What Did You Get For the Holidays

No. Went to the doctor yesterday; they think it's pneumonia.

Oh no! Jeez, I hope you pull out of it quickly. Keep us updated, and feel better!

No culinary gifts this year. Nicest gift is a beautiful wooden cribbage board.

Haven’t played cribbage for a while but a beautiful board would really be an added enjoyment. Do you play much? Cribbage that is LOL

Lately, Pumpkin and I have been playing a lot of dominoes, especially the "Mexican Train" variant.

I like card games -- cribbage, casino, pinochle, bridge -- but we don't play cards very much. Pumpkin prefers backgammon and hearts (which needs four so he plays against the computer).

[Jenise]

Barb, thanks, I'll live. Apparently the x-ray came back negative so it's not pneumonia after all, but it almost might as well be. Been a dreary Christmas!

[Jenise]

Finally got to open Xmas presents last night!

My food-related gifts were: two new French silpats (my old ones had got a bit sliced up--I'd have never replaced them but hey, now I have perfect ones), Global fish bone tweezers (I just wish I had more fish to pick), a Global knife sharpener (hand-held, AND it's a water system, very cool), and a book about African culinaria that hasn't arrived yet.

and a book about African culinaria that hasn't arrived yet.

Aha - hippo terrine to look forward to? Good gnus for sure!

[Jenise]

hippo terrine

If I told you I'd even considered such a thing, I'd be lion to you.

Your pun is irrelephant!

[Jenise]

Irrelephant? You're a cheetah, making up new words. I'm impala'd!

That's a croc!

I am shocked by your hippo-cracy!

[Jenise]

Well if I Ken, ya can too.

Puns, eh? You know that toucan play at that game...?

[Jenise]

Let's have some appreciation here! I thought 'Ken,ya' was a genius geographical pun. In fact, I waited all morning to springbok that one on you.

Not sure you are koala-fied to offer humour at this level!

But maybe I'm wrong - wouldn't want to be a hippo-crite!

Get a ruminant, you two!

[Jenise]

Koala? Wall, A-by! You've moved continents on me, sir, for which you'll 'roo the day!

How emu-sing!

[Jenise]

Glad you got a chukar out of it.

Know what you call a baby kangaroo? A pouch potato.

Anyway - we should get back to Christmas acquisitions relating to food. We can even extend that to Yuel Gruel - did anyone make anything interesting for the holidays? Any foie gras stuffed geese, or.......

[Jenise]

I did not. Had plans to do a prime rib and Bordeauxs but ended up with chicken soup and water, such was my health on that day.
What did you do?

We did a veggie dinner - an aubergine charlottes with cumin, served with split cherry tomatoes dressed with a coriander, evoo and crema di balsamico dressing, and then a mixed mushroom quiche. I'd certainly repeat the aubergine recipe!

[Jenise]

Ah, that means Chick was over! Tell me more about the aubergine madeleine. I love using eggplant in molds, etc, and in fact plan to do an intriguing Boulud recipe here soon wherein a moussaka is reborn as a 'cake', to use his word, where the long eggplant slices line a bowl-like round mold and it's stuffed with the other usual ingredients. We need to do a winter terrine event.

We need to do a winter terrine event.

Interesting thought!

The aubergine dish was slices of eggplant oiled and roasted until soft, scraped into a bowl with fresh roasted cumin seeds ground up with some eggs (to set it) then assembled with a length of thin sliced roast eggplant laid in a mold (I used our small Staub cocottes instead of ramekins), and filled half with the cumin egg eggplant mix, then a layer of chevre cheese, then top up with the mix and fold the ends of the long strip of eggplant over on top (those slices retained the skin, but it is tender enough for eating).

Bake em, cool em, eat em. They were excellent. And would work well with anything from an austere Sancerre to a richer chard.

[Jenise]

Sounds utterly fantastic.

Sounds utterly fantastic.

Here you go (I corrected madeines to charlottes)

https://www.foodnetwork.ca/recipe/auber ... lad/10331/