Boneless Turkey Breast
Now for the hamper roasts! As we reckon that we would never make it past 2kg worth of Gammon Ham, we only cut 4 thick slices and pan-fried them for a minute before serving. Pretty good stuff!
I have never been a fan of turkey and yet we could never quite escape it during Christmas. The meat was again painfully tough as juices flowed only from certain parts. On the bright side, this was already deboned so cutting was made a lot more easier.
Seafood Baked Rice
Having eaten this two Christmas ago, we gleefully saved stomach space for the reappearance of this huge monster. Using a Fried Rice with Luncheon Meat base, we added loads of squids, prawns, giant scallops and broccoli before baking it with mushroom cream sauce!
Though the cheese layer was accidentally burnt, it gave a surprisingly nice crunch as we dug out the piping hot treasures within. Oh my, if only the weather was colder to make it even more heavenly!
Yam and Sago in Coconut Milk
To round it up, mom conjured a sweet Chinese dessert to fully fill all stomach compartments. Never a better way to end off the feast!
Hope everyone had a great Christmas with their family and friends, sharing bundles of love this festive season! Now let's greedily look forward to another feast on New Year Eve!
Taken with Nikon D70
2 comments:
Your mom makes borsch soup wow! She's such a great cook! You're so lucky!
Merry Christmas & Happy Boxing Day Daniel!
ice: Haha yes, so I wasn't actually too surprised by Shashlik when I tried their version.. Hope you had a great Christmas too! =)
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