Surviving Christmas dinner

29 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by julia chews the fat in Beverage, Cooking For Your Peeps, Lunch & Dinner, Snacking, Vegetarian

Christmas dinner for 10, survived. But I’m not going to lie – the day after its execution, when I first sat down to write this, I had a knocker of a headache and pretty much just stared at the screen, mouth-breathing. I’m glad to have had these couple of days to step back and regroup.

So here we are, dear readers, on December 29th; I come to you with a sense of calm and sanity that I was unable to muster three days ago when the cooking parade was over and the kitchen looked like it had the worst hangover of its life. All I wanted to do was drink coffee and nap and watch bad movies until I felt functional again.

If nothing else, it was an interesting exercise in love and motivation – from the early-morning grocery shopping marathon, to the chopping, zesting, de-seeding, roasting, whipping, cocktail-shaking and family-wrangling – I have a new-found appreciation for the people who do this every holiday. People with kids, full-time jobs, partners…extra-curriculars. People who spend days, back-to-back, confined in their kitchen cube, but still manage to look like Doris Day when they set it all out on the table, maintaining polite conversation with their guests and smiling pleasantly throughout. You guys rule. Cha-peau!

That said, when you’re doing something out of love, the hard work is worth it. You might be a little worse for wear (box-grater wounds, oil burns, mental collapse) but you’ll recover. Plus, when your grandmother eats your food, puts her hand on your shoulder and very gently calls you “Brava”, all the bad melts away.

—–

Now since it’s almost New Year’s, I thought it’d be a good idea to lay out some (simple, sanity-friendly) recipes that you might find useful for your NYE entertaining. From the menu posted here, I’ve extracted a few delicious little things that would fit an end of year schmooze – whether you’re hosting for two, or a dozen (or even if you’re home sick and entertaining a party of one) – here are some tasty treats to say “Au revoir, 2012” and “Oh well, hello there, handsome 2013”.

Satsuma & Pomegranate Campari Cocktails – serves 6-8 (adapted from Baker’s Royale)

4 parts satsuma (about 12), freshly squeezed, sieved and chilled*
2 parts pomegranate juice**, freshly pressed, sieved and chilled
2 parts Campari
1 part white vermouth
fresh ice
strands of orange zest (optional)

*I know, I know…juicing fruit seems like a lot of work. But once you get into the swing of it, it ain’t that bad. And it makes the drinks so, so much better. Trust me on this one. Put on some music and karaoke your way through it if you want to. It’ll be worth it.

**Tips to de-seed and juice a pomegranate:

1) Remove any light-coloured clothing and put on an apron – things might get a little messy (à la slasher film).

2) Cut the pomegranate in half, hold it cut-side down with both hands over a large bowl and gently press the center, lifting the sides up slightly. This will help release the seeds from the pulp.

3) Holding the pomegranate over the bowl with one hand, cut-side down, firmly whack the skin-side (facing up, towards you) with the back of a wooden spoon until all of the seeds have fallen out into your hand and the bowl. Remove any little bits of pulp that may have found their way into the bowl (there shouldn’t be many).

4) Reserve about 1/4 of the seeds for serving. Pour the remaining seeds into a food processor and liquefy. Push the juice through a sieve to dispose of the tougher bits (the actual seeds within the juice-filled pod). Chill before use.

Serving the cocktail:

1) Divide the reserved pomegranate pods and orange zest strands evenly between 6-8 glasses (martini glasses or champagne coupes are pretty dapper).

2) Fill a cocktail shaker 1/4 full with ice.

3) Pour in the juices, the Campari and the vermouth. Shake until combined.

4) Serve in the prepared glasses. Bottoms up, baby.

Persimmon and pear and caprese toasts (makes approx. 20 canapés) – adapted from Joy the Baker

1 semi-firm persimmon, sliced + each slice cut into quarters
1 medium pear (Bartlett or Anjou), sliced
4-5 small bocconcini, sliced
1 baguette, sliced thinly
1/4 cup pesto (best way to revive frozen pesto from the summer)
basalmic vinegar (the best you can afford)
olive oil for brushing
fleur de sel and freshly cracked black pepper

Directions

1) Preheat the oven to 350° F. Lay baguette slices on a pizza tray or baking sheet; brush with olive oil and bake for about 8 minutes, or until golden brown. Set aside to cool (if you want to do these ahead, conserve them in a brown paper bag until use).

2) Put pesto in a small bowl and brush onto the toasts. Next, toss the bocconcini slices into the bowl and stir to coat the cheese with pesto.

3) Arrange toasts on a serving platter and layer with a slice of persimmon, pear and bocconcini. Sprinkle with fleur de sel and cracked pepper. Finish with a gentle drizzle of balsamic vinegar*

(*if you have the time, it’s worth reducing the vinegar by heating it in a pan until it becomes a bit syrupy.)

Smoky sweet potato hummus – adapted from Blissful Eats

Makes 4 cups

1 pound sweet potatoes (about 2 medium)
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 tsp chopped chipotle chili, canned in adobo sauce
1 garlic clove, chopped
2 Tbsp fresh lime juice
2 Tbsp olive oil
2 Tbsp tahini
coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Directions:

Pre-heat the oven to 350° F.

Pierce potatoes several times with a fork; place on a foil lined baking sheet. Bake until tender (about 45 mins). Cool slightly, then peel and add to the bowl of a food processor. Add chickpeas, lime juice, tahini, olive oil, chipotle and garlic. Purée until smooth, adding up to 2 tablespoons of water if necessary. Season with salt and pepper. Garnish with a drizzle of olive oil and smoked paprika before serving.

Pita chips (makes about 60 chips)

2 bags of pita bread (whole wheat and/or white)
herbes de Provence
olive oil
fleur de sel

Directions

1) Preheat the oven to 350° F.

3) Place pita slices on a pizza tray or baking sheet; brush with olive oil and sprinkle with herbes de Provence and fleur de sel. Bake for about 6 minutes, or until golden brown. Allow to cool and reserve in brown paper bags. Serve with smoky sweet potato hummus.

Winter holiday

23 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by julia chews the fat in Cooking For Your Peeps

≈ 10 Comments

You have no idea.

This holiday makes me lose my marbles. It causes the synapses in my brain to spew chemicals in the shape of sugar plums and sleigh-bells, as evidenced by my (cat-lady?) decor choices as of late: there are paper snowflakes and twinkle lights at the office; glass ornaments dangling off house plants; a bushy wreath on the front door and friends’ Christmas cards stringed across the doorway of my kitchen. I don’t care how un-cool it all looks.

LOVE

THIS

HOLIDAY.

In my family, Christmas insanity reaches its crescendo in the kitchen. It’s one of the genetic hazards of having Italian blood coursing through your veins. The amount of baking and cooking that goes on between the 23rd to the 26th of December is fairly ridiculous, but I can’t imagine spending a Christmas without an army of cookie sheets, a metric ton of butter, and all those bags of sugar, dark chocolate and nonpareils. It’s special. It’s magical. And despite the madness (and sweating and finger-burning and swearing), I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Over the next couple of days, I will need to remind myself of this last point – repeatedly – as I prepare to make dinner for my family on the 25th. Christmas dinner. THE dinner. It might be an epic disaster, but I’m willing to risk it for the chance to knock grandma’s socks off. Here it is, in bullet-point form:

Christmas dinner for 10

Satsuma and pomegranate Campari cocktails
Beet root chips with fennel seeds

—–

Persimmon/pear/bocconcini caprese toasts
Smoky sweet potato hummus with toasted pita chips
Panko-crusted artichokes

—–

Butternut squash and apricot soup with pistachios
Frisée & mint salad with pomegranate

—–

Turkey with rosemary butter and gravy
Herbed bread stuffing
Potato and parsnip purée
Brussel sprouts with chestnuts, leeks and bacon
Baked lemon and thyme mushrooms
Cranberry compote with orange, ginger and dates

—–

Spice cake with lemon curd filling and cloud frosting

(fingers crossed it all goes off without a hitch…)

Happy holidays, lovely readers. See you all again here soon ♥

Phobias, exposure therapy, and cream puffs

09 Sunday Dec 2012

Posted by julia chews the fat in Cooking For Your Peeps, Sweet Tooth, The Basics

≈ 5 Comments

Not too long ago, flipping through an old issue of Scientific American, I came across one of the most dismal terms in the medicalisation of fear – MAGEIROCOPHOBIA. The sheer idea of it floored me. Not because I don’t believe it exists – the kitchen can be a scary place for a lot of people – but because I couldn’t imagine it as a bona fide psychological condition for which someone might seek cognitive behavior therapy, or treatment in the form of serotonin reuptake inhibitors.

Pretty heavy stuff.

Like other phobias, it seems to have varying degrees of severity. And since “the fear of cooking” is rather large in scope, mageirocophobia encompasses a wide range of anxiety triggers: it can be the fear of cooking for a large crowd, or the fear of injuring oneself while cooking, or it can be the fear of complex recipes. While each of us has particular aversions in the kitchen, I find it compelling that we’ve come to dread something that has, at least traditionally, been an integral part of our social exchanges as families and communities, not to mention our basic survival. How did we come to be so apprehensive of the one thing that provides us sustenance? Is it because we’ve gotten used to having other people do it for us? Is it because frozen pizza and powdered sauces have become our steady kitchen companions?

Thinking about this phenomenon made me curious to find out what the people around me were afraid of in the kitchen. Over the course of a week, I asked friends and colleagues to submit ideas of “food that scares them”: meals or recipes they’ve wanted to make, but have avoided for fear that they are too complicated or intimidating or too time-consuming. After collecting about 30 submissions – ranging from Beef Wellington to macarons – I put them in a hat and selected one at random. I gave myself the task of making whichever recipe came out.

The winner was my friend, Kate, who submitted “cream puffs”. Kate is a very good cook and baker – and a brave one at that (the first time I made home-made ice cream was thanks to Kate’s initiative) – but cream puffs seemed arduous to her: “I hear they’re easy but I haven’t tried because it just feels like work.”

Like Kate, I thought cream puffs would be a pain to make. It turns out that they’re really no sweat – the dough comes together in few minutes, in a pot on the stove (so no finnicky kneading, chilling, rolling) and is then piped out onto baking sheets; the cream filling is fairly simple too – a handful of ingredients that come together on the stove with the help of some warm milk and a whisk. C’est tout, les amis.

You might decide to make these cream puffs, or not. Either way, I’m hoping this post will entice you to face your cooking demons, however they manifest themselves. I’m also hoping it will be somewhat therapeutic; think of it along the lines of remedial exposure therapy, where the more you do the things that scare you, the less afraid you’ll be of them.

Happy cooking, everyone x

—–

Cream Puffs = choux pastry + custard or cream filling

Pâte à choux– makes about 24 small buns – adapted from the Encyclopedia of French Cooking, 1982

1 1/4 cups water
1/2 cup butter
3/4 tsp salt
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 400° F.

Heat the water in a large pan with the butter and salt. When the butter has melted, bring the liquid to the boil and remove from the heat.

Immediately add the flour all at once, then beat vigorously with a wooden spoon. Return the pan to a low heat and continue beating until the mixture draws together and leaves the side of the pan. Do not overbeat – the dough should be smooth and shiny, but not oily.

Remove the pan from the heat, then add the eggs one at a time, beating vigorously after each addition and making sure the egg is fully incorporated before adding the next. Add the last egg a little at a time, beating to make a shiny dough that just falls from the spoon – if the dough will not absorb the last egg, then do not add it.

Fill a pastry bag fitted with a large plain tip with the warm choux mixture and pipe small (about 1-inch) dots onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. Wet your finger with cool tap water and lightly tap any peaks on the batter.

Bake in preheated oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375° F and bake for another 10 minutes. Allow the pastries to cool before filling.

Crème pâtissière (vanilla custard) – makes about 2 cups – from the Encyclopedia of French Cooking, 1982

2 cups milk
1 vanilla bean, sliced down the center lengthwise
4 large egg yolks
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of all-purpose flour
knob of butter, to finish

Bring the milk to just below boiling point with the vanilla pod, then cover and leave to infuse for 15 minutes. Strain, then bring to the boiling point again.

Put the egg yolks in a medium bowl with the sugar and whisk together until pale and thick. Add the flour and whisk again until thoroughly incorporated, then gradually whisk in the boiling milk (do this in a slow, steady stream to avoid scrambling your eggs).

Pour the custard into a heavy-based pan and whisk over medium heat until boiling. The mixture may be lumpy, in which case, remove from the heat and whisk until smooth. Return to the heat and bring to the boil again, the simmer for 1 to 2 minutes to cook the flour, whisking constantly.

Remove custard from the heat, then rub the surface with a knob of butter to prevent a skin from forming. Once cool, either fill the dough puffs by spreading a layer of custard between two halves, or alternately, fill a pastry bag with the custard and gently insert into the dough puffs, filling them until you feel a bit of resistance.

Note: as there is no sugar in the dough, these work equally well (sans custard) along savoury dishes or on a cheese plate with other breads.

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