Christmas dinner

Christmas dinner this year was an informal affair--just a few friends, some good food, and some wine. Here's what I made:

Roast chicken with potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots
Butternut squash risotto with beet greens
Roasted beets
Kale caesar salad
Spinach gratin
Buttermilk cornbread
Brussel sprouts
Cranberry upside-down cake
Cranberry brownies

And someone brought sweet potato pie.

I also saw Django Unchained, the new Quentin Tarantino movie, on Christmas Day. I'd never seen a movie on Christmas before. It was a fun day off, but I missed my husband and my family way more than I thought I would (which was a lot). Fortunately, I'm on my last week of work, which means by this time next week I'll be reunited with my cats in Virginia, and a few days after that, with my husband in Missouri.

Which means a few days after that, we'll finally be on our way to Seattle!

Cranberry brownies

Merry Christmas, everyone!

It's a white Christmas here in Boston. I'm getting a live stream of photos from my husband's Christmas in Missouri, and I really wish I were there right now.

Instead, I'm comforting myself with a warm batch of cranberry brownies. Rich, chocolatey, moist, with a pop of fun tart cranberry flavor. Delicious.

From Coconut & Lime:

3/4 cup butter
12 oz bittersweet chocolate chunks
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups fresh cranberries
3 eggs, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup flour

Heat oven to 350. Grease a 8x8 baking pan very thoroughly. In a medium saucepan, over medium heat, melt butter. Add 3/4 cup chocolate chunks. Cook mixture over low heat, stirring constantly. Chocolate should be thoroughly melted. Remove from heat. Stir in sugar. Whisk in the eggs and vanilla until well mixed. Stir in flour and remaining chocolate chunks and stir until the flour is incorporated. Fold in the cranberries. Bake about 50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean or with just one or two sticky crumbs. Cool on wire rack before slicing and serving.

Galliano Ristretto

And one more Christmas-appropriate after-dinner drink: Galliano Ristretto.

Like most of you, I only knew Galliano for that tall skinny bottle of bright yellow banana liqueur. Gross. But I discovered this stuff at the restaurant where I work the other day: Galliano Ristretto, a coffee liqueur.

This stuff makes Kahlua taste like dirt. Seriously. Don't bother mixing it into anything--just pour yourself a little of it, neat, and sip it slowly. Hard to find, and pricey, but totally worth it.

A reminder to all of you out there: I'm working tonight, on Christmas Eve. If you go out to eat today, please, pretty please, with sugar on top: tip your servers well.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas desserts

Start your baking engines!

Sweet potato pie
Pumpkin pie
Yummy holiday ice creams
Carrot cake
Lemon meringue pie
Apple pie
Pound cake
Cheesecake
Cranberry coffee cake
Cranberry upside-down cake
Chocolate mousse
Creme brulee

Christmas side dishes, updated

Last year I gave you this compilation of side dishes suitable for Thanksgiving. Here is a recap of this year's list, updated for Christmas:

Creamed collard greens
Rutabaga fries
Parsnip fries
Thai red curry-butternut squash soup
Cream of celery soup
Kale chips with lime zest and chili powder
Raw kale salad with bacon
Kale Caesar salad
Roasted beet and peach salad with pistachios
Fennel, grapefruit and shallot salad
Pear salad with walnuts, cheese and balsamic
Lentil salad with feta, mint and oranges
Dandelion green salad with walnuts
Herb risotto
Caramelized onion and lavender tart
Bacon, chard and walnut tart
Potato-carrot tart
Bok choy with fried shallots
Roasted green beans with almonds and shallots
Green bean salad

I also give you Thanksgiving breads and sweet potato buttermilk rolls.

Best after-holiday-meal drink: Nocino della Cristina Napa Valley Walnut Liqueur

This stuff is awesome. You may read "walnut liqueur" and think "Ewwww," but it's exceptionally well-balanced. Not too sweet, not too nutty, not too cloying: it's like a yummy nutty holiday in a glass. Drink it neat, like a digestif. You could also use it for cocktails, but hey, if it's good enough to drink all by itself...

Retails for around $30 for a 375ml bottle.

Best wine with turkey: Papa Celso Dolcetto di Dogliani

Here's my vote for best holiday/turkey wine: Papa Celso dolcetto.

Dolcetto is a medium-body Italian red, fruitier than pinot noir but just as versatile. This one is especially lovely; open it an hour or so before you want to serve it, as it's a little tight right out of the bottle. It pairs exquisitely with turkey, potatoes, stuffing and gravy--in short, everything at the holiday table. Not too tannic, not too dry, lots of notes of dark cherry, cloves and pepper with a long, satisfying finish.

Retails for $24-30.

Gravy

Good gravy is just pan drippings, reduced.

You know all that goo in the bottom of the roasting pan when you take the turkey out of the oven? That's gravy.

Leave it in the roasting pan and remove all the solids with a slotted spoon. (Onions, carrots, whatever you put under the turkey when you roasted it.) Set the pan over two burners on the stove. If you need more liquid, add chicken stock. Bring to a simmer while scraping all the browned bits off the bottom with a wooden spoon. Let cook slowly for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, mix 1/4 cup water with 3 tablespoons cornstarch into a smooth paste.

Whisking constantly, pour this into the simmering broth, then cook for one minute.

There! Done!

You can add salt and pepper to taste, maybe a little port if you want to get fancy.

Sweet potato pie

No marshmallows needed or allowed.

I used the standard pumpkin pie recipe, and just substituted roasted, peeled and mashed sweet potatoes for the pumpkin puree. The finished pie was a little lumpy; if you like a smooth pie, puree the sweet potato mash first. I used six small sweet potatoes; roast at 400 until cooked all the way through, then let cool and slip them out of their skins.

I used my standard pie crust recipe, too. No need to pre-bake it.

Stuffing

In this case, sausage and apple stuffing, though you could just as easily leave the sausage and apple out.

Also, I split the batch in two, and cooked part inside the turkey, and part outside. Cooked outside, it will be crispier. Cooked inside is moister. I like it crispier, but either way is fine.

Stuffing is recycled bread. That's it. I used half a loaf of slightly stale homemade bread, then added a bunch of homemade croutons for crunch.

From Joy of Cooking:


10 cups bread cubes (any kind of bread, preferably stale), in a large bowl
1/2 stick butter
1 onion, chopped
3 stalks celery, chopped
Seasonings: parsley, sage, thyme, salt and pepper, nutmeg, ground cloves
Chicken stock

Melt the butter in a skillet and saute the onion and celery until soft. Add the seasonings, stir, and add to the bread cubes in the bowl. Mix well; add chicken stock until just moist (more if you like moister stuffing). If cooking outside the turkey, turn into a buttered casserole dish and bake at 350 for 30 - 40 minutes, until crusty on top.

For sausage and apple stuffing, force the sausage out of two links of Italian sausage and cook in a separate skillet until browned. Add two Granny Smith apples, peeled and diced, and cook for another minute or so. Add to the bread cubes bowl along with the onion and celery mixture.

That's all you need for good all-purpose stuffing. You can get fancy with oysters or nuts or dried fruit, but people tend to like their stuffing plain and all-purpose, especially the kids.

Cranberry syrup, and then cranberry sauce

I made two things from the exact same batch of cranberries: cranberry syrup, and then cranberry sauce.

The cranberry syrup is for cocktails, and is just simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, stir over heat until the sugar dissolves) with cranberries in it. I let the cranberries steep until the syrup had cooled all the way down, then strained them out and put the syrup in the fridge.

Then I thought, "Hey, there's nothing wrong with these cranberries. Most of them are still whole, and they've been soaking in sugar water for like two hours. I bet I could reuse them in cranberry sauce, and I wouldn't even have to add sugar!"

So that's what I did.

I made this cranberry sauce, without the brown sugar. It was yummy. And I felt all frugal and stuff.

How to cook a turkey

Just in time for Christmas!

The most important thing about cooking a turkey is this: don't get all worked up about it.

People put way too much pressure on themselves, and a picture-perfect turkey, during the holidays. Really, it's just a turkey. Whether or not to brine it, whether or not to stuff it, whether or not to blast it with high heat at the beginning or the end, whether or not to put foil on the breast as it cooks: ultimately, none of these things really matter.

Really.

A turkey is just a big chicken. If you've cooked a roast chicken before, you can cook a turkey.

Here's how you do it.

1. Thaw it. Completely. Either on the counter overnight, or in the fridge 2-3 days before you want to cook it.

2. Get a roasting pan. Put some things in the bottom of it--I put in a roughly chopped onion, carrot, and a few stalks of celery, along with a bag of small potatoes, halved. Pour in some broth--maybe 1-2 cups. If your turkey comes with a neck/giblets, put those in the bottom too.

3. Wash off your thawed turkey. Pat it dry, then rub it all over with butter. If you want, you can separate the skin from the breast and shove a bunch of butter in there, too. Put salt and pepper all over the turkey.

4. If you're not putting stuffing inside the turkey, put some aromatics in there. A halved onion, a halved citrus fruit of some kind, some fresh herbs, any/all of the above. You can put stuffing inside there too--I like my stuffing crispy, so I usually cook it outside the bird, but if you like moist stuffing, it's perfectly safe to cook it inside the turkey.

5. Tie the legs shut with twine.

6. I usually blast the turkey with high heat at the beginning of the process. Put it in a 500-degree oven for 30 minutes or so, then back it down to 350 degrees. Cook at 350, basting every 30 minutes or so, until the button in the turkey breast pops out. You can reverse this process, with no discernible difference in color or texture or taste, by high-roasting the bird for the last 30 minutes, but it's harder to accurately predict when the last 30 minutes will be. So I do it at the beginning.

7. LET THE BIRD REST. Take it out of the oven and just let it sit for a half hour or so. If you don't, all the juice will run out the instant you cut into it and you'll have a dry bird. (Also it will be too hot to eat.)

The biggest thing about cooking a turkey is that you have to plan your oven usage around it. I had a 12-pound turkey, a smaller one ($6 on sale!), and it took a good four hours of dedicated oven time. Fortunately, most holiday desserts/breads can be made ahead of time.

That's all there is to it. Once it goes in the oven, it's pretty low-maintenance. I forgot to baste for long stretches of time and the turkey still didn't dry out or anything. (There wasn't enough juice left over for gravy, though.)

So, coming up: recipes for stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potato pie, and gravy.

Cranberry liqueur

The poor typecast cranberry never shows up except as cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving and Christmas; and I daresay most people would rather have the kind that comes in a can, as opposed to the homemade kind.

So I'm going to present a whole bunch of non-cranberry-sauce cranberry recipes, to get everyone in the mood for Christmas.

First up: cranberry liqueur.

Which is essentially a cranberry-infused vodka. Plain vodka is fine, but I had some Absolut Brooklyn on hand, which is red apple and ginger-flavored vodka. I used that as the base, because apple, ginger and cranberry will go great together.

2 cups cranberries
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup water
12 oz (about 1 2/3 cups) vodka
1-2 cinnamon sticks

In a saucepan, cook the cranberries, sugar and water until boiling, and until the cranberries get soft and start to pop. Puree that mixture in a food processor, then add to a jar with the vodka and cinnamon stick. Put a lid on the jar and put the jar in a cupboard for 2-3 weeks. Strain the vodka through a fine-mesh sieve, and then through cheesecloth. Serve. Yum.

Thanksgiving side dishes, updated

Last year I gave you this compilation of side dishes suitable for Thanksgiving. Here are some more:

Creamed collard greens
Rutabaga fries
Parsnip fries
Thai red curry-butternut squash soup
Cream of celery soup
Kale chips with lime zest and chili powder
Raw kale salad with bacon
Kale Caesar salad
Roasted beet and peach salad with pistachios
Fennel, grapefruit and shallot salad
Pear salad with walnuts, cheese and balsamic
Lentil salad with feta, mint and oranges
Dandelion green salad with walnuts
Herb risotto
Caramelized onion and lavender tart
Bacon, chard and walnut tart
Potato-carrot tart
Bok choy with fried shallots
Roasted green beans with almonds and shallots
Green bean salad

I also give you Thanksgiving breads and sweet potato buttermilk rolls.

Oyster stew

My grandmother served this at the beginning of every Thanksgiving dinner. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

1 cup milk
1 cup half and half
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon grated onion
salt and pepper to taste
1 pint drained oysters (save the juice)

Scald the first five ingredients, and keep warm. Frizzle the oysters in a little more butter in another pan, just until the edges start to curl in, and add that to the milk mix. Add the oyster juice, and cook another 2-3 minutes. Add 1-2 teaspoons lemon juice OR 2-3 tablespoons dry white wine. Add paprika to taste and serve.

Thanksgiving breads

Your family deserves better than Parker House dinner rolls. (Even if they don't, you do.)

Squash muffins
Biscuits
Rolls
Spoon bread
Buttermilk cornbread
Puff pastry cheese straws
Hush puppies

Thanksgiving side dishes

Here's a collection of recipes I've published on this blog, that would be great for Thanksgiving side dishes! Don't let me catch any of you with a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup anywhere near your holiday kitchens. Ditto marshmallow topping.

Butternut squash and chard risotto
Butternut squash stuffed with sausage and apples
Onion tart
Bourbon corn pudding
Corn fritters
Corn maque choux
Cranberry sauce
Parmesan brussel sprouts
Green beans with Rocquefort and walnuts
Green beans with balsamic vinegar
Acorn squash soup
Glazed carrots
Beet risotto
Champagne risotto
Mushroom risotto
Israeli couscous with apples and cranberries
Lima bean, corn and bacon succotash

Also, try making home fries instead of mashed potatoes this year. Slice potatoes (unpeeled) into wedges, put in a big bowl with olive oil, and mix them around until they're coated in oil. Spread out in a single layer on a baking sheet, coat liberally with dry rub, and roast at 400 degrees until a fork goes all the way through.

Ditto sweet potatoes, for sweet potato fries, but leave off the dry rub. You can make a kick-ass "aioli" for sweet potato fries by mixing together Sriracha and mayo. Yummmmm.

Thanksgiving ice creams

Oh yes. Ice creams. Why be predictable and serve pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving this year, when you could serve one of these? Plus, you can make it ahead!

Rum Butternut Squash Ice Cream
Sweet Potato Ice Cream
Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream with Pecan Praline
Cranberry Sorbet
Maple Pecan Ice Cream

and the pièce de résistance... wait for it...

Butterscotch and Bourbon Ice Cream with Bacon and Butter Toffee Chips

I think that last one is worth buying an ice cream maker for, if you don't have one already. I'm totally hauling mine out this weekend.

Brandied cranberry relish

A slightly different version of cranberry sauce.

2 cups cranberries
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup Calvados (or other brandy/applejack)

Place cranberries in a greased 2-qt baking dish and sprinkle with sugar. Cover and bake at 300 for 50-60 minutes, stirring twice. Uncover and stir in Calvados/brandy. Pour into an airtight container, let cool, and refrigerate covered for at least three hours.

Parmesan brussel sprouts

Brussel sprouts have gotten a bad rap over the years, probably because most people boil them until they're mush. Gross. This recipe, as far as I'm concerned, is the only way--and the tastiest way!--to eat brussel sprouts.

3 lbs Brussels sprouts, ends cut off and sliced in half
½ cup bacon fat
½ cup parmesan

Toss sprouts with bacon fat, roast at 425 in shallow baking pan for 20 minutes or so. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, cheese and serve.

The bacon fat is key. If you really wanted to, you could substitute olive oil and make this vegetarian, but man, roasting anything in bacon fat is just so good. The cost is minimal, too--I save all my bacon fat, so it's just however much you pay for the Brussel sprouts and the parm.