A Boxing Day Feast

We have been eating non-stop for the past few days.

It started with a yum char lunch at the Grand Harbour restaurant in Auckland, totally delicious, and ended with a cold meal for our Boxing day dinner. A real feast for us.

I decided to experiment with ingredients for a cold salad and made this one by grilling sliced red capsicum and thinly sliced courgettes.

Then I thinly sliced a few garlic cloves and grilled them with oil for 3 minutes to make garlic chips.

I also used snow peas which I had picked fresh on Boxing Day and boiled for 5 minutes, then cooled the snow peas in cold running water to stop them from cooking further.

These were all arranged on a platter and sprinkled with the little garlic chips.

Finally I squeezed a little lemon juice over and drizzled it with Italian red wine vinegar made by Acetum (aceto di vino rosso selezione).

We had rollmops and salted herrings.

And I made a clotted cream sauce using leftover clotted cream, wholegrain mustard and a squeeze of lemon juice. I wasn't sure if this combination would work, but it was mouth-wateringly yummy, if I may say so myself, and went really well with smoked salmon.

We also had a potato salad made with new potatoes, capers, gherkins, fresh dill and chives from the garden, green olives and mayonnaise.

There was a small selection of meats, prosciutto, mortadella and Calabrese salami, which we bought from Farro, my favourite delicatessen.

Mum made a lovely olive focaccia and dad made a green salad with avocados.

And this was followed by a cheese board which included emmenthal, Old Rotherdam gouda, roquefort and Jarlsberg cheeses.

It was a very relaxing meal, made slowly over the afternoon and eaten leisurely. Bliss.

Now it is time for dinner again. Leftovers from yesterday. I will have to get out in the garden to exercise all of this feasting off.

See you soon

Hugs

Rose x