Danish Christmas Cooking Class at Gewurzhaus

Last Sunday, I did at Danish Christmas cooking class at Gewurzhaus in Hawksburn Village.  Our class was led by Danish chef Marie Sanderson, who has worked for Heston Blumenthal, among others.

Marie started by preparing the duck.  Here she is stuffing it with apples, onions and prunes before putting it into the oven to roast:

While we were waiting, Marie's helper made Gluhwein: 

This is Marie stirring the cream through the cold rice pudding: 

The first course was a warm rice pudding, which is not sweet and contains no sugar - in fact, it can be eaten for breakfast:

Here is the gluhwein, which makes you very cheerful at 11am: 

Here, Marie is caramelising kipfler potatoes as a side dish:

This is the duck, roasted and out of the oven:

These are trays of the duck all cut up.  Danes traditionally roast their duck the day before, then cut it up and reheat it and take it to the table like this:

This is Marie is putting together the roast dinner for all of us:

And here it is: Roast duck with apple, onion and prune stuffing, port wine gravy, braised cabbage, pickled cucumbers and caramelised potatoes:

Dessert was a cold rice pudding served with cherries in port syrup:

It was a very rich, very satisfying meal.  Personally, I'd take some of the elements rather than serving them all together so it is a little less overwhelming, but I enjoyed the meal very much.