Early Christmas Feast

Oh the weather outside is frightful 
But the fire is delightful
And since we've no place to go

 Let it snow.. Let it snow.. Let it snow..

 ~Let it snow by Dean Martin~

I love festive seasons for so many reasons, the gathering, abundance of food, and countless of decorating activities. It is always a dream of mine to induce the seasonal spirit into my own home. I adore houses that are decorated with beautiful candles, colourful lights, and ornaments.  At this time of the year, in different parts of the world, many people experience the beginning of the coldest season of the year, but not here. Apart from being thankful of staying in Australia where all the plumptious summer berries begin to pile up at many supermarket's shelves, I have to admit it is a little bit heart breaking to be in a place where Christmas is celebrated during summer with obviously no snow!! 

Well, thankfully it did not beat my joyous spirit from throwing an early Christmas dinner and indulging myself in this season of excesses.

Although I had been pottering around the kitchen from 9 am to 7 pm, and did the cleaning, decorating, and preparing meals myself, I didn't feel apologetic about it. However, to be frank there are times, where I can be very hysterical about throwing a dinner party too.

I always have this anxiety of not having enough meal to feed my guess, or sometimes even, the time that might be up against me.  I think to maintain your mood along the preparation at this time of the year, short cut is your ally. I remember vividly in my mind, as bill granger said, it’s rather having a short cut than not cooking at all. If it’s good for bill granger, it is certainly fine by me.

I planned the whole menu already, bbq ribs, fried chicken, mashed potato, salad, and pie. But, what pie?! I understood my limit, I couldn’t even be bothered to measure the flour, butter, and egg anymore. What I did was go to the frozen food section in the supermarket, opened the freezer door, and grabbed myself one ready rolled shortcrust pastry.

I prepared this blueberry and mascarpone pie. This recipe was a reminiscence of recipe in donna hay magazine, and Nigella Lawson new cookbook called “kitchen: recipes from the heart of the home”. I thought marrying these two recipes was a great idea. 
So here is the recipe 

Blueberry and Mascarpone Pie

Adapted from Donna hay and Nigella Lawson 

Ingredients:

250 g Mascarpone Cheese, room temperature

35 g icing sugar, sifted

40 g lemon curd ( I used Mackay's lemon curd)

500 g blueberries

1 frozen flan case or use 1 sheet of  frozen shortcrust pastry (I used pampas)

Directions:

1. Baked the pastry case according to the directions on the package, cool and set a side

2. Mix the mascarpone cheese in a bowl, until smooth

3. Add in the icing sugar, and lemon curd

4. Pour the cheese mixture onto the pastry case, smooth the top

5. Scatter around some blueberries on top, and put them in the fridge to set

6. Dust it with icing sugar, and serve

Serve 7-8 people

So there you go everyone,  I will be heading home soon, therefore watch out for the updates from my home country.

'till then,