Let the festivities begin… with a Fishy Christmas Pudding!

The Christmas festivities officially began last night at Moregeous Mansions with the first of what was sure to be many nights of over-indulgence! Thought I’d share a couple of images as in between serving up drinks & food for friends, I was playing with my new Canon lens, a 50mm f1.4 which will (hopefully) let me take great quality pictures in low light, hard to do with a regular lens.

Christmas doesn’t feel perfect without fizz so kir royales were sparkled-up with icy edges (so easy to do, just a dip in egg white & coloured sugar) and frozen raspberries to toast our night.

Non-meat-eaters Mike and Amanda were joining us plus Helen & Pete for dinner so it was an all veggie starter. I’d a bit of an experiment with Jamie’s easy to make hummus recipe & added chilli, lemon & black olives, decorating the dish with pomegranate seeds and baby spinach. The gratinated artichoke hearts went down a storm, first time I’d made them but definitely not the last. So easy to do – two tins of drained & halved artichokes, mixed with softened onion & garlic, breadcrumbs, heaps of parmesan & sage and roasted for 20 mins

Then came the main course Mr M had been a little worried about.  A Fishy Christmas Pudding. Sounds so wrong doesn’t it?! I’d wanted to do something festive with fish but a search through my zillions of cookbooks came back with a big fat zero. Time for an invention. One of the recipes which looked interesting involved mini-meatballs with soured cream & pomegranate seeds on top….. this evolved into giant salmon, spring onion & ginger balls with a dollop of creme fraiche, a sprig of coriander & some finely chopped red pepper: a Salmon Xmas Pud, served on a bed of sesame roasted  cashews, green beans and broccoli.. it’s not the best of pics, but you get the gist. Next time I’ll let the ‘puddings’ rest & cool a little before popping the creme fraiche on top or it melts too fast!

Then time for everyone’s favourite bit…. dessert! White chocolate truffle cake which had been cleverly made so it included absolutely no calories at all, apart from the biscuits, butter, double cream and chocolate.

LOVING MY LENS!!!

Not loving the fact that shortly after our guests left in the early hours, Mini-M, 13, decided to decorate the bathroom and living room. Nope, not with tinsel, but with a combination of Fanta, Ben & Jerry’s & chicken curry. As we mopped up at 3am and the washing machine started it’s cycle, our glam festive meal felt like a distant memory….