Dinner for One

With Thomas away from home in Micronesia this past month, the temptation has been to forego cooking interesting meals and resort to marmite on toast; which though I love is not the cornerstone of a healthy and nutritious diet. Many meal times consisted of salads – which are super easy to put together and with a wide range of ingredients in the fridge never seemed to be dull. 

The thought of salad for my Christmas dinner was somewhat unappealing and unimaginative so I set about planning my own very special “Dinner For One”. In Germany a British slapstick skit of the same name has been awarded cult status and is religiously shown across a variety of TV networks each New Year’s Eve, so much so that family members have likened me to the lead character but unlike the lovable Miss Sophie, I don’t have my own butler to serve me and act as numerous old friends! Nonetheless I felt a feast was in order, with plenty of accompanying beverages.

Taking an idea from Good Food magazine's 2013 Christmas special that I'd been wanting to try it out, I kick started the day with a smoked salmon, cream cheese, beetroot and rocket blini, with a glass of prosecco whilst watching “Love Actually” to get me in the Christmas spirit.  You could serve this oversized blini as a dinner party starter but afterall this is Dinner for One so I ate it all myself – and enjoyed every last bit! 


With the movie over I thought it was probably a good idea to get out of my pyjamas and into my Christmas dress. After all, even though you’re alone its no reason to let yourself go completely to the dogs, plus I had skype calls to make and couldn’t let the family down. 
My next course was a simple but tasty and filling carrot and coriander soup, with rosemary bread, all of which I’d prepared a few days in advance to save time and washing up. A quick reheat and opening of a bottle of sauvignon and I was ready to tuck in. 

Rather than going down the route of roasting a whole turkey, which would seem a little extravagant plus I’m not sure it would actually fit in my small oven, I opted for stuffed chicken breast wrapped in black forest ham. The ham has a strong flavor of its own so is great with chicken and held up very well against the white wine and thyme sauce. All of this was happily baking in the oven as I ate the first course.

For the chicken I butterflied a skinless breast and stuffed it with a mix of chopped spinach and walnuts and wrapped it in 2 slices of the ham, seared in the wok and baked for 35 minutes in white wine and dried thyme. I served with roasted rosemary sweet potatoes, broccoli and a new creation – parsnip and cauliflower mash. I roasted the cauliflower so it would not be watery, then put it in a food processor with the boiled parsnip as clove of roasted garlic, about 50ml milk and a couple of knobs of butter. The result was an earthy and flavoursome mash that I felt good eating. It was all extremely delicious – yes toot toot I am blowing my own trumpet here.

I hadn’t made my own dessert so I hopped onto Little Blue and headed over to Hanako and Mark’s house where I was treated to sticky toffee pud, fresh bread, gooey cheese and pate, plus a bit more wine and topped off with a glass of single malt. Not too shabby.

Thomas was feeling a little hard done by missing out on all the goodies whilst working hard shifting stock around in a store room in Truk Lagoon, so as a good little wifey I repeated the meal to celebrate his return home on 1st Jan 2015. I would say it was just for him, but I enjoyed it so much I was more than happy to eat it again – Happy New Year from the Erbes!