Party Inspiration - Christmas in July

I love Christmas. So much. And I love all of the food traditions that go with it. The seafood and trifle and biscuits and BBQ roasts and every type of salad under the sun. Sun being the operative word. Growing up on American and British tv and movies and seeing snuggly winter Christmases makes you yearn just a little bit for a roaring fire and eggnog and all hot foods. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas! I was blessed enough to spend a Christmas in Germany on a high school exchange, and I was in New York City one year for the unveiling of the Macy’s and Saks’ Christmas displays and there really is something special and all-together more “Christmassy” about a winter Christmas. I would never give up our summer Christmases for the world…but that doesn’t mean I can’t have both. Whenever I can, I host or attend a Christmas in July party and get all winter-festive!

Recently I hosted a Christmas in July Party with the same friends that have a normal Christmas party. Everyone volunteers to bring a dish, the house gets decorated and we eat all of the traditional winter Christmas foods we grew up seeing on tv.

Given that it’s only for a day, not a season, I kept the decorations to a minimum. My least favourite chore of all time it taking down the Christmas tree, so there’s no way I’m doing it twice in one year! We had mulled cider and egg nog and a chocolate peppermint version of the Puerto Rican Coquito. There was roasted meats and vegetables. There was bonbons and santa brownies and a whole bunch of Christmas spirit. And it was such a great night. Lance even wrapped up some “re-gift’ presents so everyone received something from “Santa”.

 

Over the coming days, I’ll post recipes of the dishes that I contributed to the party, but in the meantime, here are some photos to whet your appetite and give you ideas if you were considering hosting your own Christmas in July.

To start with, there is gingerbread. This for me is still the ultimate gingerbread recipe, which Lance used to build a whole castle.

And coming:

Roast Pork with Apple Sauce

Cloudy Mulled Apple Cider

Chocolate Peppermint Coquito

Chocolate Salted Caramel Pavlova

Have you ever been to a Christmas in July party? What was your favourite winter tradition in it?

Caramel for Dinner - Pomegranate Caramel Braised Eggplant and Cabbage with Udon

I went to the Taste of Perth Food Festival earlier in the year. It’s a bit of a different concept to your usual food festival in that the top restaurants of the city present 4 dishes in tapas size-servings so you can taste what the restaurant is all about. It was so amazing. Lance and I shared each dish so we could fit in the maximum dishes and in so doing added a bunch of new restaurants to our ‘to-visit’ list. One of the (many) stand-out dishes was Nobu’s pork belly with caramel miso sauce. Everything about the dish was perfectly constructed. The textures, the salt-to-sweet-to-umami flavours of the sauce. Heaven. 

The use of caramel sauce in a savoury dish brought back the memory of a dish I made often a few years back of Caramel Braised Pork. Another sweet-savoury dish using caramel, pineapple, sweet potato and pork. So then my head started going through what I had at home and what flavours would go well with caramel. I had bought a bag of baby eggplants from the Nanna Shop. I love the creamy texture that eggplants get when you cook them, and thought that would make the perfect vegetarian base for a caramel dish. I used pomegranate for a tart contrast and water chestnuts for a textural counterpoint. And instead of using sugar to make the caramel, I used redgum honey. I’d never made caramel with honey before, but it works just as well as sugar. It adds a subtle floral flavor to the caramel that works well in this dish. Number one rule for making caramel is to watch it carefully, because it turns from caramel to burnt mess very, very quickly. But once the caramel is done, the dish can be left to cook, just stirring here and there, making it a good week night dish to set going while you prep for the next day. The toasted nuts on top really do finish the dish, so do add them. 

Pomegranate Caramel Braised Eggplant and Cabbage with Udon

½ cup honey
1 tbsp lime juice
3 tsp butter
3 tbsp soy sauce
3 tbsp fish sauce
¼ cup Chinese cooking wine
2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
Juice from one orange
1 tsp finely chopped red chilli
1 pomegranate, seeded
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 brown onion, diced
6 baby eggplants, cut into rounds
1 tin sliced water chestnuts
¼ large green cabbage, shredded
Udon noodles
Handful roasted salted peanuts, roughly chopped
Pickled onion 

Start by preparing your sauce. Mix together the onion, garlic, soy sauce, fish sauce, Chinese cooking wine, rice wine vinegar, orange juice, chilli and pomegranate in a bowl and set aside. Prep all of your veges. 

In a large, deep frypan add the honey and lime juice and heat over a medium-high flame. Stir to combine as it warms, then as it starts bubbling, stop stirring. Swirl occasionally by the handle to keep it moving as it starts browning and turning to caramel – about 3 minutes. Watch it carefully so it doesn’t burn. Remove from the heat, and stir in the butter. Watch it as it will spatter. Mix until smooth. 

Add the sauce, add back to the heat and stir well to combine as it comes back to a boil. Add the eggplant, cabbage and water chestnuts, and stir well to coat in the sauce. Leave to braise, stirring now and then until the sauce reduces and thickens, and the vegetables become tender. Around 20 minutes. 

Prepare udon as per the packet instructions, and drain well. Place in a bowl and scoop the caramel braised vegetables on top. Sprinkle generously with toasted peanuts and pickled onion, if desired.

Slow Cooker Love - Cider Braised Pork

There’s a quote from a butcher in the Recipes and Ramblings 2 Cookbook that states “slow cooking is a path to someone's heart”. I couldn’t agree more. And neither could Lance. If he had his way, there would always be pulled pork in the house for when he wants it. Which is always. He’s even taken to looking at the ads when he reads the newspaper and comes home with legs of pork when they’re on special for me to cook.

The most common way I do it is Puerco Pibil, but for something a bit different and a bit subtler in flavour, I thought I would braise it in cider. Pork and apples is a classic combination, but for this batch I used one of Rekorderlig’s flavoured ciders – Apricot and Peach. Partly because I thought it’d go really well with the pork. Partly because I had a bottle left in the fridge. Sage and mustard seeds round out the flavours.

Because it’s a subtler flavour, it lends itself to being eaten in so many different ways. Either simply, or dressed right up with extra flavours.

The first night we ate this with steam buns which I made using the Momofuku recipe (but feel free to buy frozen ones from your local Asian grocer). Then we ate it with waffles and eggs for breakfast. Then in Kaiser buns with hickory BBQ sauce and coleslaw. Then we ate the remainder in tacos with mandarin segments fresh from our tree.

Cider Braised Pork

1 tbsp sage
3 tbsp salt
1 tsp black pepper
1 tbsp mustard seeds
500mL cider (such as Rekorderlig Apricot and Peach)
2 dried bay leaves
1 pork leg roast

Carefully cut the skin and fat layer off the bottom of the pork leg with a very sharp knife. Discard. (Or if making your own steam buns, put the skin in a frypan on medium high heat to render the fat out).

Mix the sage, salt, pepper and mustard seeds together, and rub generously all over the pork leg. You may not need it all. Leave for an hour or so. Place in the base of your slow cooker, pour 400mL of the cider over the leg and add the bay leaves. Cover and cook on high for around 4-5 hours, or until the pork is falling off the bone. Remove the bay leaves

Peel the skin off the top of the roast, and remove the bones. Using two forks, shred the pork. I usually do this in the base of the slow cooker in the cooking juices still but if you want you can pull it out, shred it and put it back in the juices. Mix through the liquid and cook for a further 20 minutes or so to soak up these juices and make the pork super moist.

When ready to serve, pour the remaining 100mL of cider into a small saucepan and simmer over a low heat for 10 minutes until reduced and syrupy.

Serve pork with the reduced cider drizzled over the top, either in steamed buns, or normal bread buns with you choice of accompaniments, such as coleslaw or pickled beetroot and onions

White Vegetables - Mushroom, White Bean and Cauliflower soup

Things got a bit involved on this site. The dishes became very involved and fancy. But things got very busy at work, and out of work. And it got really cold at night times quite suddenly. So now there is flannelette sheets on the bed and there is this soup. Creamy and comforting and incredibly simple to make. I got home from the gym, 10 minutes of prep cooking. Leave it to simmer while I showered, came back and blended it up and voila. Perfect soup for sitting on the couch snuggled under my quilt.

This is naturally vegan and gluten free. It’s full of protein and things that are good for you. I added diced fried chorizo bits on top of mine because it is amazingly delicious but somewhat takes away from the vegan status. Bacon bits would be equally delicious. But the chopped toasted almonds are pretty amazing if you want to keep it vegan/vegetarian.

Mushroom, White Bean and Cauliflower Soup

Olive oil
1 – 2 cloves garlic, minced
Salt and Pepper
500g mushrooms of choice, thinly sliced
1 brown onion, diced
1 small head of cauliflower, broken roughly into large florets.
1 litre vegetable stock
1 litre water
1 cup of almond meal
Tin white beans, rinsed

Garnish

Diced, fried salami
Toasted almonds
Dried oregano
More black pepper

Drizzle a good glug of olive oil into your soup pot and heat to medium. Add the garlic, and cook 1-2 minutes until softened and fragrant. Thinly slice the mushrooms and add to the pot, and a good few cracks of pepper and fat pinch of sea salt. Stir well to mix through the garlicky oil across all the mushroom slices. Fry until the mushrooms release their liquid, then it absorbs/evaporates back again. Remove from the pot and set aside.

Add a tablespoon more olive oil to the pot and add the onion, cook 5 minutes until translucent but not browned. Add the stock, water and cauliflower. Bring to the boil, then reduce to a simmer. Simmer 15 minutes, until the cauliflower is tender. Add the white beans.

Remove from heat, then puree with a stick blender. Add the almond meal and blend it in, too.

Add mushrooms back to pot, place back over low heat. Cook 2 minutes so that the mushrooms heat up again. Check for seasoning.

Serve, garnished with oregano flakes, plenty of black pepper and toasted almond bits.

If you don’t mind breaking the vegan-ness of this dish, serve with fried diced salami pieces or bacon bits