After worrying about my first Christmas as a host last week, today I can tell you that it was a success….YAY!!! I’m so happy that everything went well, thank God! Of course there was a little a stress in the kitchen the day before Christmas eve (minor disagreement about lemon curd), but in spite of that, the food was delicious and the people were pleased. This was the first Christmas that I spent away from my family or anybody’s family, it was a special Christmas with friends that are also a long way from home. Our Italian friends Maurizio and Ivan came, and also I had the pleasure to meet Gabriel and Ana, a couple from Brazil, he studied in College with Rafael and they were here in Berlin as tourists, so we invited them of course. We had so much fun, Italians and Brazilians have so much in common, the language is very similar, sometimes it’s easier to speak in our native language than english, or german….of course…hahahha.

We sure did have a great time, we laughed and ate a lot! I get so happy when I see other people eating my food and enjoying it. I’m so grateful and thankful, it could not have been better 😀

Here are some pics from our feast on Christmas eve, we kinda forgot to take pictures of the gang, but we sure did take pictures of the food…ha!

The table full with appetizers 🙂

This time we bought some colourful veggies, I have never seen such beautiful potatoes, weird thing to say, but still… ❤

I roasted the carrots and beets with herbs, vinegar and olive oil (you can find the tutorial here). I cooked a little bit the potatoes until they were soft, and then I finished them with butter in a frying pan. You can see the result below, will definitely do this again, and again, and again! Yummy!

Our “buffet”.

If there is one thing in my life that I am sure of, is Jamie Oliver’s recipes! I found this recipe on his website, and its called Ultimate Roast Chicken, and I can tell you that it truly is. You roast it with a special butter with thyme, porcini, pancetta and some other things, it’s the best roast chicken that I ever had, I highly recommend it 🙂

I found this honeyed ham recipe with pears and cranberries here, Rafael cooked it all by himself, and it was really delicious too!! But we did not buy the right pears, the recipe asked for Bosc pears, but we didn’t find it here, so we bought another one instead. It tasted very good in the end, but it didn’t get tender enough. Since we don’t have big serving platters, we had to separate the ham from the fruits, but obviously that was not a problem.

I always like to make a pasta dish in special occasions, so I made my Stuffed Conchiglioni with Spinach and Feta, everybody liked it too!

And last, but not ever least….No-Fuss Fruit Tart, from Nigella’s website.

I was really afraid of doing this fruit tart, because I didn’t have a tart pan, so I used another one instead. I think that the side of the crust got too thin, because the minute we sliced it, it crumbled down a bit. But besides that, it was perfect! Nothing better than fresh fruit (except for the blackberries) and creamy filling of lemon curd and cream cheese 😀

This was our Christmas Feast! I hope you enjoyed it and if you like to spend some time in the kitchen like I do, try one of these recipes when you have the time, I assure that you won’t regret it 😉

xoxo