Cooking for Christmas?

[Jenise]

If so, what's on your menu?

We're doing Christmas Eve with the same four couples we have had every Christmas Eve for the last few years with. Al does all the cooking, reprising the Christmas Eve meal prepared by his late Italian grandmother which always features fried cabbage, baccalao, fried calamari, a homemade ravioli (the nature of which changes every year) and I forget what else. Always a great time.

For Christmas Day, a group of us got to talking last Saturday night about the fact that we didn't have Christmas Day plans, and yesterday that gelled into a pot luck. So I'm going to make more of the main course I was planning for just Bob and I, smoked free range chicken and grits with two toppings, a tomato 'gravy' and a collard green pesto (red and green, get it?).

As mentioned on the Wine Forum this is what we’re doing: We are having Christmas dinner tomorrow (Christmas Eve) because of extended family scheduling situations. So I will get up at o'dark thirty and get the goose on. Children are bringing fruit salad, potato bread, and nuts. We are providing along with the goose, potato stuffing in and by the side of the bird, braised red cabbage, green beans almandine, and a couple of bottles of Loire CF.

What is potato stuffing? We make a double portion, putting one in the bird and one on the side. Our gang loves it, and has all their lives. Here is a single portion:

POTATO STUFFING:

4 c Mashed potatoes (not instant)
2 c Fresh breadcrumbs
1 tsp Salt
1 tsp Pepper
2 tsp Sage
2 oz Bottle Onion juice
1 Stick melted butter

Mix all ingredients together in mixer.

I'm doing Bouillabaisse with pumpkin pie for dessert.


-mike

[Jenise]

I'm doing Bouillabaisse with pumpkin pie for dessert.


-mike

I'll be right down.

Gail's boys are coming over tonight so we can do our gift exchange with them, since they'll be with their dad and stepmom on Christmas day. Yesterday I picked up a couple of whole chicken breasts, stuffed with prosciutto and provolone, rolled and tied, which I'll brown & roast. It'll be served with a mixture of wild & brown rice, quinoa and orzo (local meat market carries this packaged blend, which was very tasty when we tried it recently); and sauteed fennel bulbs.

We're going to have Christmas Eve with Gail's mom and cousins in Oklahoma City, and all I'm tasked with bringing for the soup & sandwich affair is cheesecake. So this afternoon I'll be making a sweet potato bourbon cheesecake in accordance with MIL's wishes.

Christmas day will just be myself and Gail, and we just picked up a couple of stuffed porkchops to bake. That be the plan, anyway.

Christmas morning is eggs and muffins.

Christmas dinner is cassoulet and a green salad. Dessert is a pudding, from a real English grandmother. Homemade ice cream. Jacques Torres chocolates.

Oddly, there will also be mashed potato with the dinner. It is not needed, of course, given the intrinsic heft of a cassoulet. But the guest who is making/bringing does a wonderful job of it and we want these leftovers.

Christmas Eve is a fresh crab feast. I'm bringing the crab, a smoked turkey, and making Caesar salad. Our son will cook some sort of grilled meat and a pasta dish for the little kids and our youngest son who does not eat crab. There will be snacks, wine. etc. Christmas dinner at youngest son's home will be stuffed flank steak, a stuffed flounder, acorn squash and I don't know what else as I am not involved with this dinner other than eating. At our home, I never serve snack foods prior to large holiday dinners. But our sons do and I think it takes the edge off of the hunger. But who can resist snack foods!

The Francophile and I just spent the morning in the kitchen. He made a couple of litres of cream whisky liqueur to sustain us over the coming days. The recipe was a somewhat-adjusted "home-made Bailey's" recipe that involves a bottle of whisky, an equal amount of thin cream, and 100g each of milk and dark Lindt chocolate. The dribbles in the bottom of the bowl tasted great! It's all chilling in the fridge right now.

While he was doing that, I made a green bean salad to take to a friend's Christmas Eve party tonight. (Recipe appears at viewtopic.php?f=5&t=22702&hilit=do+you+have+a+signature+dish ) This party is an annual event. The food component is built around a barbecue (host supplies the meat) and the salads, side dishes and desserts brought by the guests are always impressive. Some of the people who attend are brilliant cooks. One friend usually brings Eton Mess for dessert - larger and larger bowls of it year by year, as it is always delicious and very much liked. (Wanna see Nigella show you how to make it? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcQF12AlJts )

We're lunching with friends on Christmas Day at their place (instructions to bring only wine and chocolates). Dinner on Christmas Night will be just the two of us, so we're cooking a free range chicken with baked vegetables (in spite of the warm Australian summer weather!) and helping it down with a bottle of sparkling red. We figure we can indulge ourselves with the things we like best.

Somewhere on Christmas day I need to find time to make a trifle, which we have promised to take to Boxing Day lunch with the Francophile's offspring and their respective partners. The plan is:
Line glass bowl with sponge fingers. Saturate these with liqueur muscat. Then layers of vanilla custard, black cherries (preserved) and raspberries (fresh), and whipped cream. Finish with a liberal sprinkling of flaked almonds.

I wanted to do something different this year, but the boys out-voted me, so I'll be making 2 lasagnas, one with ground beef & sausage, the other with spinach and mushrooms. We've been doing this on Christmas Eve for probably 20 years now.

[Robin Garr]

It seems we're going out a lot more than we're staying in over the weekend, but Mary wants oyster stew tomorrow night - an old tradition in her family. And since Alton Brown's donuts were such a hit with us, we're going to make a larger batch to take to a brunch with friends on Sunday. Other than that, it looks like we'll just let people feed us.

Chinese lemon chicken for Christmas day.

-Paul W.

I had a crab for supper this evening. Tomorrow will be Canevari's ravioli, a delicatessen about a block and a half from home, that is well-known in the Russian River valley. I was lucky - when I went in early this morning, they had 4 boxes left that hadn't been pre-ordered. Yes, they are that good!
Saturday will be grazing at my cousin's, and Sunday will be grazing at my nephew's in Folsom.

John

Christmas morning. Crêpes filled with home-made strawberry jam and whipped cream with Boillot NV Brut Champagne. Visiting friends for turkey and a killer family tradition Christmas pudding.

Christmas morning. Crêpes filled with home-made strawberry jam and whipped cream with Boillot NV Brut Champagne.

Sounds delicious. I love homemade jam. Not sure I would trust myself with champagne for breakfast to actually make it through the day. But I'm sure it's festively delicious.

I've been trying to convince my wife to make waffles for breakfast. (It's our/my 'special' treat and I do 99% of the cooking so I always needle her to make waffles). But not sure it will happen today or tomorrow with our 4-month old baby boy doing his thing. But eventually we will have waffles!

Unfortunately, I'm off most really solid food for at least another couple of days. I probably won't be reduced to having a delicious Christmas smoothie, but I doubt I'll be tucking into the dry aged ribeye that the rest of the family will get. I'll console myself with twice-baked potatoes and maybe some broccoli or brussels sprouts. And a cocktail. And wine.

The original plan was a reprise of Christmas dinner 2000, when we had individual beef wellingtons with green peppercorn sauce. I'll still make those, but it may be another week or so.

Christmas eve- appetizers: crab rangoons, egg rolls. Then Borscht, pirozhki, vodka and wine (probably a McIlroy Pinot Noir)

Tonight: Tomato basil soup and grilled cheese sandwiches..tiramisu for dessert,,supposed to have pasta, red sauce with meat, salad, garlic chive bread, tossed salad and tiramisu. The snow storms prevented half of the expected people from arriving tonight.
Xmas day dinner: planned pot roast with roasted vegetables, coleslaw, fruit pies.
Xmas day evening meal: shrimp scampi, wide noodles,asparagus, caesar salad
Sunday night dinner: shepherds pie

With the storms hitting in the home areas of the expected people who knows?

Christmas eve...

Two pates and a vegetable terrine from d' artagnan... Pheasant herbette and peppercorn mousse
Pfeffingen dry reisling (wine spectator rated this at 95)

Tim

Because of family scheduling we had our Christmas Dinner yesterday. Eleven of us enjoyed the dinner covered above, opened presents, and all went to the Vigil Mass.

This morning we sliced open the loaf of Stollen we kept for oursleves and had toasted slices with coffee. Later we plan to fix a dinner for the two of us; roasted pork loin, baby yukons, and leftover braised red cabbage (which was fantastic). Still have another bottle of the Bourgueil we had with the goose yesterday to wash it all down.

From last night:

[Jenise]

Christmas eve- appetizers: crab rangoons, egg rolls. Then Borscht, pirozhki, vodka and wine (probably a McIlroy Pinot Noir)

I take it yours is a multi-cultural household?

Btw, love the way the dog photobombed the egg roll shot. You can see him eyeing how the lip of the plate is slightly over the edge, and he's thinking, "I can take that down."

Jenise,
We are a veritable United Nations with respect to our appetites!! No country or ethnicity is safe from our attempt at botching national dishes! Layla our Anatolian, also has a varied palate. Although in this instance, she did not manage to get an egg roll, in the past she has managed to "get" bread, lamb, cake, chocolate, biriyani, spanish torta and a lot of other stuff I can't even remember. Also, note how nice and crispy the egg rolls and the crab rangoons look!! Not bad for a $25 double oven, eh?