[Sca-cooks] Christmas Dinner
Phil Troy / G.Tacitus Adamantius
adamantius1 at verizon.net
Wed Dec 27 19:13:11 PST 2006
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
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