Christmas Eve cooking

So last night I cooked Thai. There are pictures under the cut. The photos aren't the greatest as I was taking them while trying to get six dishes plus rice onto the table!

( What bears do on Christmas Eve )

X-posted to gastrogasm

Weird!

There is something very, very wrong when it's only 8C warmer in Melbourne than Toronto on Christmas day. I can remember leaving Melbourne in 40C temperatures at this time of year to come home to -20.

Christmas Dinner

We started with home made gravlax and black bread. We drank a rather nice Alsace Sylvaner "Vieilles Vignes" with it. It worked.

The main event was roast prime rib of beef with garlic/lime roast potatoes, Savoy cabbage sauteed in duck fat with juniper berries and a gratin of fennel. We drank a Leoville-Poyferre 1996 with it. The wine was glorious but it was infanticide. This wine will outlive me for sure. It is young, young, young. Purple with not a hint of orange or brown at the edge and with loads of tannin behind a black fruit and tobacco core. This is utterly classic St. Julien and I have another eleven bottles!

After a much needed break we tackled the cheese. Raw milk Double Gloucester is to die for. Chambertin is better still and maxi-Dome and Colston-Bassett Stilton are not to be sneezed at.

Judging by the deteriorating nature of my typing I probably shouldn't have too much more of the rather good Calvados I am drinking.