Merry Christmas to all!
Merry Christmas
&
Happy New Year to all our regulars and visitors!
Peace and love
Mamta, Kavey and Pete
@mamtaskitchen.com
Merry christmas and a very happy new year for Mamta, Kavey,Pete and all friends.
Oh yes, Merry Christmas indeed.
Special thanks to our two fine moderators, AskCy and Winton!
And to all our visitors for keeping the site active and relevant and making it into a community!
All the Seasons greatings to one and all, have a very happy,merry and safe Christmas and New Year.
Steve
and the same to everyone here.
I'm away from London from 21st to the 15th Jan, so maybe no postings.
Last year I said 'happy winter festival' to everyone I know in the market, assuming not everyone would be Christian, (the people I know are Zoroastrians, Hindus, Muslims, Jews and many more). Without fail, I was wished a happy Christmas, even though I am not a Christian.
Seems like everyone likes Christmas, whether their religion celebrates it, or not. I will go to the midnight service with the family (one is Christian, one is Gnostic) but I don't join in the liturgy.
Wishing Mamta, family and all contributors and readers a very Merry Christmas.
I'm fascinated by all festivals of whatever faith - especially in the kitchen, so trying many dishes I would not have otherwise, well helped by the festivals calendar on this site (under the 'Learning' >tab) and Nigella Lawson's book 'Feast.' Hopefully food is a start to giving us a better understanding of each other.
And of course a happy and peaceful New Year to all.
Winton
Indeed Winton there is nothing like giving someone brussel sprouts to help them understand us... :-) lol
Seriously though, I've said it all along that you can understand more about a Country/Religion/Faith/family/person by what goes on in the kitchen.
Steve
Echo everything that has been said. Merry Xmas to all, thanks for a super website. Regards from the Wilsonz family.
merry xmas to mamta and family and everyone who uses the site from moi.
i dont celebrate christmas because i think nowadays it is just an opertunity for industries to sell people rubbish and a time for the famous to release a new dvd cd book or scent. a time for people to get into debt and spend the rest of the year paying it back just to borrow it again the following year. i dont want any part of that...plus i am tight fisted lol. ebernezer sidney is still waiting for a visit from the ghost of the christmas past.
i am cooking an indian feast for christmas and i am using some of mamtas recipes...minus the onions and garlic :-)
merry xmas everyone and stay safe.
sidney
My mother in-law will approve of you, she never touched onions or garlic in her life :-)!
Merry Christmas
Speaking of onions and families at Christmas that reminds me of something my Grandmother told me years ago. It was around this time of year and we were taking about if we should have beef/turkey, it would be nice to have loads of this, some of that and generally having a meal of the mind. She then said one year when she was a little girl that as a special treat they had fried onions. Now this had me imagining a plate with mash, roast potatoes, all the veg and some thick slices of turkey with a load of browned onions on. I asked how they were served ie crispy brown or soft and sauce like... She then said "no, we just had onions.. as a special treat for Christmas dinner we just had fried onions".... makes you think, when you are complaining about being hungry or not being able to get the right kind of chocolate bar... "a treat" was having fried onions, ok it was during the war and onions were few and far between. Onion crops were dug up to plant essentials like potatoes, so maybe an onion was seem with much more yearning.. ?
Steve
Qoute Steve " Seriously though, I've said it all along that you can understand more about a Country/Religion/Faith/family/person by what goes on in the kitchen."
Very true, I am a Hindu (Indian citizen -- Nepalese origin) so the religion says - NO BEEF (cow meat)because it is worshipped. In Nepal during the festival of Dushera the hindus sacrifice buffaloes and consume it. Even amongst hindus some are allowed pork and some don't. For Muslims pork is a no no, and they prefer halal meat. Some consider fish and eggs as vegetarian..Why??. My wife is a vegetarian but consumes egg. As mentioned above some dont even touch onions and garlic and there are restaurants in India (Viashnav?)which serve food cooked without them.
So taking food and other facts in view religion can have plus as well as minus points, it all depends how to perceive it. In my view more deeply we get involved in a religion, the more confused we get and less common sense we use. Just my thoughts.
Merry Christmas to Mamta, Pete and Kavita! And everyone else.
I'm an atheist, my wife is a lapsed Catholic; we love Christmas. For me, it's about family, friends, and FOOD! My wife has gone off roast goose, alas, so we'll be doing guineaufowl in a sauce which has those very dark cherries called 'griottes' in French.
Then there's that wonderful Parsi dish with chicken, tomato pur?e, apricots and potato straws: very colourful, very festive. We'll be eating all this in front of huge, glowing vinestock fires on the open hearth.
The olive harvest is upon us: a terrible bore to pick, but the olive oil is fantastic, and I make tapenade from some of the olives: fab.
Have a good 2011, folks! Thanks for all that useful information this year.
Phil
It just occurred to me that instead of roast chickens for christmas i will go for two different flavoured whole tandoori chicken 1, 2 ,3 or 4.
Merry christmas to all.
this is what i am cooking for christmas dinner.
home made nut roast (same recipe every year)
the potatoes will be tossed in olive oil crushed fennel seeds crushed coriander seeds paprika powder and coars salt before i roast them
instead of boiling the sprouts this year i am going to chop them and fry them with some chopped cauliflower and panch poran.
roast chestnuts :)
going to boil the carrots and then toss them in some butter and add a handful of peanuts
already made the cranberry sauce and i added a little cassia bark to it (which added a really nice touch)
i also made an elderberry sauce with some frozen elderberries that i harvested in the autumn
oh and gravy
tomorrow i am going to make a massive batch of vegetable samosas (using mamtas recipe on the site) i will freeze them and get them out on christmas.
i might make a beetroot orange and dill salad
will be cooking pakoras on the day and some raita (excuse the spelling)
AND...if that doesn't scare them away nothing will LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
I've lent my two tagines to my SIL, so we will be having Moroccan food at some point over Christmas and the NY. I have to finish decorating her kitchen, which has a Moroccan theme.
Christmas day will be roast turkey, with all the trimmings, including cranberry sauce, bread sauce, mashed pots/parsnips, sage and onion stuffing, roast spuds/parsnips, sprouts, and I make the gravy with more than a drop of Harvey's Bristol cream.
I don't like Christmas pud, so I have mince pie instead, which I love, with genuine Devonshire clotted cream, the one with bits in. The rest of the day, and Boxing day is cold meats and pickles and feeling stuffed, but with a walk along the sea shore, somewhere, to bring the circulation back. This year we may have to give that a miss, I might not even make it to Devon tomorrow! I'm going by train, along the old Southern Railway route, slower than the other route, but much more enjoyable, and as I go from terminus to terminus, there is no chance I'll miss my stop if (when) I nod off.
Anyway, merry Christmas, everyone, and I hope you have a healthy and happy new year.
Sid, your menu sounds delicious. This Mint Raita goes will with tandoori style meats. If you make it, plese take a picture, I keep forgetting until after it is all gone!
Lapis, Tagine sounds good to me. A while back, we visited out nephew and his family in Morocco (he is now posted back in UK). His maid used to make lovely tagine!
Anyway, whatever you cook, have a nice Christmas. Hugs to everyone.
Mamta
i have decided to make two different types of samosa today. i am making mamtas samosa recipe (tried it before and it is excellent) and i am making another type that i saw gary rhodes make when he was touring in india. it is made useing chopped coliflower grated potato peanuts soaked rasins and aniseed powder (i am using ground fennel seeds but last time i made them i used ground star anise). i think i will add a small amount of ajwain seeds to the pastry for an added twist. when i make mamtas samosa recipe i add some kalonji seeds to the pastry. i dont know if that is traditional or not but it is nice :)
this is the video of coliflower samosa. the forum wont let me post the link so if you type in youtube(dot)com then put a / and copy and paste watch?v=FUnTdk53nlw after the / and hit enter it will work.
Sid your Christmas meal sounds fantabulous. Will you use whole peanuts in samosas?
No meat? seems like you are a vegetarian?
Cheers.
i will chop the peanuts up slightly but not too finely.
im not vegetarian but i dont go mad for meat at all. i dont like beef or pork and i can not abide lamb (smell or taste). the only meat i eat is chicken but i only eat it about once a week at the most. i prefer vegetarian food with the occasional bit of chicken for good measure.
two years ago i had a really odd dream where i was stood in the kitchen watching my parents cremate my dead uncle in the oven and something had gone wrong with the oven and it caught fire. the same morning when i got up my mum told me that the main oven was not working (something to do with the timer - which was bypassed by an electrician and now it works). so they were using the grill part of the cooker to roast things instead. with the door open it is a red heat and with the door closed it is a black heat. it turns out that before i had got up she had roasted a leg of lamb in the grill and when she cut into it there was an abscess in the leg and it exploded all over the kitchen and the smell was absolutely disgusting (aparently). I hated lamb before but i hate it even more now. an odd dream and quite funny (in a weird way).
Blimey! exploding of lamb's leg abscess in the kitchen? Why was there an abscess - unless it was diseased.
Ugh! That must have been awful sid, a roasted lamb abscess. Double Ugh!!
Watched the video of cauli samosas, it is just too slow, left it halfway! Let's see if the link works here; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUnTdk53nlw