Saturday December 25, 2010

Pork Ribs and Potatoes

Today's Food Diary

Breakfast: Missed

Lunch: Pork ribs and potatoes

Dinner:  Bread and chicken curry gravy

Baking: Spicy gingerbread cookies, plain cookies, tortillas

I was supposed to travel home for Christmas from the Northern to Southern Hemisphere but unfortunately I was not able to make it. I was really looking forward to the family Christmas meal, now I have to wait another year. Today I didn’t feel like cooking something very special and was quite happy with the ribs (frozen precooked which I purchased earlier) and potatoes as my Christmas lunch.

Some weeks ago I cooked chicken curry. There was extra gravy which I froze in ice cube trays. The curry gravy is great with bread or any other carb, and this was my dinner today. The meal brought back wonderful memories of my travels in Singapore and Malaysia, where a dish called roti canai is quite popular. The difference is that the roti is not regular bread. Its quite buttery and is cooked on a well greased/buttered flat iron.

Now moving onto sweets, the cookies I made today were all my recipes, all part of the experimentation. The gingerbread cookie was spicier than usual – I added generous amounts of ginger, cinnamon and cardamom. And instead of butter, I used emulsified oil/water. The spice flavours were quite dominant so I think it would make a big difference if I used butter instead of oil.

Random Ramblings

MSN has an interesting and revealing article on the worlds most expensive food. Top of the list is £12,500 for Frrrozen Haute Chocolate dessert at New York restaurant 'Serendipity-3'. The pudding is made using 14 kinds of cocoa and 23 karat edible gold.

Usual suspects like truffles, caviar and whisky appear on the list. Strangely, marmalade also makes an appearance. However my favourite is the £285 6-course Christmas lunch on the Orient Express. You have the opportunity to drink Champagne and have a gorgeous meal that includes roasted pumpkin soup, stuffed quail, and a trio of Orient desserts. I prefer eating a meal like this than eating gold and paying many times more. But thats my taste, perhaps not everyone shares my view. One can readily buy very reasonable priced sweets in India that are coated in silver (and I think gold also). I did try many of these, you don't taste the silver, its there to make it look good. A microbiologist told me that its not good to consume too much of heavy metals like gold and silver.

Today's Favourite Blog

Russian Season

An interesting insight into Slovakian Christmas celebration. The day includes watching Morozko - a Russian fairytale shown on TV every Christmas. What I found most interesting was that before the meal starts, an apple are sliced. A clean and white inside indicates good health during the year.

Sweden, Norway and perhaps other countries also show a particular show every year. In Sweden for example Kalle Anka or Donald Duck has been airing without commercial interruption at the same time on Christmas Eve since 1959. 

Today's Favourite Photo

Russian Season