International Christmas Feast
Sunday, 31 December, 2006
These are photos from several weeks ago when my church had an International Christmas Feast on the Thursday night of mission. I remember coming home tired and not wanting to socialise with anyone but hindsight I should have remembered that Francis was cooking so it would be foolish to miss out!
I also should have invited my parents (who would have really liked it because they're so into food) but unfortunately I didn't even think of it.
The International Christmas Feast took place in the church hall (behind the newly renovated church building). Normally this is not a very attractive space, however the decorators on team had divided the hall in half with a white sheet and had hung paper lanterns all over the place.
The table decorations were tealights in square glass holders wrapped in translucent patterned paper. These sat on blue and green paper with silver curling ribbon, pebbles and silver stars scattered about.
Up the front just before the stage there was a bunch of tables draped with fairy lights.
These tables had food on it that had already been prepared. Some of them were around a raised platform where Francis stood to give his cooking demonstrations. It wasn't continuous—and about halfway through, one of the guys on the mission team gave a short talk about Christmas—but he did something for just about every single course that we ate, twirling his saucepans and wielding his knives like Jamie Oliver.
There was a video camera behind him that focused on what his hands were doing. The image was projected onto the white sheet draped across the front of the stage behind him. On the left a data projecter had the PowerPoint slideshow of all the dishes he was preparing, complete with flags of their country of origin.
The feast was composed of Christmas food from around the world. Francis had chased up some recipes and thrown in a few of his own. So we started with bruschetta with both cannellini bean salad and tomato salad from Italy (of course).
Then we moved on to insalata capreses (salad from Capri—also from Italy) that had rocket, basil, tomatoes and boccocini on it.
We also had a potato salad from the Czech republic that I forgot to photograph but it was very nice. Meg had given the recipe to Francis and she got up on the platform to talk about a little. Then we had Christopsomo (“Christ's bread”—from Greece) which was served with dried figs. I wasn't that into the bread but other people on my table loved it.
Then came one of my favourite parts of the feast: canton province poached ginger chicken (from China). Francis demonstrated how to cook it—how to poach the chicken and fry the onions and put it altogether. He said that it will look like the onions have been burned but they're actually really tasy and they were!! The dish was served with bok choy.
By this stage, we were all quite stuffed and weren't sure how we were going to eat any more. There was plenty of chicken left and we felt obliged to keep on eating. But the feast hadn't ended yet. Next came the Philippino ham.
This ham took about six hours to make. Francis said that his family used to make it for Christmas lunch or dinner, but this was the first time he had tried the recipe himself. You simmer the ham in pineapple juice and port, then add smashed garlic cloves, thyme, cinnamon sticks, bay leaves, oregano, half a handful of cloves and half a kilo of brown sugar. Then you score it and pack it with cloves, and pin pineapple rings and cherries all over the outside. Then you pack it with brown sugar and bake it in the oven. Once you've tried this, you just can't go back to regular ham.
Then we had mejillones a la sevillana (mussel tomato stew—from Spain). I really liked this dish. The mission team prepared the mussels in front of us (de-bearded them, I think is the terminology) and then took them away to be prepared properly. Most of my table were either completely stuffed by this point or weren't really into mussels because I ended up eating more than anyone else. Opening them was a little tricky though.
We finished off the evening with panettone (from Italy) which was drizzled with vanilla syrup and served with ice cream, and mulled wine from Switzerland/Germany which I don't think got to our table. We congratulated the chef, then staggered home to bed.
Later on, Francis emailed around all the recipes. He gave me permission to make them available to you (PDF 220kb) so enjoy!
Blinks:
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Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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