the virgine post

Christmas Eve Dinner Party 2007

To my darling’s anguish, I do enjoy entertaining. I love being filled with that surge of drive and purpose while pottering about (or dashing, screaming, about) in the kitchen for a few hours. Cooking for many does give me the opportunity to fulfill the leftover dictatorial ambitions I find lurking distressingly about me sometimes. In any case, I often have a chronic ill-advised habit of buying food in quantities that do not denote any form of restraint, which leaves the fridge and larder bursting at the seams with pouting, unloved bits of this and that. Dinner parties are therefore a great way to clear the fridge and make me feel virtuous. Read: less wasteful and guilty.

Pre-cursor to Monday’s Christmas Eve dinner was 19 dec which saw a brief cooking up of the leftover apples in the fridge. And by leftover, I do mean, leftover… from like 5 months ago. (I kid you not) Apparently - !! – they are still crunchy and unrotted. Truly a Christmas miracle. Also, there was the over-supply of pasta in the larder, courtesy of – yes – TWO years of StanChart half marathons. Oo-er. But as if I ever needed a reason to make a drama of things, the apples alone were enough to send me to Shop-n-Save. Or rather, NTUC this time, as I had to use up the fast-expiring NTUC vouchers.

Dinner-for-two (with impromptu guests as onlookers)

1. Pasta with pesto, roasted pinenuts and white button mushrooms (the whole world’s recipe)
2. Baby *something* lettuce salad with avocado, capers, olives and vinegar-and-olive oil dressing (inspired by the lovely Nigella)
3. Apple crumble with 5-month-old apples. (courtesy of BBC recipes, although possibly not followed to the letter)

Result/ Analysis

Pasta lacked pesto – I should have (based on past experiences) realized that pesto pasta needs to be practically swimming in the thing to be a true success. If so, then NONE of the supermarkets I’ve been to ever stocked a big enough bottle to feed like, more than 1.75 human beings. Another thing, the colour looked…. Uninspiring. Brown. Green-brown. Bleah. Roasted pinenuts and fried mushrooms have – in the after-thought it makes perfect sense – a somewhat similar colour. Sigh.

Salad: The avocado was surprisingly HARD. Hard, plus hard to dislodge. Hard to open. I mean, I knew the little buggers had tough shells, but by golly I didn’t know I was dealing with some frozen granite here. Taste-wise, I have found that following the 1:3 vinegar:oil combo (thank you Jamie!) works pretty well. Plus, well, lettuce+capers+olives is always a winner for me.

Apple crumble: Easy to make, and edible. Note from a few days later: Ages well! Although, seriously, what is up with my oven? Will have to learn how to regulate the ole temp to achieve a less burnt-to-hell-but-insides-still-stone-cold effect. Well, I exaggerate, naturally (it’s practically my middle name) but you get the idea.

Well as I was slumping home from driving class that very fateful day, an idea struck me. Actually, it had been festering in the corner of my cluttered and semi-rotted mind since the afternoon, when I’d strung up the Christmas decorations in a hopeful (but artless) manner. I’d set up the palm sized tree… er, shrub on the tall mosaic-print stool and tossed over the only decent cloth covering I own, which of course is the cow-print fur. Then I installed all presents, mostly real, one or two fakes – by which I mean the real stuff had already been liberated – by which I mean that real stuff was most likely chocolate. I lined up the little so-called “luxe” (note to makers: not bad!) gift tags on a gold Santa-clip laundry line (there’s no sane way of describing this; let us skip to the next point) and I hung up a lovely tacky silver Merry Christmas across the doorway in the most inconvenient way possible. I added to that a fantastic silvery-blue pair of bells wonderfully positioned to strike the heads of entrants taller than 5 feet. (That is, taller than me.)

How can such diligence and brave effort go unnoticed?

Thus, a Christmas Eve party!

Mass smses are such a gift. Surprisingly, most of my uni friends (whom I invited) had not made plans for the 24th. A sign of old age? A sign of work stress? A sign of… god forbid, growing disillusion with the festive season? Truly, I could begin to understand that. The jingle we hear most often these days does emanate strongest from the cash register. But I’m never one to let the issue of over-commercialism, over-consumption, sweatshop labor, third world poverty, the growing carbon footprint etc etc distract me from a good ole par-tay. This dreary world needs all the love, cheer and festivity it can get. Besides, the food in the fridge and larder would begin to rot soon, and THEN where would we be?

Thus, a party of ten-nish was duly rounded up and summoned to the humble abode. The actual prep of the fateful day was not terribly problematic. Most in part due to my darling little darling who got off work early (yay!) and got ferry me around/ run errands/ clean up the goddamned house and kitchen/ chop up various things. And in some small part, it was also due to the choice of menu for the night. Behold, the wonder of store bought goodies.

Dinner for ten or so

1. Angel hair pasta in tomato sauce with button and shimeiji mushrooms and snap peas (whatever recipe)
2. Killer tomato salad seasoned with sea salt (thanks be to Jamie O)
3. Warm potato salad with smoked salmon and capers (thank you JO again)
4. Chicken wings marinated in black pepper sauce, lemongrass marinade and honey rib sauce and oven-roasted with sesame seeds
5. Fish nuggets from NTUC fried up 5 mins before
6. Ball of ham from NTUC with 2 kinds of mustard
7. Ye olde Apple Crumble (modified from the BBC’s – added grapes and cooked longer) with vanilla ice-cream
8. Spiced red wine with cloves, cinnamon and orange peel

This all took only a couple of hours of not-very-hurried and somewhat-distracted cooking. The flavours were all good – only I ran out of olive oil and thus failed to adhere to JamO’s 3:1 ratio. Plus, silly me, overboiled the ‘taters and they turned mushy ohbutwhocares!!! The spiced/ mulled wine was particularly good. Don’t tell the friends, but I did empty half a tub of sugar into it. Ah well. The sacrifices one makes for gastronomia. Apple Crumble was much sweeter, naturally, with the addition of grapes, but that’s because I was cooking for the masses (who I assume do not come from a diabetic-sensitive family). Happily, everything was edible and then some. Very little leftovers, except for the pasta (which I knew I cooked too much of in the first place) but even then there was less left then I’d expected.

Thus, success I think.

Christmas Day brought a lovely surprise in the rectangular shape of a pretty, PRETTY Nigella. The goddess! In my hands! Happiness.

This naturally brings me to what I should cater for Saturday’s dinner for Die Familie. Of 23, eeps. There’s a whole panful of apple-and-grape crumble undisturbed, which I’ve popped into the freezer. It should last 4 days without much mishap. And there’s still half a jar of capers despite the determined usage. And there’s still – would you believe it? I can’t – packs of pasta left. Fusili and spaghetti. So.

Fusili in cream sauce, unless darling wants to rehash his lovely pasta salad
Spaghetti in tomato-based sauce (specifics can always be ironed out later)
Potato salad with smoked salmon and capers
Apple-and-grape crumble

And… (the rest will be MRT fodder. Since I have to return to school the next three days, there WILL be MRT fodder. Sigh.)

25/12/07-26/12/07 (2.34am)