3 hats (2 adult and one infant)
1 shawl
1 toddler sweater
6 loaves of bread
a glass of eggnog with rum
2 cranberry gingerbread upside down cakes
1 batch of Rugelach (Marg's Justifiably Famous)
1 batch of Colman cookies
the afore-mentioned ham, brussels sprouts and spoonbread meal
a very long drive
several large messes which I sometimes left for others to clean up.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Tuesday, December 29, 2009
Christmas Eve and the rebirth of Golum
Well, I think I redeemed myself after the Thanksgiving Debacle. I made ham, brussels sprouts with pancetta and chestnuts (so? I like pork), and spoon bread. Bought a fully cooked ham, referred to as "semi-boned". Whatever that means. Turns out it means that it only has part of the leg bone and none of the joint. I read a number of recipes that mystified me with instructions to boil the ham for 2 hours before baking it to remove the saltiness. Isn't that the good part? the recipes called for variously - uncured ham, uncooked ham, Smithfield style ham, southern ham, cured ham, and fully cooked ham. It was too complex so I said screw it, jammed in a bunch of whole cloves and baked the thing at 350 for a few hours. Then I glazed it with a mix of equal parts marmalade, whole grain mustard and orange juice. I dumped the rest of the orange juice in the bottom of the pan and every 10 minutes I basted it and reglazed until I ran out of glaze and the spoon bread was done.
The brussels were from Nigella Lawson Feast, which I love. I swear I have never made a bad thing out of that cookbook. Spoonbread from Epicurious, found while trolling for decipherable ham recipes. A thing of joy to the world, especially Christmas morning when I cut the leftovers into slabs, fried them in butter and served them with maple syrup. But I digress.
The meal was really good, but I didn't realize how good until the next morning when A was slicing ham for an "omelette au jambon", as he refers to it. He was muttering crossly as he sliced and when I passed by on my way to seconds of maple syrup I realized he was muttering about how much ham he had sent home with our daughter the night before. "Doesn't appreciate it, took almost half, not enough, never enough" he mumbled as he weilded a large carving knife with an obsessive ferocity that put me in mind of Golum. I have stayed away from the leftovers ever since.
The brussels were from Nigella Lawson Feast, which I love. I swear I have never made a bad thing out of that cookbook. Spoonbread from Epicurious, found while trolling for decipherable ham recipes. A thing of joy to the world, especially Christmas morning when I cut the leftovers into slabs, fried them in butter and served them with maple syrup. But I digress.
The meal was really good, but I didn't realize how good until the next morning when A was slicing ham for an "omelette au jambon", as he refers to it. He was muttering crossly as he sliced and when I passed by on my way to seconds of maple syrup I realized he was muttering about how much ham he had sent home with our daughter the night before. "Doesn't appreciate it, took almost half, not enough, never enough" he mumbled as he weilded a large carving knife with an obsessive ferocity that put me in mind of Golum. I have stayed away from the leftovers ever since.
Monday, December 28, 2009
the "there and then" moment
We all know about the "there and then" moment in relationships.
He breaks up with you, tells you that you should go out with his friend for a while and then you all can revisit the decision in a few months, he admits to cheating on you but says that the Neil Young song, Helpless ran through his head the entire time, your first trip away together, you get in a fight and he doesn't talk to you for 3 days, not a word. For each of those, There and Then, you should have known.
Well the same applies to cooking. When the pie crust was awash in melted butter and setting off the fire alarm, there and then, I should have known. The moment I realized that I hadn't added leavening to the cobbler dough, when the dog whimpered and backed away from the Cornish game hen, when the expiration date was 3 dogs ago, half way into making gingerbread and I discovered I didn't have any ginger and convinced myself that cloves and cardamom were a perfectly acceptable substitute, 3/4 of the way into making gingerbread and I realized I had used dried mustard in place of the ground ginger.
The only time I actually recognized the there and then moment was one of my first cakes. I was at my grandmother's house and baking a cake from a box mix. The directions called for 1 1/2 cups of water. I read this as 11 and 2 and added 13 cups of water. (I was probably 8 and it was surely my the first time I solo baked.)
I showed the watery soup to my mother and explained that I had just followed the directions. She explained how to read fractions. I wanted to know how we could salvage it. Could I strain it, add 6 more boxes of mix? "No, you'll just have to pour it down the drain."
Maybe it is easier to recognize another person's There and Then.
He breaks up with you, tells you that you should go out with his friend for a while and then you all can revisit the decision in a few months, he admits to cheating on you but says that the Neil Young song, Helpless ran through his head the entire time, your first trip away together, you get in a fight and he doesn't talk to you for 3 days, not a word. For each of those, There and Then, you should have known.
Well the same applies to cooking. When the pie crust was awash in melted butter and setting off the fire alarm, there and then, I should have known. The moment I realized that I hadn't added leavening to the cobbler dough, when the dog whimpered and backed away from the Cornish game hen, when the expiration date was 3 dogs ago, half way into making gingerbread and I discovered I didn't have any ginger and convinced myself that cloves and cardamom were a perfectly acceptable substitute, 3/4 of the way into making gingerbread and I realized I had used dried mustard in place of the ground ginger.
The only time I actually recognized the there and then moment was one of my first cakes. I was at my grandmother's house and baking a cake from a box mix. The directions called for 1 1/2 cups of water. I read this as 11 and 2 and added 13 cups of water. (I was probably 8 and it was surely my the first time I solo baked.)
I showed the watery soup to my mother and explained that I had just followed the directions. She explained how to read fractions. I wanted to know how we could salvage it. Could I strain it, add 6 more boxes of mix? "No, you'll just have to pour it down the drain."
Maybe it is easier to recognize another person's There and Then.
Thursday, December 24, 2009
the 29 days of Christmas and what I made
3 bread puddings
4 pans of lasagna, one vegetarian
1 chocolate cake
2 batches chocolate chip cookies, 2 batches oatmeal cherry cookies, 5 batches fabulous chocolate chunkers, 4 batches famous rugelach
2 different types caramel sauce
1 lamb tagine
1 lamb pot pie w sweet potato crust
2 roast chickens
1 beef stir fry
scrambled eggs
1 nantucket cranberry pie
4 cranberry upside down gingerbread cakes
1 sausage and polenta casserole
3 pots of white beans w sausage
white bean and butternut squash soup
chicken tettrazini
a triple recipe of Grossmutters Punsch
the usual green and orange vegetables, not worth detailing, but don't want to give the impression that December has been nothing but a riot of white pasta, white sugar and white beans
4 pans of lasagna, one vegetarian
1 chocolate cake
2 batches chocolate chip cookies, 2 batches oatmeal cherry cookies, 5 batches fabulous chocolate chunkers, 4 batches famous rugelach
2 different types caramel sauce
1 lamb tagine
1 lamb pot pie w sweet potato crust
2 roast chickens
1 beef stir fry
scrambled eggs
1 nantucket cranberry pie
4 cranberry upside down gingerbread cakes
1 sausage and polenta casserole
3 pots of white beans w sausage
white bean and butternut squash soup
chicken tettrazini
a triple recipe of Grossmutters Punsch
the usual green and orange vegetables, not worth detailing, but don't want to give the impression that December has been nothing but a riot of white pasta, white sugar and white beans
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
holy cow eggnog
As if the chicken had nothing to do with it!
My friend, Debbie, makes eggnog as follows:
12 egg yolks, 1 qt whole milk, 2 C sugar, stir it all up until the sugar dissolves and add a fifth of rum. Then whip a qt of heavy cream and fold it in.
Nothing is heated. She says it is just important to keep it chilled. She doesn't always add the entire fifth of rum, but she says her mother does.
Her mother is from Alabama.
We thought if there were any leftovers, you could use it to make french toast on Christmas morning.
My sister is the eggnog person in the family, so perhaps she will weigh in here.
Eggnog person weighing in here (and weighing more I'm sure after this eggnog season)
The one time I made eggnog from scratch it was na-stee. The recipe wanted you to separate the eggs and whip the whites. When you had the yolks, sugar, cream etc combined then you gently folded in the beaten whites and added the whiskey. Then the beaten whites separated from the rest of the liquid and floated to the surface so that by the time you served it you had decent eggnog with a 3" thick layer of raw merangue on top. Not very festive.
this recipe sounds like a fabulous alternative to Organic Valley, though generally I prefer it unsullied with alcohol. You can drink more.
My friend, Debbie, makes eggnog as follows:
12 egg yolks, 1 qt whole milk, 2 C sugar, stir it all up until the sugar dissolves and add a fifth of rum. Then whip a qt of heavy cream and fold it in.
Nothing is heated. She says it is just important to keep it chilled. She doesn't always add the entire fifth of rum, but she says her mother does.
Her mother is from Alabama.
We thought if there were any leftovers, you could use it to make french toast on Christmas morning.
My sister is the eggnog person in the family, so perhaps she will weigh in here.
Eggnog person weighing in here (and weighing more I'm sure after this eggnog season)
The one time I made eggnog from scratch it was na-stee. The recipe wanted you to separate the eggs and whip the whites. When you had the yolks, sugar, cream etc combined then you gently folded in the beaten whites and added the whiskey. Then the beaten whites separated from the rest of the liquid and floated to the surface so that by the time you served it you had decent eggnog with a 3" thick layer of raw merangue on top. Not very festive.
this recipe sounds like a fabulous alternative to Organic Valley, though generally I prefer it unsullied with alcohol. You can drink more.
the lasagne of oppression
In which lasagna is the oppressor and spiced wine punch is the liberator.
It was the bf's office party and that meant 8-12 people for dinner plus his 15-year old son and 3 friends. I volunteered to make a lasagna. All those people plus 4 15-year olds? That adds up to 2 pans of lasagna.
I make a pretty good one. I'm not famous for it, but as lasagnas go, it is my favorite. It involves a ragu made from browned ground beef and 2 types of sausage over which I dump a bottle of Rao's marinara sauce. So far, so easy. There is a white sauce, still, pretty easy. I had to grate 4 C of Parmesan so I opted for the food processor, and that was a good call, despite the extra time and space required for washing it.
Then there were the noodles.
Recently, I have decided that fresh lasagna noodles (purchased from the refrigerator section of whole foods, not made myself, which would move the lasagna beyond oppression and into the realm of abuse or even torture, serfdom, maybe) make a far superior dish. The purchasing part is easy, but they have to be boiled and then removed from the boiling water, not just dumped into a colander to drain, so another package can be boiled. Remember, 2 pans. And they are HOT. And I can't manipulate them with utensils because they tear. So I curse and burn my finger and wrestle them apart and have to drape them across the sauce and naturally they are not the size of the pan so I have to cut them and patch pieces in, all the while cursing and burning my fingers as my feelings of oppression hypertrophy. Why 2 pans? I never would have agreed to this had I known I'd need 2 pans. And what do 15-year old boys know from al dente pasta? They would be fine with no-boil noodles.
And the hour grows late and I still haven't dressed or done make-up. The dog keeps bouncing at me, and pawing me, because their dinner is now 2 hours late, and I still have to walk them and I've lost most of the skin off my finger tips.
Did I mention that I had my spider veins injected and have to wear real honest to goodness support hose for a week? If ever there was a perfect primer for feelings of oppression, it would be support hose. I now know why old women are so disagreeable. These things couldn't be more uncomfortable. So I'm wrestling with scalding hot noodles as my white sauce congeals and the dog starts to whine pitifully, all while enduring itchy, tightly compressed legs, and an excruciating binding around my hips and a near severing cinching at my waist. I think the dog would start gnawing on my ankle except he would probably break a tooth and also die from the poisonous chemicals that keep these things tighter than an iron mask day after day.
I finally have both pans assembled. The gross weight of the dirty dishes that are strewn around the kitchen I think is creating it's own little mini black hole, but I'm late so I turn my back on the disaster area and box up the pans, padding each one with plenty of brown paper bags bc I know they will slop grease all over on the way to the bf's house.
The good news is that I had made Grossmutters Punsch and as soon as I got there, I had a large glass over crushed iced and all was at least improved with the world.
Two more days of support hose.
It was the bf's office party and that meant 8-12 people for dinner plus his 15-year old son and 3 friends. I volunteered to make a lasagna. All those people plus 4 15-year olds? That adds up to 2 pans of lasagna.
I make a pretty good one. I'm not famous for it, but as lasagnas go, it is my favorite. It involves a ragu made from browned ground beef and 2 types of sausage over which I dump a bottle of Rao's marinara sauce. So far, so easy. There is a white sauce, still, pretty easy. I had to grate 4 C of Parmesan so I opted for the food processor, and that was a good call, despite the extra time and space required for washing it.
Then there were the noodles.
Recently, I have decided that fresh lasagna noodles (purchased from the refrigerator section of whole foods, not made myself, which would move the lasagna beyond oppression and into the realm of abuse or even torture, serfdom, maybe) make a far superior dish. The purchasing part is easy, but they have to be boiled and then removed from the boiling water, not just dumped into a colander to drain, so another package can be boiled. Remember, 2 pans. And they are HOT. And I can't manipulate them with utensils because they tear. So I curse and burn my finger and wrestle them apart and have to drape them across the sauce and naturally they are not the size of the pan so I have to cut them and patch pieces in, all the while cursing and burning my fingers as my feelings of oppression hypertrophy. Why 2 pans? I never would have agreed to this had I known I'd need 2 pans. And what do 15-year old boys know from al dente pasta? They would be fine with no-boil noodles.
And the hour grows late and I still haven't dressed or done make-up. The dog keeps bouncing at me, and pawing me, because their dinner is now 2 hours late, and I still have to walk them and I've lost most of the skin off my finger tips.
Did I mention that I had my spider veins injected and have to wear real honest to goodness support hose for a week? If ever there was a perfect primer for feelings of oppression, it would be support hose. I now know why old women are so disagreeable. These things couldn't be more uncomfortable. So I'm wrestling with scalding hot noodles as my white sauce congeals and the dog starts to whine pitifully, all while enduring itchy, tightly compressed legs, and an excruciating binding around my hips and a near severing cinching at my waist. I think the dog would start gnawing on my ankle except he would probably break a tooth and also die from the poisonous chemicals that keep these things tighter than an iron mask day after day.
I finally have both pans assembled. The gross weight of the dirty dishes that are strewn around the kitchen I think is creating it's own little mini black hole, but I'm late so I turn my back on the disaster area and box up the pans, padding each one with plenty of brown paper bags bc I know they will slop grease all over on the way to the bf's house.
The good news is that I had made Grossmutters Punsch and as soon as I got there, I had a large glass over crushed iced and all was at least improved with the world.
Two more days of support hose.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
snow bound baking
I have carried the Cooks Illustrated recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies around for over a year and I finally settled down to make it. You brown the butter. Then there is some whisking. The whole thing can be made without a mixer. The recipe wants you to make 16 cookies and I made 24 and they were still much too large. Unless you are making ice cream sandwiches or plan to serve each one as a complete meal, make them quite small. They spread like crazy when baked.
I wasn't especially impressed. They look really supermarket bakery-ish, but once they were cooled, they were really pretty good. I gave some to my neighbor who plowed out my drive after the 2+ feet of snow.
This is day 2 of the 2+ feet of snow so I have been baking all day and also mostly housebound, so not exactly a pristine palette. Just about anything would taste OK to me right now. I wouldn't eschew a boiled Brussels sprout, nor would I devour a mille feuille.
I'd make those cookies again.
Then I made the oatmeal cookies from Baked. I've made them before and they have a lot of brown sugar which I think really picks them up. Then it is important to just about undercook them. Gave some of them away too. They are reliably good and popular. Not an oatmeal cookie to inspire the usual oatmeal cookie disappointment.
Last year I made Abby's oatmeal cookies and my massage therapist said she ate them for breakfast bc they tasted so healthy. I don't think that was a complement.
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