Merry Christmas everyone!
I spent Christmas in Nagaoka, with Mum, Ben, Beth and Martin. It was fantastic fun once we'd managed to cook everything, which ended up being quite a task. As I'm sure you know, Christmas lunch is a large saxon feast sort of affair. My kitchen, on the other hand, closely resembles the galley you might expect to find on a small fishing boat. This, combined with its innate demureness, makes hard work out of half a pig and a load of potatoes. The main tool of the trade in recreating any British roast/baking style cookery is the ubiquitous Toaster Oven, which is basically a toaster that western people try to use as an oven, with varied results. (Shown here with a playstation controller for scale)
The rule of thumb is that anything is ok so long as it is a) already partially cooked, b) less than 4 inches high, or c) bread. After some amateur but highly effective surgery on the ham, we managed to cram it in.
