Christmas 2008 was our first Christmas as a married couple. For a few weeks now we've been feeling kinda sad because Christmas is a very much celebrated event over here, something like our CNY back home. A time where most company closed down for a week and the entire transportation shuts down.
In the mist of being depressed, Des managed to lift our spirits up by decoration our house with some lights and a small christmas tree. And with both of us not working during Christmas, it allows us to spend some much needed time together (contary to the belief, we rarely had the time to see each other for long).
A week to Christmas the TV was showing show after show of celebrity chefs showing the viewers how to whip up a Christmas dinner effortlessly. And that gave us the motivation to do something on our own too, given the fact that most of the restaurant is closed anyway. Following the unfortunate event last week, Des cheered me up and gave me a selection of Christmas menu to choose from.
And so with the ingredients ready (I think Christmas dinner cost about a week's worth of groceries), Des put on his Chef's hat and set on preparing a gruelling four hour long Christmas dinner...
First course was the soup. Mind you, a
GORDAN RAMSAY recipe no less. It was quite easy, kinda like our chinese soup but takes about 20 minutes instead of the usual 2 hours.
So chopped everything up and melt the butter,
Pour everything in and bring to boil,
And the LIQUIDIFY! They seems to like their soup thick and creamy, hence they tend to blend their soup.
And so, with the soup bubling away, its time to work on the main course.
Ok, so we started working on the main first cause this took blardy 3 hours (recipe says 4 but we kinda get bored of waiting). So chopped vegetable for flavouring and season the pork (have I mentioned how much I love meat!?!). This is about 50% done...
And tadah! Roast Pork Belly done! Excuse the vegetable, as it WAS meant to be burnt! You'll see later that the roast vegetable is being prepared separately. So, nothing is failing yet :)
The second part of the main is of course the Lobster! Lobster for 5 pounds, can you believe it!?!
It was sold cooked and frozen in water, so we just need to defrost it and dump it into boiling water again.
Des has never cooked lobster before, so it was quite interesting, considering I craved seafood so much I literally floated in loveliness whenever I pass the seafood section of the supermarket.
The lobster head too sayang to throw away that we dump it into the soup. Doesnt really make a difference in the taste but its nice to know that we put the lobster in good use instead of throwing it away.
As for the remaining badan, sprinkle some cheese and let grill
Remember the burnt vege? Told you its supposed to be burnt! Cause we're preparing roast vege separately of onions, parsnip, potatoes and carrots. Chopped them together and roast them in the secret ingredient: GOOSE FAT.
For a meat lover, these were very good :)
Lobster - Grilled. Pork - Roasted. Main Course - DONE!
Next in line, Dessert!
Apples with cinammon and wine. Enough said!
The tedious part where Des gotta roll the filling in rice paper (something like spring roll apple pie).
End result - 4 biji apple pie (I've got a portion-ing problem, luckily Des did four cause we were quite full by the end).
And so, after 4 hours of cooking (hey, I helped!), presenting our first Christmas dinner:
Starter: Apple, Parsnip and Chestnut soup
Main - Surf and Turf (Grilled Lobsters and Roast Pork Belly. Roasted vegetables on side)
Dessert - Spring Roll Apple Pie
And so that was our Christmas dinner. I was quite suprised that I didnt drop dead being full and drunk considering we polished 2 bottles of wine during dinner and had non stop whiskey throughout the day.
So that was Christmas day. One Boxing day, we went out to the superbly packed Oxford Street and bought ourselves presents! Des bought not one, not two but THREE pairs of shoes! Hahaha I on the other hand, managed to grab myself an ALDO heels. I've always wanted to own a pair of Also heels but was put off by the bad service in its One Utama's outlet that I just couldnt bring myself to spend that kinda money just to be treated like dirt.
Oh, and did I mentioned that it only cost about 35 pounds??? Meaning, I only need to give up 3 movie tickets to buy one pair of Aldo shoes compared to back home, in which I'll probably have to give up like what, 30 times worth of movie tickets??? Ridiculous!
Having said that, I must set the record straight that we both RARELY spend that much on clothing items. It is Christmas afterall...
And so that is from us from London for Christmas. We've posted our pictures for our 'pre wedding' pixs taken around London a couple of weeks ago (just got them today on Boxing Day!). We hope to have our second day of pictures soon but it wont be any sooner than in January, i supposed. Please do let us know what you think of the pictures! We're trying to cut cost and hopefully the second day's pictures will be just as nice (if not better) so that we can make do without the compulsory 'studio-like' shot back home and just arrange for the pictures to be printed off straight away.
New Year's Day is going to be a quiet affair as Des will be working but we had a great Christmas and I wont be working for a few days next week so hopefully that will gives us time to catch up again.
And the thought of flying home suddenly feels so near, almost as if we we cannot believe our time here is almost done. 2008 has been so eventful and hopefully 2009 will continue to be so.
Thanks again for those of you who voted on our wedding survey and it has been a great help (wedding is now on a Saturday, church ceremony is being discussed but we still havent decided on our wedding march yet!). And hence, I take this opportunity to announce that we've set our wedding date to be next year 1st Aug 2009. We will continue to post pictures up along our journey together and we hope you have enjoyed our pictures so far in our year in London and hope that there will be many more to come.
We wish you all a great Christmas and a fantastic year ahead!
Love, Desmond and Agnes
