Christmas feasting!

We did goose - and thanks to the combination of Mr Dale (aka 'the Hampton Court Butcher')'s magnificent bird, Raymond Blanc's excellent recipe (serendipitously spotted by my mother) and K's sterling efforts with a sharp knife, it was absolutely delicious - moist, goose fat did not pour smoking from the oven, and there were lots of leftovers, despite the horror stories which several people had told me when I said we were going to try cooking goose for the first time... My sister did think the roasted crown looked a bit like the head of one of the aliens in Alien, which was disturbingly true, but it didn't mar the flavour!

Preparations on Christmas Eve, just before heading out to Midnight Mass up the road at Christ Church, Streatham - the James Wild designed church with an Owen Jones interior which is just up the road!

As you can see here next to the fruit bowl, the new iPad really came into its own for online recipe consultation - I call it 'iPad cooking'! Did I mention that I treated myself to one of these from the Apple store in Houston?? It has been brilliant anyway, generally for reading PDFs when travelling to and fro on the tube (I am examining an enormous Spanish thesis - which, thank god, I actually finished reading today - and this has made getting through it in a timely fashion much more manageable)

Sitting down to a delicious starter of home-made blinis and Hebridean Smokehouse peat-smoked salmon, with thanks to my sister...

The goose - served up on the wonderful 19th-century platter which I inherited from my grandmother, which only ever comes out on special occasions, and when the food deserves showing off!

And there were a lot of trimmings! Home-made bread sauce (yum) and cranberry & apple relish, and all the vegetables came from our Local Greens veg bag, which I have blogged about before and will again - it has been prompting us to experiment with new recipes and invigorate our cooking which is always good!

Happy Christmas diners! We needed a walk in Brockwell Park after all that...

...but we returned ready to eat our dessert - a rather delicious (if I say so myself) mocha chocolate roulade! I was very happy with how very loggy it looked, being a Yule Log an' all. I totally mucked up the icing for this - twice - and so that the cream and Green & Blacks dark chocolate I had melted together didn't go to waste, I made truffles!


Quite pleased with how these have turned out! (though amazingly we haven't tried them yet)

My sister stayed over and on Boxing Day we went for a long walk along the Thames, from Vauxhall to Bermondsey.

A bit different from this time last year when we had to strap on our crampons to trudge through the Edinburgh snow! It has been really mild and rather un-wintry, and the South Bank was full of tourists, as usual! I couldn't resist taking a photo every time I saw the growing Shard...

This is from pretty much right underneath it, at London Bridge station. It is just so other-worldly in its hugeness. When it is finished it will be the tallest building in Europe!!

So, it's been a lovely week of cooking and eating and spending time with family and seeing friends - last night we had dinner with Wanda and Az at Bill Granger's new London restaurant, Granger & Co, which was amazing. I won't be forgetting the gorgeous pavlova with quince and strawberries for a while...

Not bad for a first Christmas in our new flat. And we still have a week off work! We're finally organising a housewarming, an 'open house' on New Year's Day, which we're now planning the menu for (we're going to bake a whole salmon from the Brixton Market fishmonger) and which might finally prompt us to put some pictures up on the walls... Catching up on sleep is also an important part of the plan.

Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and all best wishes for 2012!

Christmas is coming!

I hadn't realised quite how long it has been since my last posting, but this is symptomatic of how busy November was, for both of us. I gave a conference paper (in Berlin), a gallery talk and 5 lectures (4 of them on the same day! a study day to the Birkbeck Alumni art history society - I was the study day!) all in the space of a two week period! The day I was giving my conference paper in Berlin, K was giving a lecture to the Hereford Historical Association! So, when the lecture was done, at least he got to spend a relaxing weekend at home with his parents...

Since we finished with all that craziness we have been trying to catch up with ourselves and start winding down a bit. By the end of December, I still have to read and write a report on a Spanish PhD thesis, write an article and a book introduction, but I am choosing not to worry overly about all those things - I am feeling completely lethargic at the weekends, and all I am capable of doing is wandering around shopping in Brixton Market, trying more of the food joints we haven't gone to yet. Mama Lan was a recent high point - the new Chinese dumpling place. We sat at the counter eating our lunch, watching the chefs making and cooking more of the dumplings we were eating - can't get much more freshly prepared than that!

There are quite a lot of pre-Christmas markets on at the weekends at the moment, which is quickly getting us into the Christmas spirit - last Saturday we went to visit our friend Lisa who was doing her first ever stall at the Workshop Sale in East Dulwich. We cycled over there, and picked up a few nice things for Christmas presents. Yesterday we wandered round the Crafty Fox Pop Up makers' market (I have discovered this is the phrase of the moment for craft fairs) and Brixton Makers' Market, which is a now monthly happening on Station Road, though I have to say the first one - which I stumbled upon quite by chance, back in October - was the best so far.

Today we bought a Christmas tree! (see above) And once K had struggled with getting it to stand up straight without falling over, we decorated it! I am sitting looking at it as I write - it feels very cosy in our living room now. We even put up a few pictures properly. We are doing Christmas here in the new flat this year - my parents and sister are coming to us, and we're planning the menu: so far the only fixtures are goose, and a mocha chocolate roulade. We both have two weeks off work, to catch up on sleep and exhibitions and write those articles and prepare for what is going to be another busy year - at least for me the next 6 months are going to carry on being pretty crazy - but also to spend some time in the flat and properly figure out where pictures and furniture should go, and replace those things we've been living with temporarily, and just be home-bodies for a while in our own home... Only two weeks to go!

Meet Juan, the camel-herd, and José, the potter - our mini-belen figures, bought in the Plaza Mayor Christmas market in Madrid, where there is always an enormous and highly complex belen, or Nativity Scene (though this does not really convey the true glamour of the Spanish version!), which the Christmas shoppers queue up to process past and enjoy! Of course the caganer is the most notorious of the Belen figures (Google it!) but there are all sorts of fun minor characters which make up the Bethlehem cityscape! We chose these two for a secular 'Nativity Scene' - though having put them out for the first time in a while, it is looking a bit bare. It's obviously about time to go back to Madrid to get a few more!!