I hope you all had a great Christmas. As for us, this year we spent it at my aunt’s house, together with my two cousins, my parents, one of my aunt’s friends and the friend’s son (sounds complicated?), so this year I didn’t have to worry about cooking up a four course Christmas dinner for two so much and could let other people do the work.
We had an uncomplicated, but really tasty pre-Christmas dinner on the 23rd instead, with warm goat cheese salad as an entrée, rumpsteak with grilled tomatoes and french fries as the main course and chocolate chestnut cake with vanilla ice cream as dessert. I had baked said cake for my goodbye party at my old company and there was some left, so I froze it. It’s a recipe by my beloved Nigella Lawson, a not-so-sweet chocolate cake, which uses pureed chestnuts instead of flour. It’s very filling, so I usually cut it in small pieces, but it’s really tasty as well. It also can be frozen easily, which is a great plus with any cake.
However I was surprised at how easy this more or less improvised dinner came together. The hardest part was actually the steak, since Peter wanted to try the step-by-step instructions he found in one of my cook books. Mind you, but these step-by-step instructions for roasting the steak consisted of about 20 steps, telling you to turn the steak over approximately 30 times. It was good, though, so I should probably stop complaining.
On Christmas Eve (which is the most important day of Christmas here in Germany) we had the table laden with food, roast beef, pasta, carrots, brussels sprouts, snow peas and a lovely dessert made by my aunt, raspberry’s topped with a deliciously sweet curd cheese cream, a recipe she was only willing to share reluctantly and which I of course forgot to write down. Stupid me.
Yesterday we had dinner with my parents, grandparents and another aunt at my parents place, with shrimps and salad as an appetizer. Then came a roasted goose, more brussels sprouts, red cabbage, Semmelknödel (bread dumplings), Chinese cabbage salad and a lovely sweet sauce made with lingonberries and chestnuts. Dessert was Tiramisu. I don’t have to tell you what this is, do I? I love Tiramisu, but mostly for the thick mascarpone cream. I don’t actually need the alcohol and coffee drenched sponge fingers, so I usually try to get a piece which consists mostly of cream.
Today we’re not cooking up anything. Partly because we’ve been stuffed with good food these past three days and partly because both me and Peter are sick. I caught a flu and generously infected him with it, so we’re both busy sniffling, coughing and whining at each other. It’s very cute actually. Kind of.
