Christmas dinner is something of a gastronomic event in our house.
We decided to have the entree as lunch instead of with the evening meal. BBQ prawns marinated overnight in lemon and lime juice, garlic, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves, chilli, black pepper and prawn oil. Served with a salad of cos lettuce, charred baby capsicum, cherry tomatoes, sliced zucchini and avocado and a dressing of palm sugar, fish sauce, lemon juice and diced chilli.
Here’s the dinner menu, served with Bird in Hand Sparkling Pinot Noir.
Spiced Duck Breast with Cherry Sauce
This started with an Ottolenghi recipe (from his book “Ottolenghi“), with the duck marinated overnight in a spice mix of crushed fennel and cumin seeds, pepper and salt. I made a duck with red wine sauce base from a Masterchef recipe (vol 2. p144). Then giving Ottolenghi a twist I added a few star anise and about 15 cherries and cooked it down. This worked really well….