Holiday Menu Planning

I’m helming this year’s holiday dinner. So far it looks like there will be at least 7 if not 9 diners at our place, and I’ve started putting together a menu. Desserts are being handled by our visitors, leaving me to create some kind of tasty meal. Thus far, I’m planning:

Ham (for Easter in the past we’ve done one of the pre-sliced spiral hams requiring no work; this year I might opt for a regular ham and come up with the glaze myself)

A variation on these ridiculous potatoes, featuring bacon, cream cheese, and cheddar, per Mr. Pea’s desires

These brussels sprouts with pine nuts and currants

Some kind of sweet potato dish, preferably one that does not need baking so we can use the oven for other things

And some kind of bread or roll

Mr. Pea and I always start Christmas day with these cinnamon rolls, which I prep the day before as they rise overnight in the fridge. I’m also planning some kind of brie starter before dinner, though I’m not sure what to do for that, either. I’d be happy to hear any suggestions on that, the sweet potatoes, or the ham!

Paula Deen Scares Me

Last night for one unknown reason or the other, I compelled us to watch most of Paula Deen’s Christmas Party show on the Food Network. We don’t usually watch her at all, as she’s kind of insane (interpreted by some as ‘folksy’) and her laugh gets to us after a while. And then there’s her totally whacked-out use of butter. “Just a little” is usually a whole stick. But every now and then we’ll put it on for giggles and scream with fright. Last night was no exception, as she made this:

That’s a ham covered in two cans of crescent rolls. It’s like a sandwich, without any cheese. It even has a mustard glaze in there! The best part is that she left the layer of fat that covers the ham on (naturally) so you can chew it when you bite into it, unless you peel off the crescent roll and then cut the fat off. Bleeeaaauuuhhh. That’s me trying not to hurl.

In Deen’s defense, some of the stuff she makes does look tasty, and her use of butter makes me feel better about throwing in a tablespoon or two when I cook. And she really pulled herself up from the proverbial bootstraps after going through some nasty stuff earlier in her life. But this ham really grosses me out. At least I know what *not* to make for Christmas dinner….

Must-have Christmas Cookies

Now I think we all know here that I am given to hyperbole, but these cookies, which I made for the first time yesterday, are going to easily make it into the Make Every Year pile. They are stunningly good, if a royal pain in the neck to make. They aren’t for the faint of heart and require many steps, but the payoff is totally worth it.

The recipe itself is from Epicurious, though I adjusted it slightly to reflect what I had picked up at the grocery store and what I had forgotten. They’re supposed to crackle at the top and while mine didn’t do that, I didn’t especially care. So good. Sooooo goooooood.

Here’s the ingredient list:
9.5 ounces of bittersweet chocolate (I had 8 bittersweet and threw in 1.5 oz of semisweet chocolate chips, and adjusted the sugar accordingly. And we bought nice Ghiradelli chocolate as it was on sale)
1 stick butter
1/2 c finely destroyed red and white peppermint candies (I used the Magic Bullet we got for the wedding for this and it turned a bunch of starlite mints into dust pretty quickly
just under 6 T of sugar (originally it called for more but by not using any unsweetened chocolate and tossing in semi-sweet instead, I cut back on the sugar to make up for it)

3 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp peppermint extract
1 1/2 c flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 c chocolate chips

More peppermint dust

Ok, got everything? Now the real work begins.

First, chop up your chocolate into nice chunks. Add it and the butter to a nice big saucepan, and turn heat onto lowish. Stirring constantly, melt the butter and chocolate until smooth. Take off heat and add peppermint bits and sugar, stirring to mix, and stirring occasionally until it cools to lukewarm. The recipe says this will take half an hour, but it took me about 15 minutes.

Add the eggs, one at a time, breaking them up and stirring them in. Then add the extracts, stirring, stirring. Mix your dry ingredients and add, stirring, stirring. It’s not going to seem like regular cookie dough–it’ll have more the consistency of a brownie batter. It has to chill to firm up. They recommend 3-24 hours in the fridge. I have no patience, so I did a half hour or so in the freezer.

Preheat oven to 325. Either put some parchment paper on baking sheets or give them a light greasing. Using a spoon, scoop out dough and shape with your hands into 1″ balls. This might get messy unless the dough is good and cold. Place on sheet and bake for 11-13 minutes until they’ve set but are still soft. Theoretically they should crackle but mine didn’t.

Place dough back in the freezer when you aren’t using it so it stays good and cold.

Remove baked cookies from the oven and, using a spoon, sprinkle them with peppermint dust. After a few minutes you can remove them to a rack.

The initial recipe said you’d get 36; we got about 55, counting the ‘test cookies’ we ate. These are a fair amount of labor, but if you put on some holiday music and roll up your sleeves, they are absolutely worth it. And your house will smell like what I imagine a York Peppermint Patty factory smells like, and that’s a wonderful thing.

Dead fridge!

On Wednesday as I walked past the fridge it made a weird, loud clicking sound. “That’s new,” I said, but not with surprise–our old fridge in Boston made a range of crazy sounds. I sat down at my sewing machine and within a minute was nearly shouting “Ack! That smell! What is that??” Something in the fridge had evidently let go/burned out and was now filling the kitchen with fumes. We closed off the room and opened a window. Within twelve hours it stopped working completely, and I ran what perishables were in the fridge (we were on the verge of shopping day) up to the faculty fridge at work. Since then we haven’t really cooked as our fridge has only a temporary fix (it was supposed to be permanently fixed last night, but you know how it goes…) and we don’t want to fill it with stuff that could potentially go bad. So no cooking, no recipe-sharing. Unless we hit up the vintage cookbooks!

I’m making Christmas dinner this year for about half the family. I’m generally looking for ideas, so why not prowl the vintage books? And I found this….

Christmas Cranberry Salad
1 small pkg lemon jello
1 1/2 c hot water
1 c sweetened cranberries
1 c chopped celery
1/2 c chopped nuts

Dissolve jello in hot water. When slightly thickened, fold in the rest of the stuff. Place in mold and refrigerate until firm.

This actually doesn’t sound that gross, though the celery throws me; and really, who doesn’t miss the old days of stuff suspended in gelatin, shaped into a wreath?

Gift crafting: I’ve learned to knit

Every night I work on one of these while we watch TV or a movie. My grandma taught me how to knit many, many years ago and I pretty much promptly abandoned any project I started. I tried again in college to no avail. I was determined, though, to make this year the year I started and completed knitting projects. Someday I aspire to make sweaters but for now I’m happy with scarves.

Two of these are finished–the blue one on the left and the red one in the middle. The silvery one, the one where I tried to create a pattern, is a little over halfway, and the skinny one on the edge is about a third of the way done. Now if I can only finish them in time for the holiday, I’ll be a happy camper.

Toast variations: Yeasted Pumpkin Bread

I spent a fair amount of time on Sunday googling a recipe for pumpkin bread made with yeast. I make a pumpkin quick bread all the time–quick breads are those that rise with the help of a leavening agent like baking powder or baking soda. I had in mind a nice, fluffy bread scented gently with spices and kept moist and tasty by the pumpkin. I got something in between.

It is actually very hard to find recipes for pumpkin breads that rise with the help of yeast. I finally found one on the website of the Red Star yeast company. The bread is tasty, but extremely dense. I’m not sure if this is their fault or mine. Probably mine, as I didn’t use any bread flour (this has more protein and thus, when you knead it, builds a stronger support system for the bread as it rises, letting it get tall without collapsing) and instead used half all-purpose and half whole wheat. Because the bread contains eggs for richness, too, this becomes a very heavy loaf. It rises ok and I even got some oven spring, but it’s fairly dense, somewhere in between a quick pumpkin bread and a loaf of white sandwich bread (one you make yourself, of course!)

If I were to make this bread again, I’d probably pick up some bread flour. I’d also cut back on the spices. It’s just a little too clove-y for my taste. But overall it makes some interesting toast, slathered with butter and enjoyed with a hot cuppa joe.

Here’s a c&p list of ingredients:

Water 1 tablespoon
Pumpkin, canned 1 cup
Oil 3 tablespoons
Eggs 2
Ground cloves 1/4 teaspoon
Ground nutmeg 1/2 teaspoon
Ground ginger 1/2 teaspoon
Ground cinnamon 2 teaspoons
Salt 1 1/2 teaspoons
Brown sugar 1/4 cup
Bread flour 3 cups
Active Dry Yeast 2 1/4 teaspoons

You want to mix up the yeast with that T of water, warmed, first, and let it sit a few minutes until frothy. Then add the rest of your wet ingredients, except eggs. Then add the dry. Start to mix, adding eggs in. Turn out on a floured surface and knead until relatively smooth and elastic, which might take more flour. Mine did.

More c&p directions:

Place dough in lightly oiled bowl and turn to grease top. Cover; let rise until doubled in size. Turn dough onto lightly floured surface; punch down to remove air bubbles. Roll or pat into a 14- x 7-inch rectangle. Starting with shorter side, roll up tightly, pressing dough into roll. Pinch edges and ends to seal. Place in greased 9- x 5-inch loaf pan. Cover; let rise until doubled. Bake in preheated 375 degrees F oven 30 to 40 minutes. Remove from pan; cool.

Please send inspiration….

I’m out of ideas. What should I make for dinner tonight? It should be:
–vegetarian (we’ve had an awful lot of meat and poultry lately)
–cheese-free (a sin, I know, but Mr. Pea’s cold doesn’t play well with dairy)
–not a soup
–not pasta (I already have one set for tomorrow)

Help! Help! Browsing epicurious is just making my head spin.