meg140 Food Journal

As things do, the plans changed for Christmas dinner. Easily handled, though -- since it was just my husband and me, I went with the filet oscar and the apple chess pie. (The filet oscar -- filet mignon with asparagus, shrimp, and hollandaise -- was prepared without a recipe.) 'Twas delicious! I decided that it really isn't a good thing for entertaining, though -- it's unabashedly last minute, and if there's anything I don't do well, it's cooking for guests under pressure. I'd much rather be part of the conversation than fiddling with a hollandaise and a steak!

The Zip-steam bags that let you microwave vegetables without getting them soggy have turned out to be one of the best new inventions around! I've actually microwaved fresh green beans and had them turn out lovely and crisp without that "squeaky" noise that undercooked beans make. This time, I used them for the asparagus, and the asparagus came out lovely -- tender crisp, delicious. And no cleanup!

The hollandaise recipe I used was from the New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne (copyright 1961). Times must have changed, or else I am more used to the "blender" hollandaise which is what I used to make. The recipe (3 egg yolks and 1 T water, whisked over hot water until foamy, with 1 stick softened butter added a few tablespoons at a time while constantly whisking, and then seasoned with salt and 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice) was inherently bland and tasted more of butter than anything else. After I made the emulsion (which held quite well for 10 minutes or so over the hot water) and tasted it, I added 1/4 teaspoon of cayenne and the juice of 2 lemons. Finally!

I had always been afraid of making hollandaise without the use of a blender, but it took only a few minutes in a double boiler, and had significantly less cleanup than a blender. I'm getting to the point, in my old age, that I believe that most of the lovely electric appliances are not as time saving as they appear. I didn't have to melt the butter; I didn't have to wash the blender and put it away -- I had a pot of hot water, a double-boiler top, and a whisk.

I also rarely use my food processor, but when I need it, I try to make sure I use it a lot at one sitting. For example, today, I made the herb dip for tomorrow; grated the cheese for the cornmeal biscotti and cheese straws for tomorrow; and whirled together the crumbly dough for the cheese straws. Finally, I put it into the dishwasher. For me, that made it a multi-use appliance worth the dishwasher space!

We didn't drink anything except water with dinner -- my husband has to work tomorrow, and one thing he has learned: he is not a good nurse if he has had more than one glass of wine or beer the night before, and I wasn't about to open a bottle of wine for one glass. We did fine.

The apple chess pie was yummy. Tasted sort of like apple custard pie, and it made us very happy. My husband is taking the remaining 3/4s of the pie with him to work tomorrow -- I do not need that thing sitting around the house calling my name!

Tomorrow morning, I boil the ducks and then let them cool and rest, and I make the coffee granita. And in the afternoon, I will wilt the greens and let them stand until I get ready to serve them. The ducks go in about an hour before we plan to eat. All in all, an easy day.

A couple with whom we are very close are coming over New Year's Eve and spending the night -- because the next day, their entire family is coming over to spend the day. (We have been close friends with this family since their youngest daughter -- now the mother of four -- was in elementary school!) I'm planning a simple and elegant dinner for them.

We'll start in the living room with Lemon Pizza, using a recipe by Christopher Idone that was published on The Wednesday Chef blog. Since it starts with ready made pizza dough, available in the bakery section at my local Publix, it's a breeze! With champagne, it will be a lovely festive opener.

In the dining room, I'll serve filet oscar -- filet mignon topped with crabmeat, asparagus, and hollandaise. Nice one-dish meal, don't you think? And appropriately extravagant to start the new year. I'll try, for the first time, to make some no-knead bread, but if it doesn't work out, well, hey -- we had the pizza!

For dessert, a cherry semi-freddo. I'm going to use the juice from a jar of Amarena Fabbri cherries and gently whipped heavy cream, and stick it in the freezer. I'll serve the semi-freddo in homemade chocolate cups and top it with some more of the cherries. These cherries are made by one of Italy's specialty food producers -- the company provides syrups for some of the premiere gelato makers in Italy. I think it will be a beautiful pink color, and the chocolate cups (melted dark chocolate, dip balloons far enough into the chocolate to form a bowl, and let the chocolate harden -- then, needless to say I hope, pop the balloons and remove them. Ta-da! Chocolate bowls!) will make my chocolate-loving friend happy. We may serve champagne with the dessert, and plop another Amarana cherry into the glass.

All in all, a simple dinner with friends for a lovely and quiet New Year's Eve.

Our dear friends from Alabama will be visiting over the holidays. They are adventurous eaters, particularly consider they're born, bred, and continue to live in the South, but I have to be careful with spice -- too much and I'll lose Lyra.

My husband requested roast duck for the holidays, so this seemed like a good time to do this. Now, these people enjoy port and rather sweet drinks, and they are very traditional Southern folks. So:

Cheese straws, crudite, and an herb dip in the living room with some Cava. Cheese straws are quintessential Southern food, and I adore them. They are not hard to make, I can make them ahead, and they are that yummy crunch. Here's the recipe from the Picayune's Creole Cookbook (published in 1987). It's become my standard.
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Cheese Straws

1 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon melted butter
1 egg Yolk, well beaten
salt and cayenne pepper to taste

Blend the flour and cheese together, seasoning them with the salt and cayenne.

Add the egg yolk and butter.

Roll into thin strips of 1/8" thickness. Cut into pieces 4" long and 1/8" wide.

Place on parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake at 375 until light brown.
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In the dining room, prosciutto with wilted greens, adapted from an Alice Waters recipe. (I won't be able to garnish with the mustard flowers, needless to say, but I'll figure out something!) will start us off. Greens are wonderfully Southern, but this way, they won't be drippy with ham fat.

Then the duck -- I'll use Ina Garten's technique for boiling the ducks first since I can do that early in the day, and then roast them closer to dinner. I figured a parsley salad would be good with that: refreshing and tasty with garlic, sherry vinegar, and parmesan. I'm using a recipe from The New James Beard Cookbook, published in 1981.
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Tom Isbel's Parsley Salad

6 cloves garlic, finely chopped
8 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 to 2 tablespoons sherry vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
1 1/2 cups Italian Parsley
2 cups curly parsley
1/2 cup parmesan cheese

Marinate the garlic in the oil for at least 2 hours. Combine the oil with the vinegar and season to taste.

Put the parsley sprigs into a bowl, pour the dressing over, and toss throughly. Add the cheese and toss again.

NOTES : To measure parsley, break off the little sprigs from the stalks and let them fall loosely into a measuring cup.

Sherry vinegar is very strong in flavor, so start with 1 1/2 tablespoons, and taste to see if you need more.
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I had seen a recipe on a blog (Culinary in the Desert) for cornmeal chili-pepper biscotti that I've been wanting to make, and since the recipe uses canned green chilis, I know it will not be particularly spicy, so I think it will make a lovely starch. There's nothing to soak up (no gravy or anything with the duck), so I think it will give us some needed crunch without the crisp, a nice textural change, and some color.

A good red wine will make a nice warming drink.

Dessert will be coffee granita (made with decaf espresso) with whipped heavy cream. I think the cold and refreshing texture will be a good contrast after the rich duck.

We'll probably pass out in the living room after the meal, but we'll have fun.

When we visit these friends, they always make a huge Southern breakfast because my husband keeps telling them how much he loves that kind of breakfast! I, on the other hand, gag down a piece of bacon and some seltzer. Since my husband will be home the next day, I'll let him make the disgusting huge Southern breakfast. I think he has planned to make a low-carb sausage gravy (you won't believe this recipe when you read it!) and serve it with high-carb cathead biscuits. I figure Lyra and I can gag down a biscuit (Lyra will have jelly) and we'll let the "menfolk" have their way with the gravy.

This recipe is from a cookbook called Extreme Low-Carb Cuisine by Sharron Long, and was published in 1994. It is delicious, but unless you are keeping a strict low-carb diet where fats just don't matter, I'd avoid this like the plague!
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Low-Carb Sausage Gravy

1 pound bulk pork sausage
8 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/3 cup soy milk
1/3 cup water
1/4 teaspoon salt

Cook and crumble the sausage. Drain the excess fat.

Place the cream cheese into the pan and reduce the heat. The cheese will melt as it is stirred.

Add the remaining ingredients, stirring constantly. Add additional water if necessary.
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The reason for the soy milk is that it has significantly less carbohydrates than regular milk. I'm pretty sure for the purposes of this disgusting breakfast, my husband will just regular milk.

We'll send our friends away fat, dumb, and happy, I'm sure.

We're entertaining quite a bit over the holiday week. My husband, a nurse, is working Christmas Day, so we're having neighbors over for dinner. The next day, dear friends from Alabama are coming to visit, so we'll have yet another Christmas dinner! And then New Year's Eve, another couple is coming over for a (relatively) early New Year's Eve dinner -- none of us will make it until midnight -- we're too old! And New Year's Day, 30 members of our local family are coming for a pot luck. That's the easy one!

I had planned a rather elegant Christmas dinner with cocktails and wine, only to find out that our neighbors do not drink. Ah me. I'll continue with the elegant dinner and figure out some kind of non-alcoholic cocktails to serve. And I guess I'll make iced tea (we're in the South, after all ...). I decided on a somewhat traditional Christmas dinner.

When I grew up, it was shrimp cocktail, roast tenderloin, roasted potatoes, green beans (you had to have some color), and Christmas cookies. Wonderful if you're with family you grew up with, no question. But I wanted to do a spin on tradition.

At any rate, we'll begin with shrimp remoulade. In my mind, it's a gussied up shrimp cocktail, though instead of cocktail sauce, it's a tart "mayonnaisy" sauce. Perhaps we'll have "mockitos" -- mojitos without the rum, and with seltzer to make it festive. Then we'll move to the dining room.

In the dining room, we'll have a salad with pears, blue cheese, and toasted walnuts. I know it's perhaps a bit passe, but it's easy to throw together without me having to be lost in the kitchen.

Then we'll have roast beef, creamed turnips (I LOVE creamed turnips!), sauteed spinach, and yorkshire pudding. I'll season the roast beef with cajun spices, and make the turnips with real cream (no bechamel for Christmas dinner!). To make the spinach a bit more festive, I'll toss it with a few diced roasted red bell peppers.

For dessert, an apple chess pie -- butter, sugar, eggs, Nutella, and apples! Chess pie is such a traditional Southern thing, but the apples and, especially, the Nutella, twist the tradition to a new world.

With the leftovers from the main course, I can see ridiculously rich roast beef sandwiches served with cream of turnip soup (add some chicken broth to the creamed turnips, and season with, I'm thinking, some wasabi powder). Make a delicious lunch for our guests when they arrive Wednesday.

Sometimes, I can go for a week or two with absolutely no appetite for food! I know I need to eat, but nothing appeals to me. What I generally want are lots of bland carbohydrates, which doesn't do a whole lot for my blood sugars!

Last night, for example: went to the local Thai restaurant and had a bowl of mixed vegetable soup (broccoli, yellow squash, zucchini, carrots, onions, cabbage in a clear broth) and a couple of Thai spring rolls. What I really wanted were the spring rolls: fried bits of rice paper with that sweet clear sauce. I forced myself to eat my soup and then tore into the spring rolls. I paid the price at the 2-hour post-prandial check, however: blood sugar of 140.

I struggle to get through these periods of dislike. Reading recipes makes me feel nauseated; cooking is disgusting to think about; eating is exhausting. And then, there's my poor skinny husband -- what's he supposed to eat while I'm groaning about the horrendous smell emanating from the kitchen when he fries a couple of eggs to help him get through the famine!

I had half a bagel and cream cheese for lunch today, along with a glass of unsweetened iced tea with lemon. We'll see how I do on that. And then, when I get home, I'll see what leftovers we have from earlier in the week -- I think I can provide something better than fried eggs!