My African Christmas Feast 2011

Growing up, Christmas for me was always about coming together as a family and sharing the best food we could cook. I remember even when we decided to spend part of Christmas at a church event, our taste buds were never disappointed.

We had a multicultural community and these were the places where I got to taste popular Indian dishes such as chicken biryani and those sweet Indian desserts. This was also where I got to taste wonderful Ugandan dishes such as this lovely peanut buttery stew of which unfortunately I do not know the name.

But yes, Christmas was all about sharing the best food we could make. For this post I had to call my mom so that she could remind me what was a regular Christmas dish in our household. Sure enough, jollof rice was a regular feature. Mama and I have pulled together a menu guaranteed to set your taste buds into motion. For this year’s Christmas feast I planned to have:

1. Jollof rice (I cut this out and went for sour cherry rice)
2. Roast goat leg
3. Simple coconut caramel.

(I could not get a hold of fresh coconut so I made a special wrapped up treat instead).

I also made creamy vegetables, shito, Anjum Anand’s courgette carpaccio pictured above (See http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/647994 for Anjum’s recipe) and cranberry sauce. Oh… and let’s not forget the chicken my guests insisted on, what’s Christmas without a bird huh?

And these, my friends, made for a scrumptious Christmas feast.

*This is an update of the post I wrote first at http://www.africaontheblog.com/african-christmas-feasts/; it did not all go as planned, but you know me and cooking; we just cannot be confined to a box.