Christmas 2010 - Lamb and Date Tagine

I have never cooked on Christmas eve or Christmas dinner before. Every time either I will be at my best friend’s place or in India with my parents. In both cases I never had the responsibility of cooking the festive meal.

Couple of years ago I was at my friend’s place and I had the responsibility of decorating the Christmas tree. Last year I was in India and I shamelessly accept the fact that I never help my mom in cooking, I just enjoy it. This year it was different, my parents have visited me couple of months ago, I wasn’t going to India and my friend was working late on Christmas eve. So it was just me and my better half at home on a snow covered, –12 degree C evening.

I am a big Nigella fan. Simply because she makes such mouth-watering dishes with least effort spent. Whenever I have to cook something special I often look in her website or books for recipe ideas. This holiday season I was following her program Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen on the Good Food Channel and recording them for my future reference. I know if I am in need of any culinary help then where to look for.

This Christmas eve was one such occasion. I was about to cook my first ever Christmas eve dinner for both of us and I wanted it to be special. Very special. I decided to make Lamb and date tagine which I had recorded form Nigella’s Christmas series. It is an easy to make and extremely rewarding on taste for the least amount of effort spent in making this dish. I had a lovely evening with my husband, celebrating Christmas eve without spending hours and hours in the kitchen to produce a good festive meal. If you love lamb as I do, then this is most definitely worth a try.

You can find the recipe for the lamb tagine here or in the link above mentioned. I served the lamb with some couscous and a red onion relish which she suggested in the show. The recipe for the relish is very simple just thinly slice the red onion and soak them in pomegranate juice and half of a lime juice while the lamb is cooking and serve with the lamb and couscous. For couscous I followed my recipe which you can find here, only difference was this time I didn’t add the chickpeas and the orange jest. Enjoy.

Sending this to Maison Cupcake for this month’s Forever Nigella contest.

Next morning the Christmas day we went to our friends house where she was preparing for a massive Christmas dinner for eleven guests. She is an expert cook. In fact I learnt from her how to throw dinner parties. She is an amazing host and a great friend. Every Christmas that I have spent in this country was with her and family. So this time also we did the same thing and as always it was great! For the boxing day we went shopping, had lunch outside and when we came back home we watched Inception and two more movies before going to bed. Here are some photos :)

 

Happy holidays to all my readers :)