Tuesday, February 04, 2014

Our Lovely {Belated} Christmas Meal {cauliflower, yams, lemon and sage roast chicken}


Such beautiful snow these days.
I had a wonderful afternoon preparing for this 
dinner.
*
I must say however that my good friend brought over
the best cheese ball I have yet to taste
and I failed to get a picture of it.
*
Suffice to say that GF bagel chips and the cheese ball
were enjoyed by all before the actual meal began.
*
So about this meal...


I made my Ottawa Ukrainian Mother's 
breaded cauliflower for our Christmas meal.
*
Here's the recipe:

1. Boil cauliflower (whole), so it becomes softer, but not too soft.
2. Cut on smaller pieces
3. have eggs in one bowl (start with 3 and beat them) and 
breadcrumbs or cornmeal to its mix in other bowl
4. dip cauliflower in breadcrumbs first, in eggs after. Do it 2 times.
5. fry it. The best result will be if you fry it in butter or oil and butter.
*
The cauliflower was soft enough for me to easily cut
off the end of it and break them into smaller florets,
but not so soft that it was at all disintegrating. 
*
I used cornmeal so that it was GF and added one or two eggs
as I went along.
It is surprisingly thick egg with cornmeal but when it fries up
it looks like slightly burnt roasted cauliflower and 
the breading is just right.
*
I choose to fry it in ghee
as I knew it would not cause smoke issues while frying.
It worked really well; I did find that between
all the dishes I had in the oven (4 others)
and the two pans of frying cauliflower that
I opened the windows for a little bit to clear the air of
the added heat and food smells.
*
It worked wonderfully and was very much 
enjoyed by our guests.


We used my Grandma's dishes for the Christmas meal.


The fried cauliflower was great on our white platter.


It's a great dish as it's texture is more
firm and with a nice light crunch.


We used a very special Romanian wine for our Christmas meal,
one that I was given over a year ago by dear 
friends in Ottawa.


We had a Romanian at our meal who 
asked where I got it from and said that it was
indeed a very good wine.
It was greatly enjoyed!


I also served a green salad, 
baked carrots with an orange and ginger glaze,


and the cranberry and yam dish 
(I will blog about how I made this later this week DV).


that was roasted, basting once with the juices.
Recipe inspired from this one.
*
Here is how I did it:
I cut up a large onion
and place the onion inside the chicken with much of the sage, 
and a little lemon.
Under the skin was lemon slices, sage and garlic.
I put butter on the skin...
Onion was around everywhere, spilling out and wedged in 
by the wings.
 After buttering the chicken, 
lemon juice was poured over the chicken,
before I put minced garlic and more salt and pepper on the top of 
the chicken before pouring around half a cup of chicken stock
in the pan after the chicken was already in the pan,
ready to be roasted. 
It was roasted at 450 F for about 30 or so minutes.
Then I turned the oven down to 375F and put back the 
already partially baked stuffing, carrots and yams,
all covered in tin foil
(other than the chicken).
These all stayed in the oven for perhaps a hour or less.


It was a lovely and very festive meal.


Cheesecake followed with a mint tea with rose petals
and coffee.
*
Much talking, discussing and laughter was present...
life with all of it's joys and hopes were there,
with friendships deepening and 
talk of church, priests and family interweaving in 
the conversation as the meal was enjoyed by all.

4 comments:

E Helena E said...

So glad for you both to have this type of meal and fellowship in your now not-so-new home!

Martha said...

That cheesecake looks delicious...especially because I can tell it's homemade! ♥ And I bet that mint tea with rose petals is very nice. Is it from the Republic of Tea?

Martha said...

P.S. Will you share your cheesecake recipe?

elizabeth said...

Martha: the tea is from Bridgehead in Ottawa :)