I'm beginning to get into the Christmas spirit - the tree is up, the shopping is done (just hoping Amazon and co don't let me down with their delivery times), family sleeping arrangements have been decided for next week, we're even going to see It's a Wonderful Life at the cinema tomorrow. A crucial part of Christmas for me though is eating humungous amounts of food, and with that in mind we set off for Sainsbury's (Waitrose was not big enough for today's task) to do the shopping. Half an hour or so later, we'd spent £150 (300 nectar points for me - kerching!) and bought the ingredients for 5 (five) fifteen minute meals. It's going to be a busy weekend...
First up were the camembert parcels. There was definitely a bit of a Christmassy feel to it - who doesn't buy a huge wheel of cheese at some point in December? - and the sauce with cranberries and cloves and port (we actually used dessert wine as we had some open) had Christmas written all over it. Being the first official day of winter though, I was a day out on the Autumn salad - oh well. It was still a good opportunity to use up a couple of pomegranates from a veg box a couple of weeks ago which were beginning to look a bit withered.
What struck me as a I started cooking was how much cheese I was using. 200g is a lot of camembert (especially when it's just me and Lolz). You can't worry about those kind of things at Christmas though so set about making the parcels - and thankfully my filo technique is definitely better than when I was making those crab briks some months ago - these ones looked quite neat. They went in the pan and I started on the sauce and salad, and everything was made without too much fuss.
I felt like I was a bit of a missed opportunity. I really liked the salad - the sweetness of the pomegranate and apple nicely offset the bitterness of the chicory and peppery watercress - but the parcels didn't quite work. I was expecting a nice oozy filling, but instead it was a bit rubbery - I don't know if that was because I over blended the cheese mixture. The sauce was also a bit overpowered by the cloves - you definitely only need a sprinkle.
Lolz gave the dish 6/10. Difficulty rating 6/10.
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