Christmas Dinner

Following up to my last post, which was a quick Merry Christmas to Hive, I figured I'd show you what I ended up making for dinner on Christmas Day.

To start, my sister brought an appetizer board with sushi, shrimp, cheeses, charcuterie and more. Prior to hosting, I was focused on the main meal when doing groceries and had forgotten to buy stuff for pre-dinner snacks. It was helpful that my sister was on top of it. She did a great job with pre-dinner appetizers.

I cooked a turkey and decided to brine it this year. Its a little difficult of a task because of the size of the bird. Its not like a chicken, that's for sure. The turkey I bought was small by turkey standards, weighing only 5.5kg (12lbs), but it was still too large to fit into any sort of conventional bowl or container. I had to use a cooler to hold it. The nice thing about winter is that the outdoors is basically just a giant refrigerator so no need hold everything inside. I brined turkey for only 3 hours. It probably could have gone for more like 8 hours, but it was sort of a game day decision to brine. I just didn't plan that far ahead I guess. The raw turkey in the brine doesn't look appetizing but here is a photo.

The brine recipe I uses is as follows:

• 16 cups water
• 1 cup salt
• 1/2 cup sugar
• and other optional stuff (lemon wedges, thyme, garlic)

You can double or triple the quantities as needed. Ideally the full bird should be submerged but it required to much of everything to get it to that point so I just rotated it every hours or so.

The turkey turned out pretty good in the end. It stayed juicy and tender.

For sides I made leeks and a new creamed carrots recipe that was okay. I also made standard traditional mashed potatoes and also sweet potatoes with a honey roasted almond topping and crust.

Something new I tried this year were Yorkshire puddings. This was the first time I'd ever made them and they were super easy and fun so I may make them a staple in my cooking repertoire. For special occasions at least.

The recipe and rough directions I used for the Yorkshires were the following:

• Equal parts egg, milk and flour (1cup of each which ended uo being 5 eggs)

1. Whisk the ingredients into a batter.
2. Put a tsp of oil into each slot of a muffin tray.
3. Heat the tray and oil at 400°C about 15-20 minutes.
4. Pour mixture into the muffin tray (1/2 to 3/4 of the way full).
5. Cook at 400°C for 15 minutes.
6. Turn heat down to 375°C for another 10-15 minutes and watch to make sure they don't start to burn. Turn down heat further if needed.
7. Cook until fully puffed out, brown color with very little yellow showing.

You can cook these more or less depending on your preference. More makes them dry and crispy whereas less cook time makes them more chewy and eggey. I made them two days in a row, the 25th and 26th.

Here's a look at my plate, heaping with food.

My wife made a pecan pie for dessert which turned out really good as well. I forgot to take a photo before it was cut but here is a close up.

well, that was our Christmas meal. Happy holidays everyone! Until next time, thanks for stopping by.