Monday, December 25, 2006

Christmas Eve in Los Angeles

I more than made up for my absence in the US during Thanksgiving. Yesterday, we had a Christmas Eve party at Seema and Mick's and decided to have a full-blown turkey dinner. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner is one of my favorite traditions and I was glad that we could do it this year before we moved to India.

Mona, Seema and I had the primary cooking responsibility while Mick played the able kitchen assistant role. I experimented with a new Alton Brown (foodtv) recipe for the turkey. This involved a rub of sea salt, black pepper, white pepper, allspice and brown sugar. My personal contribution to this recipe were the garlic cloves embedded in the meat. Finally, I added partially cooked apples, onions and herbs to the cavity. I also cooked my all time favorite garlic-basil mashed potatoes (to Aanish's delight). Mona did her ever-popular green bean casserole with fried onions, yams and a cherry/pineapple cobbler. Seema prepared the stuffing along with her speciality - Spinach did. She made another half dozen appetizers.

Richard started us off with killer Mojitos and the fun never stopped until the presents were unwrapped, dessert was eaten and some great memories were made!

2 comments:

mtpoktz said...

Pervez,
I'm glad we found your blog. You tell a good story...wish I had looked more closely at your haircut! I take back what I said about walking to work; after seeing the mob in the Sat. LA Times, I don't know if you could walk through the throngs as quickly as you could push through with a few thousand pounds of steel helping you along.
D and M

Pervez Sikora said...

You've got to be in Bangalore to experience this! Mobs in LA don't even come close.