Christmas Eve dinner

That time of the year again. Christmas. This year I don't feel like Christmas. I think it is because I just came back from Europe and had a really good holiday break. Of course spent a lot of money over in Europe, I am not prepared to spend more money here to buy presents... anyways... Christmas is about giving. I might as well do my best - be creative.

This year we had our family dinner on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day. I prepared something really simple - well... good food are the simple ones and not have to fuzz over 10 recipes to create one thing...

I was given this fresh dill over a week ago. SO fresh that it has not died after being in the fridge for a whole week. I stuffed the dill in the salmon - best salmon ever!! rubbed with some good quality olive oil and drizzled with lemon juice and lemon zest. The crispy skin was awesome and the salmon was really fresh. 

We invited a friend over, who is a vegetarian, so I adopted some dish that is vege friendly, I made a zucchini, chickpeas cous cous dish - it was delicious and SPICY. I flavoured it with curry that I bought from the market - man.. that was hot!!!! The cous cous is not like the normal cous cous. This is called pearl cous cous. They are hugh and the texture is really different to the normal cous cous.

I also made a roasted pumpkin and eggplant rocket salad with pine nut. It was really simple. Toss the cut up pumpkin and eggplant with olive oil and a bit of soy sauce for the eggplant and chilli flakes for the pumpkin. After the veggie is cooled. Toss with the rocket with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice... the pine nut added an extra texture to the dish. It is very nice!!! We were pretty full after the 3 dishes... 

Wait... how can you dine at Mandy's kitchen without desert??? 

Mango ice-cream!!! I did a quick version of this mango ice-cream. It was refreshing in a hot summer night... but I will do a long version next time. I think it will worth it...

The quick version is not bad. I used store bought vanilla ice-cream. Let it melts then add mango puree and mango chunks to it. However, the texture of the ice-cream changed during the process. When it refroze... the texture is more like a granita... it lost the creaminess of the ice-cream,

I am making a pavlova for Christmas lunch tomorrow. Yes, Pavlova... which involve a lot of eggwhites... so I will have a lot of egg yolks leftover... that is a formulation for a creamy ice-cream...