Out of the way

Christmas dinner here is Christmas eve. There are a handful of expats in Oslo who aren't at home, so Opera offered us Christmas dinner, and we decided to have it at my house. Yum.

Normally on the winter solstice I do a medieval dinner, but it was delayed a couple of days to be the Julbord this time. Roast lamb, roast stuffed chicken, mashed parsnips, leeks in cider, mushroooms, asparagus (well, it wouldn't have been in season but I was freestyling it a bit ), carrots, baked apples, and a few odds and ends. Lots of vegetarians or non-red-meat-eaters, so the lamb didn't have a lot of competition to get some. (We still ate almost all of it though ) And a request for not too spicy, not too much dairy, medieval (ok, -ish) food was a good choice. And then I fell asleep on the couch, which is why I am writing at 7am...

Some open sauce food:

Parsnips that are yummy:

Get a turnip and half a dozen parsnips. 
Peel and chop them up, boil them until they are soft. 
Then drain them, add lots of butter (about 100g)
 some cream (I used about 200ml), and 
ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, pepper and cloves.
Mash them (I add a bit of cream at a time while mashing them).

Carrots:

The original recipe is known in Australia as Jazzy carrots,
 or al-jazr (which is arabic for carrot). 
I think it comes from Persia.
It is basically carrots cooked with vinegar and caraway seeds.
I did mine in the oven as an experiment,
 and added a good slop of olive oil. 
Turn them round a few times, 
cooking in a medium-slow oven for an hour or so.

Chicken stuffing:

Peel and chop an apple and an onion very fine. 
Add cinnamon, oregano, a little honey, nutmeg, cloves, 
salt and pepper, and breadcrumbs. 
I probably should have added a bit of verjuice too. 

Thanks Opera, thanks everyone for coming and helping decorate and clean up. It's already almost all cleaned away, leftovers in the fridge. Just a few glasses and empty bottles, and shaking out the tablecloth left to do. Hopefully Huib's photos come out OK and I can link to them later.

God Jul everyone.