This year, instead of having the usual (albeit delicious) Mongolian braai, I managed to negotiate a different plan. We had the most delicious roast chicken with cranberry stuffing, roasted vegetables, and roasted potatoes.
We had also planned on having green salad, and red salad. We did so many roasted veggies that we did not make the salads, as there seemed to be quite enough to eat.
We put the chicken into a cooking bag, and surrounded it with the veggies, lightly coated in olive oil, and very sparingly drizzled with honey.
After 2 hours in the oven (the veggies came out a bit before), the chicken was done. The final touch was to put some Dukkah onto the potatoes. We had made our own Dukkah, and it is the most excellent thing ever. It is supposed to be a fragrant Egyptian spice, and MAN is it ever delicious.
We got the base recipe from a book somewhere, but made it our own. You take one cup of oven-roasted almonds, one cup of oven roasted sesame seeds, one third of a cup of coriander seeds, one third of a cup of cumin seeds, and blend it all in a food processor. Then add a quarter teaspoon of flaked sea salt, and you have the best spice in the world.
It is a very subtle yet fragrant flavour that we added liberally to the potatoes.
For festive drinks we made cranberry and soda with ribbons of cucumber and strawberry in them. The looked very merry.
I am going to try upload some pics for you all to see.
The drinks with the cucumber ribbons:
Here is the raw chicken with the delicious-looking veggies before they went in:
