[Sca-cooks] Christmas Dinner

[Phil Troy / G.Tacitus Adamantius]

On Dec 26, 2006, at 8:16 AM, Pat Griffin wrote:

> I cooked the usual suspects:

I had not made any really specific plans other than to visit my  
mother at some point over the long weekend, so pretty much improvised  
Sunday night and Monday, with the exception of scrounging through my  
freezer for roast-like entities. Based on what I found, I offered my  
mom the choice between a pork loin, a leg of lamb, and I forget what- 
all else, but she emphatically requested the lamb, which I planned to  
bring over to her place and throw in the oven.

I figured other people would be bringing food, too, so I wanted to  
keep it pretty simple: the lamb, roasted, semi-caramelized winter veg  
in the pan, English mint sauce (a non-negotiable demand from She Who  
Must Be Obeyed), and an unspecified mushroom dish which turned out to  
be my standard stuffed mushroom variant, a.k.a. Mushrooms With  
Mushroom Stuffing, which is basically mushrooms stuffed with an  
overlapping combination of basic duxelles and mirepoix -- the first  
would be equal parts mushroom and onion or shallots, and the second  
usually consisting of two parts onion, one of carrot and one of  
celery -- so the combination was two parts mushrooms (stems of the  
stuffing mushrooms and some additional criminis), one part each of  
onion and shallots, one of celery and one of carrots, all in teeny  
brunoise dice (1/8"). Sunday evening was a good opportunity to  
practice some knife work; I've been getting rusty. The stuffing is  
just this vegetable mixture, sweated until tender and juicy in  
copious quantities of fresh, unsalted butter, then just enough  
unseasoned breadcrumbs (fresh are best, but the standard toasted  
commercial ones will do for this) to make a more or less cohesive  
stuffing. Salt and pepper. That's it: the Amazing Power of Aromatics,  
Or, Herbs and Spices Are For Sissies. Sometimes. Somehow, these seem  
to taste, when done, more like mushrooms than mushrooms do...

Same principle for the lamb: I just put some coarse sea salt on it,  
and by the time it was done the roasted vegetables had imparted a  
considerable perfume to the meat. Again, I had gone crazy with the  
knife work, cutting large russet potatoes into little tourné shapes  
(imagine a football-shaped, faceted gemstone and you come pretty  
close), plus parsnips, white turnips, carrots, celery and onions. I  
lightly sauteed the potatoes in a little olive oil until slightly  
browned, and in a separate pan, slowly cooked the other vegetables  
until half done, then raised the heat and added a big pinch of sugar  
(yes, I cheated) to encourage a slightly caramelized/glazed coating.  
On Monday we put them all, with the potatoes, in the pan with the  
lamb for the last half-hour or so, so there wasn't too much heavy  
caramelization at the bottom of the meat pan (later I deglazed that  
brown goo out of the pan with some brown beef stock to get a little  
jus for the meat).

We decided at the last minute to serve some of the food as a first  
course; it just sort of happened that way. What we ended up with was:

Small portions of lasagne my sister had made, and/or stuffed  
mushrooms as a starter (both my wife and the Evil Spawn had allergy  
issues with different components of the lasagne)


Leek and potato soup with chicken stock and just a little cream  
(improvised on site when my Mom got an immersion blender as a gift)


Roast Lamb
Roasted winter veg
MInt Sauce (made with mint, a little sugar, and sherry vinegar  
instead of the usual malt)
Broccoli-Rabe braised with garlic and EV olive oil
Some species of green torta my mother had made, which is normally  
made with kale, currants, and pignoles, but on this occasion seemed  
to be spinach

Cucumber salad in mustard/dill vinaigrette (basically the sauce that  
goes on gravlax, but less sweet)

New-York-Type Cheesecake made from the standard Leo Lindy recipe
Scottish shortbread
Almond Macaroons (made from a sugar-free recipe for a diabetic family  
member)


Adamantius


"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04