Christmas chez Connie

For a change this year, my family spent Christmas Day at my humble little house in London, mainly to avoid me having to get on yet another mode of transportation for a little while at least. We as a family do not celebrate Christmas in the British sense, but we do do what we do best, and that is to cook way too much food.

We had a very lovely dinner of salmon and duck, a very successful collaboration between my mum and myself! First, the salmon:

Baked salmon with whatever is available in the fridge (serves 4-6)
Half a whole salmon
1 lemon, sliced
1 bunch of coriander
4 cloves garlic, crushed
1 glass white wine

1. Ask your mum to wash and scale and de-guck the salmon
2. Prepare 2 large square of foil, each comfortably big to wrap around the salmon, and lay on top of one another.
3. Put a layer of garlic, lemon, coriander on the middle of the foil, and lay fish on top. Repeat with some in the middle of the fish, and some on top.
4. Wrap foil tightly around the fish, until there is only one small edge left open. Pour in the wine, then tightly seal the end.
5. Bake at 200C for about 30 minutes, until fish is cooked.

And here it is, eaten traditionally with chopsticks, of course :)

My mum on the other hand was in charge of the duck. She seems to marinade it with a different thing each time, but this time it involved fermented bean curd on the outside (it is seriously yummy) and some hoisin sauce on the inside. The bean curd made the skin really savoury, and dad decided to carve it into slices rather than the traditional Chinese way - most excellent:

Unsurprisingly, we had tons of leftover fish and duck (much better than turkey leftovers!). My parents ran off with most of the duck, leaving the duck legs for me to munch on in front of the telly. There was tons of fish left, so I decided to experiment with a kedgeree. I adore kedgeree, and this was my first time at making it, and it was sooooooooo awesome. Here is the Nigella recipe that I plagarised:

Asian-spiced kedgeree (serves 2)
About 200g leftover salmon, flaked
3 soft boiled eggs
1 small onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp coriander seeds, crushed
1/2 tsp tumeric
100g basmati rice
250ml water
Juice of 1 lime
1 handful of chopped fresh coriander
A little fish sauce

1. Fry the onion in a little butter and oil in a heavy bottomed pan (I used my little Le Creuset casserole), along with the cumin, coriander seeds and tumeric until the onion is slightly translucent.
2. Add the rice, and mix well to coat the rice with the spicy onion mixture. Add in the water and leave to simmer on a very low heat for about 15 minutes, stirring once in a while to stop it sticking.
3. Once the rice is cooked through, add the fish, eggs and stir gently, trying not to break up the fish too much. Add in the lime juice, coriander, fish sauce, and stir again.
4. Close the lid briefly for about 5 mins to warm up the fish and eggs. Eat for brunch!

And for those of you who are wondering what was the first thing I ate when I came back from South America, here is a little treat. Actually the first thing I ate was Nando's, given it was 10pm when I got home and it was the only thing opened, but what I am counting is this: fish fingers for breakfast, served with Nando's coleslaw. Food of the gods!! And apparently it looked so pretty it 'looked like something from Tetsuya's'!