We’re usually away for Christmas, so it was refreshing this year that we decided to stay home. This meant that the cat have the pleasure of our company (hehe), I was able to have an actual Christmas dinner on Christmas day, and got actual presents to open up! I got some speakers, a new sewing machine and other assorted knick knacks – Your Shape Wii game for one, chocolates, books ect ect…yay!

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Not to mention the magnificent snowfall! My first White Christmas – but thinking about it..I have not actually spent that many Christmases in countries that actually snow, so one in five is not too bad! Yep, I made the above on Christmas morning…

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And bacon made this, which is supposed to be a snow-cat

Unlike alot of people, I do not tend to get stressed out with making Christmas dinner. In fact, I quite enjoy it. It’s really not that difficult as well….and I do love making Christmas dinner with all the trimmings..

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My beautifully golden brown turkey. Yumm. My secret recipe is to brine it, let it swim in salt water for 24hours ; it makes the turkey wonderfully moist and flavourful. And NEVER follow the cooking time on the packaging. I cooked this for less than 2 hours (4.2kg bird), whilst the packaging reccomended about a 3 hour + cooking time. Of course, ALWAYS check the thickest part of the bird is not bloody before taking it out of the oven. To be honest, my bird could’ve done with only 1 hr & 30 mins, as I let it brown (without the bacon) for about 30 mins at 220deg before wrapping bacon all over the turkey for the remaining time at 180 deg. This browns up the turkey beautifully, whilst the bacon wrapping keeps it wonderfully moist. Lovely.

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I also made my fave festive red cabbage; with port, red wine vineger, cranberries, orange juice & rind, onions, cinnamon, nutmeg & star anise.

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And of course, the lovely trimmings – roast potatoes & parsnips, stuffing balls, pigs in blankets, sprouts with chipped bacon and assorted roast vegetables. I do love the trimmings.

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My piece de resistance – traditional American candied yam. This is the first time ever that I’m making it, but it is a very traditional American dish not to be missed with Thanksgiving & Christmas dinners. Fairly unknown outside of the US, this came from the 3 Thanksgiving that I spent in California. I have not had a full American Thanksgiving dinner for so long….and sorely missed the candied yams. Slightly misleading name – this is not a candy nor is it made out of what the rest of the world call yam. It is sweet potato, cooked in a lovely sauce of butter, maple syrup, spices and orange juice, it is then topped with marshmallows (yes, MARSHMALLOWS!) and baked till the marshmallows starts to toast – about 15 mins.

Serve immediately – the marshmallow crust looks deceptively hard, but its all soft and gooey inside, perfect mixed in with the sauce. I added some crushed walnuts to my sauce, and it tastes absolutely magnificent. Delicious. I like. Suprisingly enough, so did bacon – he had been apprehensive ever since I bought the sweet potato (sweet potato with my Christmas dinner??!! Never!!) . He was won over by this wonderful dish, the marshmallows just melting perfectly into the sauce. Bliss. Definately something that I will be repeating, with bacon’s seal of approval.

The whole spread – with homemade giblet gravy…. yummz.

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Until next year!!

Sorry – this is for bacon….you could play as well if you like by the way

I write about Kasa Rosa on an annual basis…I say it’s my favourite restaurant but in reality I don’t actually go there very often at all. It’s because it’s not open on Sundays, and it’s usually on Sundays that we go in search of lunch. Shame really. Not to mention that I kinda fell out with them after they stopped making the world’s best tiramisu…preferring to stick to their horrible chocolate fudge cake instead. eew. Tastes like they bought the choc fudge cake from the supermarket or something. And oh, when I went on my birthday last year and ordered scallops, that was all I got….five scallops on a huge plate, and two silvers of grilled pepper. For £15.95, that was extremely poor – at least give me abit of a side dish, damnit! Even some side salad or chips won’t go amiss…but just five scallops on top of two silvers of grilled pepper…thats just plain blah.

Anyway, on bacon’s birthday we eventually made it there for lunch. I’ve noticed that they’ve revamped their menu online, and was intruiged to find that they have started offering lunchtime deals. Seeing that their pizzas & pastas are between £6.50 – £9.50, their lunchtime deal of £5.90 for any pizzas or pastas with 1/2 pint of beer is an absolute bargin. I love it when restaurants do lunch deals – there are not many people here who eats out for lunch anyway, and the chefs had to be there to prepare for dinner.

I had my regular Pasta Tarantino. Hmm. When I said regular, I mean that’s what I usually have, but it definately did not taste the same. Gone was the light, wine infused tomato concasse flavoured with fresh basil. It was replaced by a heavier tomato pasty like sauce, with only a very slight hint of wine. The spaghetti had also been replaced by linguine, I must say I don’t think that works very well. However, instead of pre-cooked mini shirmps, this pasta dish now contains humungous bits of seafood.

Just look at the prawn. Definately a step up from the former pathetic looking pre-cooked shrimps. Not too sure about the sauce – both version are nice, but the lighter wine-infused sauce of its earlier days was just too special to pass up. Now it just tastes like a good pasta dish, not special like it used to be. Also, there seems to be a tad more chillies than what I remembered – and that’s a good thing. Gives it the fiery kick and brings out the flavours better methinks.

Bacon went for the Pizza “Augustea” . This comprised of tomatatoes, mozzarella and Gorgonzola cheese, oven baked and garnished with Serrano ham and rocket lettuce. We’ve only ever tried their Pepperoni pizza, which is ghastly – overly salty and oily. This pizza was a very refreshing change – light in flavours and yummy in taste. The crisp base contrasts nicely with the fresh leaves and melted cheese…rounded off by the super thin slices of serrano ham.

At £5.95 per person, this meal even came with freshly baked bread and a 1/2 pint of beer. How fab is that? The only problem is that this had put me off from patronising them at night, where pastas go for £9 instead of £5.95 plus drink!

Kasa Rosa
2 Queens Place
Morley, Leeds
LS27 8HG

Need directions? It is opposite from the Bargin Mart in Morley, hidden behind some bushes.

Everybody now:

Yes, its’ bacon’s birthday TODAY!!! I have therefore stole his recipe and make him something yummy. What he wants for his birthday is TO BE LEFT ALONE. Seriously, that’s not very nice for me and really, slightly insulting. So he’s spending the day watching SKY sports news…after bringing me to the debenhams sales, of course.

Inggredients:

3.5 ounces self raising flour
0.5 ounce cocoa powder
3 ounces butter
1 ounce oil
1 clementine, or other citrus fruit.
3 ounces caster sugar
2 free-range large eggs
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp natural vanilla essence
125g milk chocolate

Slightly melt butter, and cream with sugar & oil. This needs to be beaten until the bright yellow color turns slightly pastel

Beat in eggs until fluffly, airy and light.

Add in sieved flour, baking soda & cocoa powder

Continue beating until fully mixed in

Meanwhile, heat oven at 180 c for 10 minutes

The cake mixture should be very thick now. Add in vanilla essence, zest from the clementine and juice from the clementine.

Continue beating untill light.

Chop chocolate (I use Cadbury’s dairy milk) into tiny chunks…I chop mine into four pieces per tablet. Fold it into cake mixture slowly

Scoop into individual cup cakes cups; bake for 12 minutes.

Poke a metal skewer in – if it doesn’t stick, it is cooked!

Icing:

1 clementine, juice & zest
icing sugar

Pour in about 100g of icing sugar
Mix in zest
Slowly mix in orange juice.
Texture needs to very very thick, bacon always says that icing sugar needs to be thicker than you think….otherwise it just won’t set properly!

I love it when I bite into it and get a suprise mouthful of the just-melting chocolate chunks. Mmmm mmm yumm.Thats what’s so special about this recipe…the lovely choc chunks. I love chocolate & orange, and 1 clementine has just enough juice to gently flavour the cake with orangey goodness. You can drop in some orange essence I guess….hmm, wonder if I can use orange essential oil? Is it essential oil even edible?

I am about a week late for Valentine’s day – the annual retailer’s dream day. With most people getting flowers, chocs, champagne and dinner in a posh restaurant, perhaps you would like to see what I got……..

Because I got a dozen of Krispy Kreme . With special Valentine’s edition doughnut in the shape of a heard with a strawberry filling. Now, isn’t this better than flowers that costs 5 times more and wilt anyway? All together now….aaaawwww….

We actually started the day off in Daysinn…the cheapest of the cheap hotel. No, did not actually go there on purpose, I was still in Oxford and bacon being the super-husband came all the way from the other end of the country to pick me up – so we thought we’ll stay the night at the cheapest place we could find.

I don’t actually think the rooms are that bad…clean, spacious, complimentary toilteries and coffee/tea making facilities. Comes with free newspapers – which DeVere hotel charged me 50p for. To be honest, I would rather stay in the Daysinn rather than the posh DeVere.

We walked along Cowley road – Oxford’s famous restaurant mile, but ended up getting the abovementioned Krispy Kreme for breakfast…as I couldn’t actually find cafe that serves breakfast..sigh. After breakfast (well, brunch) we drove into Oxford city centre to have a wander around…Oxford’s a real lovely city. Ended up at the Covered Market, a lovely market housing anything from traditional butchers, hatmakers, juice bars and natural toileteries stalls.

We came across MooMoos…a juice/milkshake bar. Just look at the variety!!

Bacon bought me a mars milkshake,very similar with those from Perhentian’s!!! AWWWW! Although he did slurp it up like a pint of beer and I only really had a taste of it….hmpf. Love the hanging pineapples behind him by the way

Pie Minster serves a variety of pie with traditional gravy, mushy peas and mash. Bacon had the traditional steak and kidney ale pie. Yummilicious! There are other varieties from chorizo to thai chicken curry. The crust was crisp and non-oily, whilst the gravy is really groovy! For about £6.25 you get the minty peas, mash, gravy and a choice of pies.

All too soon it was way for us to leave Oxford having exhausted our 2 hour parking. We never seem to stay very long at Oxford due to the prohibitive parking charges. This was the first time I was actually there in the daytime, and would definately return in the near future to spend another day here…this time we will do the park-n-ride rather than trying to find parking in Oxford city centre.

To cap the day off (Leeds is about 3.5hrs away from Oxford), we left Oxford around 1.30pm for Birmingham. Bacon made a detour to Malaysian Delight at Birmingham to bring me to my favourite Assam Laksa. Checked the picture I took when I was last there – mint leaves are missing this time! Not fair! I got a tapau (takeaway) of prawn noodle for Sunday’s breakfast. No pictures there – I devoured it at 10am bleary eyed! YUMM! I can’t really compare Village Cafe’s harmeen with Malaysian Delight, but I would go either restaurant for harmeen. Not sure when will I be able to make it there again….but hopefully it is sometime soon….:)

All in all, an excellent day. Now, the diet starts…..burp.