yesterday once more

a dinner table full of food for christmas. mashed potatoes, pasta, salad, roast turkey, and STRAWBERRY WATER. strawberry water needs a stronger advocate. it is really special because it gives a fruity hint to the water - better than lemon.

the past week has been so stressful because of all the baking schedules for stollen, panettone and the turkey.

the turkey was a massive project, but nigella's recipes turned out a very edible one. first, the sauces:

this was the stock for the turkey gravy. using the giblets, carrot, celery, parsley, bay, bacon, etc. it was boiled for a few hours to reduce to a flavourful soup. it was then beaten into a flour roux, for which i have no photos =(

and then the cranberry sauce. cranberries are so sour. should not have tried one at all. but the recipe boils it with wine and sugar, and the pectin in the fruit sets it naturally into a chunky jam. which was delicious, like ikea's jam for meatballs.

the turkey was soaked in brine overnight. nigella says this makes the turkey foolproof - it is impossible to dry out this one. the brine was made with sugar, salt, honey, maple syrup and lots of different herbs. i thought it was very colourful and smelled very festive.

mummy taught me a new trick. to melt butter, simply place the pan on the hot oven. this saves the trouble of using the stove and avoids possibly burning the butter. so here is the maple syrup-butter for basting the turkey.

the turkey was so heavy that it couldn't go into the oven correctly at first. and then the whole schedule got delayed by half hour. in the end though, it went in, and we had to put a tray beneath to catch all the oil drips.

by the end of the roasting, the oven was splattered all over with oil, because the oil in the bottom tray was sizzling and sputtering all the time.

i think the turkey was really delicious. it was moist, as nigella promised. and tasty, maybe the brine made it salty. the turkey gravy and cranberry sauce went well with the meat.

and so we carved starting from the breast. but as it turned out, the real delicious and juicy parts were the limbs. and after completely dismembering and scraping the turkey of meat, mummy took the big bone structure left to boil into another pot of stock.

and so that was the end of the turkey.

with the passing of christmas 2011, much stress has been released. but i love tonghin. i miss you so much.

spoonful

i ate a lot of chocolate cream pie today.

priest

sometimes, someone you know for a year can mean so much more to you than the people you grew up with. (is that love?)

concession

sometimes, you don't need to be happy. you just need to be happy enough. i think it's magical when you can walk in the clouds. is it silly to have such dreams?

i've written before that when your heart isn't there, nothing turns out right. but sometimes even if you gave all your heart, nothing comes back. yet, you just need to be happy enough, and it will be reason to give all your heart.

deshelled prawns

when you are on a 7-hour bus ride with a family of crying babies and children, you'll find that children cry for reasons so different from adults.