Holiday Comedy of Errors

My, it is hard to get back to real life after the holidays, isn’t it? The last three weeks have been trying because a) we moved, b) we had company, and c) it was the holidays. The moving wasn’t horrible, but it was still moving. The company was my brother-in-law and his wife, who knew full well that we had been in our house for one week and one day prior to their arrival, so they were prepared for pretty much anything. And of course Christmas was Christmas, complete with last-minute present wrapping (see “moving,” above) and small children getting up at 4:30 a.m.

In some ways the season was a sort of comedy of errors. My new stove is a lot more high-strung than the Kenmore-types I’ve previously had, and I’ve never had a brand brand brand new stove before. The refrigerator is fairly docile. Its only oddity is that if you hold the door open too long, it starts beeping at you. Putting groceries away was somewhat trying until Alex found the “off” switch and subdued it. The dishwasher is just a delight—quiet, efficient, and not the least bit temperamental. In fact, it’s quiet to the point that you can’t even tell it’s running—more than once we’ve opened the door to find it in full cycle, whereupon we hastily shut the door in the manner of someone who has walked in on a roommate entertaining a romantic guest.

But the stove. The stove is somewhat arrogant, as befits an appliance of its pedigree. It has both convection and non-convection capabilities. It has racks that look like they could be used as structural supports in a skyscraper. And it has power. So much power, in fact, that our hood isn’t really quite strong enough to deal with the potential output from it. If we had both ovens going, plus all six burners and the griddle, I don’t think the hood would be able to keep up. Fortunately it’s unlikely that we’ll ever find ourselves in need of that kind of BTU production, but it’s worth keeping in mind, in any event.

And it’s quirky. I realized this when I made the French Onion Soup the Saturday night before Christmas. My brother-in-law and his wife were getting in on an early evening plane, which meant they’d be getting to our house about 8:30, when you factor in the drive from the airport and the 35 minute ferry ride. I was sure they would want something filling and warming, but not heavy or rich, so I spent quite some time caramelizing thinly sliced onions, simmering broth, and toasting baguette slices. When they arrived, I dished up the soup, topped it with the croutons, and sliced up Gruyere cheese to melt over the whole.

I needed to move an oven rack to get the bowls in the right position under the broiler. I popped them in and waited. When they were perfectly golden and bubbling, I pulled the rack out and watched in horror as it tipped forward with the weight from the bowls and dumped the entire contents plus the bowls themselves on the inside of the open oven door. I stood there in shock and disbelief while my husband, his brother, and my sister-in-law sprang to action. They scooped the soup into a mixing bowl, and did their best to wipe out the oven. When it was confirmed that none of the scalding hot soup had splattered on me, and none of the bowls were actually broken (although I did discover later that one was chipped, but no one broke a tooth on the shard, or at least, they didn’t say anything if they did), we dished up the sloppy mess into new bowls and ate what could only be called Upside Down French Onion Soup. It tasted fine, but it was a far cry from the elegant presentation I had planned.

I’ve now been shown four times exactly how to get the oven racks in and stable, but I still have trouble remembering the three step process. The Range Police are going to come and take my beautiful new oven away from me for being completely inept and unworthy of such a magnificent appliance.

And my children are going to go deaf from the smoke detectors. Our smoke detectors are hard-wired into the house, and all networked to one another (of course; too bad there's no way to visually imbue a word with sarcasm, because this is a case that calls for it). The result of this is that when one goes off, they all go off in a cacophony of ear-splitting beeping and chirping that gives me a headache and lasts until the offending miasma has dissipated.

The first time this happened was at lunchtime on Christmas Eve. We’d been to the grocery store to stock up on cheese (the larger of the two grocery stores near us has a fantastic selection of cheeses, and we all plead guilty to being total cheese freaks), and I was making grilled sandwiches on the new griddle. Ciabatta with Manchego cheese, proscuitto, arugula, and the slightest wisp of homemade mayonnaise to moisten them, each brushed lightly with olive oil and grilled until golden, toasty, and melty. Well, that was the plan, of course. The reality was that they were grilled until golden, toasty, and melty, but with the blare of the smoke detector’s siren as an accompaniment. We opened windows and blasted the hood to its highest setting. My husband maintains the griddle hadn’t been properly seasoned, which is entirely possible. Fortunately, by the time I broke out the sweet potato chips, the green salad, and the blue cheese dressing, the concert was over and we could eat in peace.

The second time this happened was at dinnertime on Christmas Eve. Yes, twice in one day I managed to generate enough kitchen pollution to set off the smoke detectors. This time the baby was asleep (and slept through it, if you can imagine; I guess this is what happens when you’re accustomed to the screaming of three small boys—you learn to sleep through smoke detectors, earthquakes, and other acts of God and Mom). My husband was getting the twins ready for bed, and discovered that if you go into the bathroom that adjoins their room, the shrilling noise is muffled because there’s no detector in there to serenade you. My oldest son danced up and down on the front porch, asking me when it would stop and begging me to go get him his shoes so he could run down into the front yard to get further from the noise. I assured him it would soon end, which it did.

The catalyst for this second bout of aural mayhem was the prime rib we were having for Christmas Eve dinner. My aunt had invited everyone over for light snacky things on Christmas afternoon around 4, so we decided to have our really nice meal on Christmas Eve, and have something more casual on Christmas night. Prime rib was our protein of choice on Christmas Eve, and I proceeded to cook it according to the gospel of James Beard. The instructions said to roast it at 500 degrees for 30 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350. I dutifully cranked the oven up, turned on the hood, and put the roast in.

The roast setting on my oven activates both the broiler and the heating elements. When the fat from that beautiful piece of meat slipped down and hit the superheated roasting pan in which it rested, it was immediately vaporized, and wafted up into the path of the hood. But either the smoke overpowered the hood, or there was too much “overdrift” (if you will) in the direction of the smoke detector. Either way, within 15 minutes, we were in shrieking hell again. Once again we sprang to open windows and doors and generally encourage complete replacement of the fouled air with fresh. Once again within about ten minutes the noise had ceased. The meal continued uneventfully (although I did think the gravy was a tad on the greasy side, but I was so thrown by having set off the smoke detectors twice in one day that I probably didn’t skim the fat well enough; no one else mentioned it).

With those occurrences, you’d think that the entrée I made for our Christmas dinner would just spontaneously combust and save me the drama and the pain. Well I have delightful news—no such thing happened. I made Beef Bourguignon from an old issue of Martha Stewart Living, and it turned out beautifully. I was forced to use bacon scraps instead of salt pork, and complained to my sister-in-law about the inability to get salt pork in this part of the country. They live in Atlanta, so salt pork is readily available, as it was in the part of the country in which I used to live. We served the stew over mashed potatoes, and everyone went to bed full, happy, and humming “You’re Easy to Dance With” from Holiday Inn (although admittedly still with a slight ringing in our ears, not from the jingling of sleigh bells, but from the wail of the smoke detectors. Oh well, no holiday is ever perfect).

I’ve promised the recipe for the Beef Bourguignon before, so now here it is. I love this recipe because it has all the advantages of beef stew—beef slow cooked until tender, a lovely flavorful gravy, caramelized pearl onions—but none of the other things about beef stew that always make me shy away from it, like carrots and potatoes cooked to a gray and indistinguishable mush (I know that if you add them later they don’t get as bad, but let’s face it, even then they can still be somewhat unappealingly discolored). If you can’t get salt pork you can substitute bacon scraps, or bacon cut into really small pieces. Also, I left out the rosemary because my sister-in-law can’t eat it. I’ve made it with and without, and it’s fine both ways.

Boeuf Bourguignon
recipe from Martha Stewart Living, February 2003

1 large onion, roughly chopped
2 carrots, roughly chopped
1 head garlic, cloves separated and lightly crushed (unpeeled)
10 sprigs flat-leaf parsley, cut in half, plus 3 tablespoons chopped for garnish
6 sprigs thyme
4 sprigs rosemary
2 dried bay leaves
½ teaspoon whole black peppercorns
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 oz. salt pork, trimmed of rind and cut into ¼ -by-1 inch pieces
Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
3 cups homemade or low-sodium canned beef stock
1 750-ml bottle red wine, preferably Burgundy or another Pinot Noir
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 pound frozen pearl onions
½ cup water
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 tablespoon sugar
10 oz. large white mushrooms, trimmed and quartered

Cut two 12-by-22 inch pieces of cheesecloth; lay them on a clean work surface, overlapping each other perpendicularly in the center to form a cross. Pile the chopped onion, carrots, garlic cloves, parsley sprigs, thyme, rosemary, bay leaves, and peppercorns in the center.

Gather the ends together to enclose contents completely, and tie the top with kitchen twine, Place in an 8 quart Dutch oven, and set aside.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add salt pork, and sauté until brown and crisp, about 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer pork to Dutch oven, leaving rendered fat in skillet.

Season beef cubes with salt and pepper. Working in two batches, place beef in skillet in a single layer; cook until dark brown on all sides, about 6 minutes total.

Using tongs, transfer beef to Dutch oven, reserving fat in skillet.

Whisk the flour into the fat in the skillet. Slowly whisk in beef stock, and bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently until thickened.

Pour mixture into Dutch oven around cheesecloth bundle. Add wine and tomato paste, and season with salt and pepper; stir to combine. Bring to a boil over high heat. Cover; transfer to oven. Cook until beef is very tender, about 2 ½ hours.

Remove pot from oven, and transfer cheesecloth bundle to a large sieve set over a bowl. With a wooden spoon, press on bundle to release as much liquid as possible. Discard bundle, and pour accumulated juices into Dutch oven.

Remove beef and pork from Dutch oven; reserve. Return liquid to a boil over high heat; reduce to 4 cups, about 10 minutes. Skim surface as needed with a large metal spoon. Reduce heat to low; return beef and pork to Dutch oven.

While sauce is reducing further, set skillet over high heat. Add the pearl onions, the water, butter, sugar, and a large pinch of salt. Bring to a boil, and reduce heat to medium; simmer until almost all the liquid evaporates, 5 to 8 minutes. Raise heat to medium-high, and add the mushrooms. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are browned and glazed, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat. Transfer contents to Dutch oven, and simmer over medium heat until heated through. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper as desired, and serve at once. Garnish each serving with chopped parsley.

Serves 8; makes 2 ½ quarts.

Blue Swoon

I recently switched over to using blue cheese salad dressing exclusively. For years I’ve been pretty much anti blue cheese in every form. It was too strong for me, and the idea that it was mold that gave it its character just ooked me out.

That I actually came to like it was a somewhat convoluted process. I had a tomato recipe from Bon Appetit that I made for our Christmas Eve dinner last year. Plum tomatoes get cut in half, seeded, and drained for 15 minutes. Then you toss them with chopped rosemary, minced garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper and let them sit for another 15 minutes. They get roasted at 375 for about 65 minutes. Once they come out of the oven, the cheese (which was supposed to be Stilton—this was, after all, a Christmas recipe) gets crumbled and scattered over them, where it melts a little.

The question of why I was willing to make a recipe that called for Stilton cheese when I wasn’t a fan of blue cheese in the first place is a hard one to answer. Food photography can be very seductive, and they were being served with a Rosemary-and-Pepper Standing Rib Roast with Two-Mushroom Pan Sauce we were making, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and make the tomatoes. The worst thing that could happen, I determined, was that I’d hate the blue cheese and scrape it off.

The first time I made the tomatoes, I used Stilton, and they were exceptional, even for a non-blue cheese lover. The next time I made them (because I figured they were the perfect winter vegetable—something a little different, a nice take on tomatoes in which if they weren’t first class summer ones they were still acceptable) I guess we were out of Stilton, but we had this St. Agur that we’d bought at our local grocery store (Central Market, if you’re wondering—a fabulous place with an outstanding selection of cheeses). I used it and was devoted from that minute. I ate the tomatoes for breakfast, much to the disgust of my boss, who didn’t like the smell of the blue cheese. I invested a hefty percentage of my children’s college fund in blue cheese.

The path from tomatoes with blue cheese to blue cheese dressing is a somewhat hazy, twisting one. We needed a salad dressing for a meal, and I happened on a blue cheese dressing in Sara Foster’s Fresh Every Day: More Great Recipes from Foster’s Market that looked passable, and concluded if I could eat blue cheese in tomatoes, why not in salad dressing? It called for mayonnaise, buttermilk, blue cheese, a little white wine vinegar, salt, pepper and chopped chives. It was quick, and sounded like it would fill the need. I didn’t actually use St Agur in the dressing—in the first place, St Agur is one of the wetter, more goopy blue cheeses, and in the second place, I was running out of college tuition money (St Agur goes for about $32 a pound, or $2 an ounce, so in a recipe that called for 4 ounces of blue cheese it seemed a little excessive). We decided the dressing was everything we wanted in a blue cheese dressing, and it’s become a household standard that I now keep in an old spaghetti sauce jar in the refrigerator and replenish regularly.

As with just about every recipe I make more than once, I’ve tinkered with it a little. The original recipe calls for a cup of mayonnaise (I use homemade), plus a quarter of a cup of buttermilk. I find this makes too thick a dressing for us, so I use closer to a half a cup of buttermilk—probably a quarter cup plus two tablespoons, if I really stopped to measure it, and then add a splash more here and there until it reaches the desired thickness. This looks pretty runny when you first combine it, but it firms back up in the fridge, and adding the blue cheese thickens it too.

For blue cheese, I confess I’ve stooped to the Danish Blue crumbles that they sell in little plastic tubs at the grocery store. I’ve tried buying and crumbling my own, but I can’t get the crumbles small enough. Whether this is because I lack experience with crumbling blue cheese, or because I’m buying the wrong kind, I can’t say, but since it’s getting smothered in mayonnaise, I figure the highest quality blue cheese is going to be suffocated anyway. I did once try putting everything in the blender and whizzing it, but the result, while blue cheese flavored, was disappointingly smooth, lacking those little chunks of blue cheese that make blue cheese dressing…well, blue cheese dressing.

As for the remaining ingredients, the recipe calls for a teaspoon of white wine vinegar, a couple of tablespoons of chopped chives, salt, and pepper. I use a capful of plain old distilled white vinegar, which I find to be perfectly acceptable. I also left out the chives one time, and then used them the next time, and I was informed that it was actually better without the chives, so the chives have now been deleted from the ingredient list. I use a few grinds of black pepper. Generally the combination of the mayonnaise and the blue cheese is enough salt, but I taste it and might add a quick grind or two of sea salt.

Once it’s done I put it all in the aforementioned old spaghetti sauce jar and keep it in the refrigerator. It’s wonderful on a spinach salad with some bacon, and we use it daily on the salad we always take along to work to accompany whatever else we’re having for lunch.

I’ve now completely about-faced on blue cheese, and love it so much that when my husband and I went out for our anniversary dinner (to a first-class wine bar called Purple), we ordered an appetizer that was slices of Cashel blue cheese, fig jam, crackers, and a wine chosen to accompany it (Joel Gott Zinfandel, 2004). We loved it so much that we sought out a bottle of the wine, picked up some of the cheese, some crackers, and cracked open the jar of fig jam we had in the pantry and recreated the appetizer two weeks later. The dinner that followed was rib eye steaks with a salad with…blue cheese dressing.

Christmas...um...Treats

Even though it’s nearly Spring, something the other day happened to remind me of Christmas. Actually, it was the bag of red, green, and silver foil wrapped Hershey’s Kisses I found that were plainly left over from Christmas. I tend to buy the holiday wrapped candy a week or so after the holiday at half price. A Hershey’s Kiss wrapped in green foil is still a Hershey’s Kiss, after all.

This discovery reminded me of some of the more memorable holiday foods I’ve come into contact with over the years. The holidays are typically a time of indulgence, of course, and I’ve done my share of indulging, I admit. Interestingly, the things that stand out most in my memory are not the really wonderful things I’ve had, but the less wonderful, or even very awful ones.

When I was small, my grandmother used to send us boxes of baked goods every Christmas. There are only two things that she sent that really made an impression on me, and again, it’s because they were both fairly horrible, in retrospect. At the time I thought they were pretty good. The first was a variation on Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, and the second was Twinkies. I think my grandmother knew how much I liked junky foods like those, and in an effort to save money (always a top priority for her) she decided to make them for me, rather than buy them.

The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup things were chocolate covered peanut butter balls. If you don’t know this, peanut butter gets grainy when it’s refrigerated. I don’t mind that texture, but chocolate gets waxy when it’s refrigerated, and I do mind that. Also, my grandmother always put raisins in her peanut butter balls. I don’t like raisins plain to start with, but I sure don’t like them in things. So to sully perfectly good peanut butter and chocolate with raisins is just downright wrong in my book, and then to refrigerate it on top of that renders the whole product totally inedible. Since she was sending the stuff out of the kindness of her heart, I didn’t very well feel like I could complain (not that I’m not complaining now, but I would never have hurt her feelings by saying anything to her).

The Twinkies were just kind of weird. I really have no idea what she used for “creme” filling, only that it wasn’t white frosting (which is pretty much what Twinkie filling is—white frosting, probably made with pure lard and sugar, likely with some titanium dioxide tossed in for good measure and whitening and brightening purposes). She made a simple sponge cake, and then cut it into rectangles, which she layered together with this “creme”. I remember eating them, and liking them fairly well, but today I have to agree with my aunt. At the time she remarked “Who would bother to make a Twinkie?” (and the question wasn’t posed as to why you wouldn’t simply go buy them, but more why anyone would want to have anything to do with a Twinkie in any form at all).

Since then I have actually seen "Twinkie" pans for sale through the Williams-Sonoma catalog. Clearly there are people who feel that homemade Twinkies are a good idea. It takes all kinds, I guess.

My husband’s grandmother was also a seasonal baker. She made mostly cookies—chocolate chip, Mexican wedding cakes, and the like—and fudge. He said they were great when he was a kid, but last batch that was inflicted on me was pretty terrible. The cookies were either hard as rocks or flavorless, or both, and the fudge was like eating chocolate plastic. He agreed that it was all horrible, and we sewed all of it at intervals along the Taconic State Parkway as we drove home. I’m not sure if her offerings were always so terrible, or if they just deteriorated as she aged. It’s not the sort of thing I can gauge because I never tasted anything until it had gone past awful, and he might be remembering the flavor in the forgiving glow of childhood nostalgia. She has now grown too old for holiday baking, for which we are all somewhat guiltily grateful.

I think the person who provided the most repulsive holiday “treat” was Aunt Stevie. Aunt Stevie was married to Uncle Mike (before he died, of course), and was my husband’s great aunt. Aunt Stevie lived in Sacramento or something, and every Christmas she would send a “tower o’ treats” thing to my husband’s grandparents “for everyone to share.” This was a very kind gesture, but the tower consisted of Aplets and Cotlets. Aplets and Cotlets are the most horrid candy every made (I use the term “candy” loosely, since I’m not sure they're not actually made of melted-down rubber bands). Interestingly, I recently found out that they're made not far from where I now live. That doesn’t improve their flavor or texture, but now I’m grossed out by something made locally. I feel I’m contributing to saving the environment, somehow.

During one holiday celebration, my husband’s grandmother (nickname Grammy), kept insisting that we take some with us. My mother-in-law, sister-in-law and I protested that we didn’t want to deprive them of Aunt Stevie’s gift. Grammy kept saying that Stevie had sent them “for the family to share.” Finally, in an effort to get out of there before St. Patrick’s Day, I grabbed the smallest box and said “OK, thanks--well, we’ll be on our way.” On the way out the door, my mother-in-law asked me low in my ear which box I’d taken. “The smallest one,” I hissed back. Needless to say the box was promptly consigned to the trash compactor (still in its cellophane wrapper) the minute we arrived back at my in-laws’ house.

My husband says my in-laws used to get a fruitcake from his grandparents every year that was fairly nasty. But fruitcake is so clichéd that it doesn’t even get a mention in annals of Nasty Holiday Treat Gifts. My preference is for unusual disgusting holiday treats. If I have to eat something yucky and pretend i like it, at least I want it to be something yucky and interesting.