Christmas cheer...

Well, I hope everyone has had a food and beverage filled Christmas this year. What pressies did you get?

Two of my pressies are going to come in very handy for this here blog...

Firstly - The new Jamie Oliver book.



It's bloody huge, and filled not just with recipes, but with tips and tricks about how you should be shopping for food, what flavours go well together, ways to tailor the meals to your own liking, etc etc.

Secondly - Digital camera.

Yay! Now the blog will turn more into a recipe, photostyle blog (for things like this, I recommend heading over to my friend Liz's page, threekilosofricotta.blogspot.com) rather than the restaurant reviews it seems to have been so far.

Ok - now to the meat of the post. What did I eat for Chrismas lunch?

To start - two different kinds of prawns, and oysters, served natural. My sister tried her first non-kilpatrick oyster and nearly vommed, but that's fine with me, cos there were more for me. I stuffed myself, as I love seafood and don't eat it very often at home (this may well soon change, the seafood section of Jamie has got me a little bit excited).

The Main Event - cold ham off the bone, known as Mum's baby. My family are a little bit retarded. Baked turkey breast, known as buffy. See, retarded. Roast pork left over from our roast dinner last night, not known as anything. The crackling was tasty, but not up to the usual crunch standard of Mum's pork. We believe this is to do with buying shrinkwrapped meat from the supermarket rather than from the butcher. Never again.

And we had salads up the wazoo. A delicious roast potato and basil salad, served cold with a balsamic dressing. A green salad that barely got touched with all else that was on offer. The asian noodle salad from the recipe off the back of the Chang's noodle packets. And a cranberry couscous salad that nearly didn't happen.

Mum followed the instructions to the letter, boil chicken stock, add couscous, turn off heat, leave sealed in saucepan for 5 minutes. For a salad, you want your couscous to be nice and dry, with the grains separating easily. The couscous Mum found in her saucepan looked like polenta before it's baked. Not the greatest texture for a salad...

so, the defoxus hassle-free way of cooking couscous is thus:

Put stock or water in a microwave safe bowl, and heat on high for two minutes.

Add to couscous, a little at a time, you can always add more stock, you can't take it out.

Stir with fork until all couscous has swelled up and is tender to the bite. Don't cover it, don't let it stand without stirring it, if it's going to separate, you need constant motion.

Hope your bellies get to normal size again soon!