Christmas Eve Dinner Food Porn
Merry Christmas to everyone! I hope that your Christmas was filled with family, food and fun.
Christmas for 2012 has come and gone; with only memories and picture remaining for reminiscing. That.......and all the leftover food!
My family traditions are such that we celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. Over the years, with respective partners and their families, my mother has worked out that to keep family peace in her offspring (me and my brothers), it was better for us to shift the feasting to the night before so as the respective partners could spend Christmas Day with their families.
Our family feasting includes the various cousins, their families and uncles and aunts. Whilst not gargantuan in proportion, we do end up with quite a horde to feed. This year was no exception.......we ended up with 22 adults and 12 kids for dinner.
Another tradition that we have - we eat Asian fare for this feasting; with all of us siblings, aunts, cousins bringing dishes along for the pot luck.
Inspite of being an Asian family where it's what isn't said rather than what is overtly spoken that's important, I would say that we're a fairly normal family; which is that as a family, we are typically dysfunctional and functional at the same time.
So......As with everything familial, the cook-off has turned into something of an artform with a balancing act between competition, where everyone wants to amaze the family with their cooking skill (I blame MasterChef!); and some degree of collusion between the sibllings and cousins so that we end up with a fairly balanced offering for dinner.
I think we did fairly well this year. I think most of us have switched off the competitive cook-off and we brought tried and tested favourite dishes to the table!
Egg Curry - courtesy of my mother.
Sambal, with deep fried anchovies - another one of my mother's offerings.
My mother also made this mushroom vegetarian dish. We were blessed with 4 vegetarians for dinner on this night.
Chicken Rendang - my dad's.
A dry Chicken curry - my dad has specialised in chicken curry dishes.
One of my cousin's brought this chicken soya dish - for the kids. It was delicious and all the adults descended on this!
Another cousin and an aunt brought this Assam Shrimp curry. Fantastically hot and sour!
My other cousin brought the Top Hats. You make the "hats" using a special mould and deep frying them. And then "top" it off with the filling. She made the filling vegetarian friendly.
My younger brother made paella. Why? Because he thought Spanish cuisine would fit in well with the night. Yup. That's my younger brother.
My older brother made the Thai Shrimp.
My SiL made another soya chicken dish.
My contributions? With a pesky vegetarian in the house, I tend to volunteer the vegetarian curries.
Chickpea curry.
Vegetable curry.
My mother also put on a LARGE pot of rice to go with all the curries. It was a fantastic meal!
My first plate of food.
I didn't get round to capturing my second.
(Continued in Next Post)
so we are celebrating in the morning!
)
The most we have nowadays is the four of us. If my sister ever could come down with her husband and kids, they would more than double our numbers. We have less than 10 in our whole family. 12 if you include my father's sister, husband and kid.
They're something I could do next year.
