Text 18446, 109 rader
Skriven 2008-12-26 05:38:04 av Michael Loo (1:18/200.0)
Ärende: Xmas eve 428
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I showed up at Lee and Mary's at noon to do prep for dinner, as I
didn't have anything better to do. I ended up doing 90% of the
on-the-day cooking, which suits me as I like to cook and to eat
my own cooking.

(off menu)
Gribbenes
Goose liver and giblet canape
Fonseca Tawny Port

Lee was going to do something unspeakable, like toss the giblets,
so I made goose cracklings (everyone else had a few and pronounced
them good, but I got the lion's share); then I minced the heart
and gizzard and cooked them with the liver. Into the Cuisinart
with a small onion, a tot of Port, and a shake of thyme, and spread
on baguette slices, this was, if I may say so (Mary agreed) the
highlight of the meal. This Tawny was one of the few I've found that
is actually brown in color, as opposed to the murky off-ruby that
usually obtains. It was nuttier than the usual (lots of walnut) and
had some interesting spice notes as well as the expected dried and
candied fruits and menthol. I liked the stuff.

(on menu)
Assorted nuts
Sovetskoe Egrestoye - Soviet semi-dry sparkling wine

The assorted nuts were the five of us - Lee, Mary, their son
Nathaniel, Nicholas, and me. There were also roast almonds
and cashews from Whole Foods available. The Champers was less
horrid than I expected. It was in fact not as Soviet as it
claimed - apparently, this stuff was the only sparkler available
to the middle classes during the Soviet era, and it ceased being
made with the fall of that government; but in a fit of nostalgia
and/or poor judgment, some outfit in Latvia is producing wine of
the same general flavor and bottling it under the old name. It
tasted like a half-maderized Moscato, with nut and prune notes
under the floral fruitiness of the grape. It was also quite
sweet, which I suppose is what "semi-dry" means these days.

Crabmeat imperial a la Commanders
Chassagne-Montrachet 05 (Sebastian Roux)

Lee wanted me to make crab imperial, but he described a weird
concoction that had capers and Parmesan amid the real ingredients.
I did some research and found that Commander's Palace offers a
version similar to what he described, so I made that. It's not
bad, just not chili, er, crab imperial. The Parmesan is unnecessary,
as are the diced artichoke hearts and capers. It's unbelievably
rich, and though the pound of crabmeat (jonah - half as expensive
as blue) was stretched five ways, only three of us, myself not
included, ate more than half a serving. The wine was a grapy,
grassy, green, unsubtle mistake.

Arizona punch

It is Lee and Nicholas's custom to have a sorbet course between
the starter and the main. It is not a bad custom. When Lee makes
it, it's sweet and nasty, and Nicholas complains about it; when
Nicholas makes it, Lee complains that it's bitter and sour and
puckery (which it is). This time, Nathaniel was delegated to
produce a compromise, and it was sweet and nasty and bitter and
sour and puckery. The main ingredients were Campari and Arizona
iced tea (hence the name).

Spit-roasted Wheatstone Farms South Dakota roamin' gander

This, despite my warnings, was not taken out of the fridge when
I arrived: I ended up taking it out about 2, and it sat there
unattended for another hour; still, when it went on the spit at
4, it was still frozen inside. As a consequence, after an hour on
its merry-go-round, it was still at room temperature inside, and
after three, when I was asked to check on it, I opined that it
needed at least another hour. I guessed that it was about 140
inside. Tests showed it ranged from 130 in spots to 145 in spots.
Goose is one of the few meats that is better served by longer
cooking; the breast is nice done blood rare but then goes into
a state where it's chewy and tough until about 160. However, just
about this point, the spit fell off its rotisserie, and Lee,
under my protest (I actually said something like, "I'll eat it,
but you won't like it), declared the thing done, which it wasn't.
I think that aside from myself, who ate half a pound of meat and
a quarter pound of uncrisp fatty skin, nobody had more than a
couple slices. By the way, Lee's purple prose notwithstanding,
there is no evidence that the bird in question was or had ever
been a male. The label did say "free range," though.

Veal, wild rice & chestnut forcemeat

Lee made this. It was underfatted, underseasoned, and underflavored.
Further, the wild rice was a mixture of wild and brown, with the
drawbacks inherent in this combination.

Braised red cabbage

Lee has no idea how to make this and tried to force Julia
Child's recipe on me. I told him I knew how to make braised red
cabbage with the best of them and to go away (he wanted to do
some bizarre convoluted thing involving an oven or something).
I took half a head of cabbage and two next-to-rotten apples,
diced them up, sauteed them in a teaspoon of goose fat, added
a quarter cup of cheap red wine and a sprinkling each of brown
sugar and Balsamic. Then on top of the stove on low for an
arbitrary length of time. I'd have added a red onion if there
had been any, and maybe a bay leaf ditto. This resulted in some
of the best braised red cabbage I have ever slapped a lip over.


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