We are almost one week into 2015, so, before my palate memories fade, here is a brief review of the elongated Christmas Day lunch Maggie and I shared with friends who live a few doors up from us. You can view the photos here.

For starters, our friend Janet prepared a Japanese-style noodle salad with pan-fried sesame-crusted salmon and a wasabi-flavoured dressing. It was refreshing and delicate, followed by the wasabi kick! Before, during and after this plate, we shared one of the bottles of Prosecco we brought back from our visit to the King Valley.

The second course was beef carpaccio, dressed with rocket, lemon juice, olive oil, salt & pepper and shaved Italian parmesan. Maggie had found a youtube video from London’s famous River Cafe that showed you how to make beef carpaccio from scratch and we followed it faithfully except for reducing the volume of lemon juice. This is a dish that we will add to our collection of favourite recipes and make a few more times in 2015.

As foreshadowed in a pre-Christmas post, the next course was chargrilled spatchcock and peaches. With fresh spatchcock purchased from Cesters and the pick of this season’s outstanding crop of yellow peaches from Toscano’s, we could hardly have failed. And we didn’t! A bottle of viognier purchased from Paringa Estate a few months back was a perfect partner for this dish.

Last but not in anyway least, was a modest serve each of Janet’s lemon tart with fresh raspberries and lime & coconut ice-cream. We dine with Janet and Gary at our respective homes several times each year and, by a unanimous decision, Janet takes responsibility for most of the desserts, usually featuring an exotic homemade ice-cream.

Then, while the dishwasher whirred away, we watched the special Christmas edition of the Vicar of Dibley. What a perfect day; even Melbourne’s fickle weather came to the party with a blue sky, light winds and 23C. And, you know what, it is only 353 sleeps ’til our next Christmas Day feast!