Dec. 27th, 2002 04:02 pm
Da's Christmas Food Roundup
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muckefuckIt belatedly occurs to me that I've talked a lot in my recent entries about family and fun, but very little about food. I suppose that's because there wasn't as much emphasis on it this season as in recent years. I had planned to hit the Christkindlmarkt and Piron right before I left, but then I got sick. So I showed up without chocolates for my hostess and bereft of German cookies.
Not that it mattered. As I said before, all it really took to make Christmas come was my sister's sugar cookies and e.'s polvorones. We also made chocolate pops from a great bar of Ghiradelli for the wee ones at the Family Christmas Party and a dessert for the grownups that was really half chocolate cake, half chocolate ganache. It was my sister's and my first experience with ganache because we never realised how gosh darn simple it is--it's really just whipped cream with roughly equal parts chocolate and cream.
Like the tres Rei Magi,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunj and e. came bearing gifts, including Basque and Galician cheese, a mongo star of Christmas cookies, and, of course, the fabled cheesecakes. I made the gooey butter (a St. Louis specialty) for Christmas day and had another revelation: It's really just a poor man's cheesecake with way too much sugar. (How much? When my mom first gave me the recipe, I could not bring myself to put that much sugar into a dish I was going to set before people I liked.)
The only restaurant meals I ended up having were some takeout from BM on the first or second day and lunch with my dad on the 23rd. We went to a place with mediocre Italian and American food and a phenomenal beer selection. My brother and I also picked up lambics for lunch one day and insisted everyone try them. My sister had the same reaction I always did to coffee until I discovered Meinl: "It tastes like beer."
That was one of several lunches we had from leftovers from the party. I wasn't as taken with the caterer's food as e. (although we were all terribly pleased with their professionalism and polish overall, random blazes notwithstanding), but I did find the roast beef very tasty. On the little rye rolls with the Butterkäse she brought melted over it, it was irresistable. We also had plenty of ham from Christmas morning, and I lamented I could only make one sandwich from it. My sister wanted to give me more to take with, but I don't like the idea of taking perishables on the four-hour journey from her door to mine.
My sister, btw, should plan every family get-together from now on. For Christmas brunch, she served simple dishes that she prepared in advance and just popped in the oven that morning while she was getting dressed. I insisted on soaking the ham overnight to desalt it, and I'm very glad I did. We also had "roadside spinach" (basically, half-spinach, half-cheese, and 100% delish), a breakfast casserole that e. compared to a frittata, the gooey butter, and a bûche de Noël brought by my stepmom.
She had actually called while I was lunching with my dad to ask if that was okay. I had to think a moment, because in the past we've often had a surfeit of Christmas cakes. (One year, I brought a Stollen, my mom brought a panettone, and someone else brought something, too.) Astonishingly, we didn't have a single one this year. The roscón (okay, technically rosca) de reyes that e. had planned to pick up wasn't going to be available until almost reyes (i.e. Epiphany), so I gave That Woman the go-ahead.
I was glad she was able to contribute something, since this was the first Christmas in years without her lasagne. (I think I've explained before that she's a Jew from the Bronx, so of course she makes lasagne every Christmas eve.) We had dinner with her and my father a day earlier than usual to simplify things. All in all, we did a great job of trimming the fancy meals to a bare minimum so we spent time together in the living room instead of brushing past each other in a frenzy in the kitchen. Even Mom's somewhat last-minute decision to fix dinner Christmas eve was streamlined by reheating leftover green beans and potatoes from the banquet. (Unfortunately--since they were pretty yummy--her cranberry mousse in chocolate dishes got forgotten about until Christmas night.)
As it turns out, I'll get my German goodies after all. Monshu called on Christmas morning (I was in the bathroom at the time, and the conversation with my brother, who had been sent to get me, went something like this:
bunj: (knock, knock) Da[...]?
muckefuck: I'm so totally in here!
bunj: [Monshu] is so totally on the phone for you.
muckefuck: Tell him I'll so totally call him back.
bunj: (into phone) He'll so totally call you back!) to let me know he'd made it to Daley Plaza both Sunday and Monday. Since the latter is closeout day, I shudder to think of the mountain of sweets awaiting me at his place tonight. He also got busy on Christmas and started a sauerbraten. (For years, my sister used to request one of these from me when I was home over Christmas.) Maybe we can devour it for New Year's, depending what our plans end up being.
Not that it mattered. As I said before, all it really took to make Christmas come was my sister's sugar cookies and e.'s polvorones. We also made chocolate pops from a great bar of Ghiradelli for the wee ones at the Family Christmas Party and a dessert for the grownups that was really half chocolate cake, half chocolate ganache. It was my sister's and my first experience with ganache because we never realised how gosh darn simple it is--it's really just whipped cream with roughly equal parts chocolate and cream.
Like the tres Rei Magi,
bunj and e. came bearing gifts, including Basque and Galician cheese, a mongo star of Christmas cookies, and, of course, the fabled cheesecakes. I made the gooey butter (a St. Louis specialty) for Christmas day and had another revelation: It's really just a poor man's cheesecake with way too much sugar. (How much? When my mom first gave me the recipe, I could not bring myself to put that much sugar into a dish I was going to set before people I liked.)The only restaurant meals I ended up having were some takeout from BM on the first or second day and lunch with my dad on the 23rd. We went to a place with mediocre Italian and American food and a phenomenal beer selection. My brother and I also picked up lambics for lunch one day and insisted everyone try them. My sister had the same reaction I always did to coffee until I discovered Meinl: "It tastes like beer."
That was one of several lunches we had from leftovers from the party. I wasn't as taken with the caterer's food as e. (although we were all terribly pleased with their professionalism and polish overall, random blazes notwithstanding), but I did find the roast beef very tasty. On the little rye rolls with the Butterkäse she brought melted over it, it was irresistable. We also had plenty of ham from Christmas morning, and I lamented I could only make one sandwich from it. My sister wanted to give me more to take with, but I don't like the idea of taking perishables on the four-hour journey from her door to mine.
My sister, btw, should plan every family get-together from now on. For Christmas brunch, she served simple dishes that she prepared in advance and just popped in the oven that morning while she was getting dressed. I insisted on soaking the ham overnight to desalt it, and I'm very glad I did. We also had "roadside spinach" (basically, half-spinach, half-cheese, and 100% delish), a breakfast casserole that e. compared to a frittata, the gooey butter, and a bûche de Noël brought by my stepmom.
She had actually called while I was lunching with my dad to ask if that was okay. I had to think a moment, because in the past we've often had a surfeit of Christmas cakes. (One year, I brought a Stollen, my mom brought a panettone, and someone else brought something, too.) Astonishingly, we didn't have a single one this year. The roscón (okay, technically rosca) de reyes that e. had planned to pick up wasn't going to be available until almost reyes (i.e. Epiphany), so I gave That Woman the go-ahead.
I was glad she was able to contribute something, since this was the first Christmas in years without her lasagne. (I think I've explained before that she's a Jew from the Bronx, so of course she makes lasagne every Christmas eve.) We had dinner with her and my father a day earlier than usual to simplify things. All in all, we did a great job of trimming the fancy meals to a bare minimum so we spent time together in the living room instead of brushing past each other in a frenzy in the kitchen. Even Mom's somewhat last-minute decision to fix dinner Christmas eve was streamlined by reheating leftover green beans and potatoes from the banquet. (Unfortunately--since they were pretty yummy--her cranberry mousse in chocolate dishes got forgotten about until Christmas night.)
As it turns out, I'll get my German goodies after all. Monshu called on Christmas morning (I was in the bathroom at the time, and the conversation with my brother, who had been sent to get me, went something like this:
bunj: (knock, knock) Da[...]?muckefuck: I'm so totally in here!bunj: [Monshu] is so totally on the phone for you.muckefuck: Tell him I'll so totally call him back.bunj: (into phone) He'll so totally call you back!) to let me know he'd made it to Daley Plaza both Sunday and Monday. Since the latter is closeout day, I shudder to think of the mountain of sweets awaiting me at his place tonight. He also got busy on Christmas and started a sauerbraten. (For years, my sister used to request one of these from me when I was home over Christmas.) Maybe we can devour it for New Year's, depending what our plans end up being.![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
And is EVERYONE in your family as foody as you?
no subject
When my sister asked that question, e. did a beautiful job of explaining. Not having her handy, however, I'm forced to fall back on my BRAND-NEW LAROUSSE GASTRONOMIQUE which has this to say:
Kriek was the first beer I ever had that I really enjoyed, so I've come to think of it as beer for people who don't like beer, which is why I thought my sister might go for it. All the lambics I've ever seen are flavoured; the two we picked up were pêche (peach) and cassis (blackcurrant)
And is EVERYONE in your family as foody as you?
Hardly! Don't forget the gooey butter. It was made by special request of my older brother, whose tastes haven't matured a bit in twenty years or more. (He can't understand why anyone would pay so much for Godiva; he almost single-handedly destroyed a box of Russel Stover chocolates, which are better than Fannie Mae, but not by much.) Nevertheless, it was nearly gone by the end of the meal while more than half the Danish Baker yule log remained.
The rest of us have all come under the beneficent influence of outsiders. My sister may have ended up with a decidedly uncosmopolitan St. Louisan for a husband (we couldn't tell him the cranberry salsa had pecans because "he won't eat nuts"), but before him she dated a Spaniard for over three years. My younger brother, of course, married one and I had that year abroad to broaden my tastes. Still, I always was the most adventurous child, ready to try any dish or cuisine as long as it was something I just hadn't had before.
no subject
I don't normally get involved in this sort of discussion, because most of my food tastes are simple and unsophisticated. I don't acquire acquired tastes. I don't like beer, wine, or any sort of straight liquor. I don't like coffee, let alone have the capability of distinguishing well-roasted high-quality arabica beans from tenth rate robustas. I will never eat at Charlie Trotter's. I'm not a gourmet, or a foodie, in any sense of the term.
But chocolate, now, that's an exception. Valrhona is the candy bar of choice in the house, and I've actually lost much of my tolerance for crap chocolate (and more recently even for Lindt bars, which when I was in college constituted the top of my personal spectrum). I get the 70% cacao dark bars (though I like good milk chocolate too). I'll eat crushed cacao beans straight. If there's any food I'd even dare to lay my tastes on the line with anyone's, it's chocolate.
And no way is Russell Stover better than Fannie May in any universe that I'm participating in. Yes, sure, Godiva's chocolate is better than Fannie May (though I like some of Fannie May's fillings better-- this, of course, may go back to my usual plebeian tastes). But unless Russell Stover has secret caches of decent chocolate hidden among the Whitman's Sampler-level collections I've run into, it's not even playing in the same league as Fannie May. Fannie May is perfectly good-- not a thing of beauty and joy forever like the Chocolate Obsession1 the Ritz-Carlton served me a couple of months ago, but a nice, solid box of chocolates. Russell Stover, when I've had it, was just mediocre.
(I note, on doing a bit of research, that in addition to selling candy in drugstores, Russell Stover has its own network of stores. I note further that they're heavily concentrated in Missouri. I will therefore grant, for the sake of argument, that they may be better fresh in their native environment than after a few months on an Osco shelf. But after putting together a quality rant like the above, I can't see just tossing it out.)
Amen, Brother!
Re: Amen, Brother!
But I'm in no hurry to, not as long as (1) Dominick's continues selling Droste; (2) I can stop by Piron on my way home from work for their freshly-made 70% cocoa bars; and (3) Meinl Edelbitter is obtainable in Chicago. Bye-bye Lindt!
no subject
I can't figure out if that makes me mature, since I clearly don't request it, or simply sadly uneducated.