Twists on Tradition

On the eve of Thanksgiving or Christmas, I like a simple supper like oyster stew or clam chowder – not a fast, certainly, but a meatless restraint that will be thrown to the winds on the following day.  And then there are the cranberries: my husband likes them raw and chopped up with oranges, orange juice, and orange peel, while I confess I love a sweet, cooked, jellied sauce. We did not exactly break with our traditions this year, but I did put a few twists on them, and we were both pleased with the results. 

 

The first twist was the Christmas Eve soup. Rather than any kind of New England seafood meal, I went out on a cultural limb to make Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric, as featured in the New York Times on November 28, 2018. The recipe was one I’d found appealing enough to save for over two years before trying it. Chickpeas are crisped in a pan that holds garlic, onions, and ginger already cooked in olive oil until translucent and enhanced with turmeric, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. 

To the chickpeas is added coconut milk and vegetable or chicken stock (in my kitchen on Thursday, the latter was the chicken Better Than Bouillon) and then begins a long, slow simmer, with greens added late in the game. My last-minute inspiration was to add cubed tofu, also. It worked! A good cheese and some hearty crackers are all that’s needed to make this rich, creamy, mouth-watering soup a satisfying and yet modest Christmas Eve supper, and that was good because I had other things to do on Christmas Eve. I’d been hampered by migraine the whole day before, unable to get an earlier start, and didn’t feel quite out of the woods yet, so I was working slowly, with frequent stops for rest.

The cranberries! Again, it was a recipe published years before, this one in the Thanksgiving issue of Bon Appétit, November 2017. The cranberries in this recipe were raw (a nod to husband’s preference), but no fruit was involved. Instead of oranges, walnuts were the complement, and the remaining ingredients were mustard seeds, shallot, chile (omitted), dried currants (raisins substituted), maple syrup, sherry or red wine vinegar (Balsamic vinegar substituted), allspice, and salt. Fresh parsley was to be added for serving, but He-Who-Prefers-Cranberries-Raw is not a big parsley fan, so that was left out, too. What would the single important reviewer say to the result? I got the cranberry-walnut relish done the night before our holiday dinner.

Christmas morning, after a big holiday breakfast was out of the way, there were two major kitchen jobs to be undertaken: homemade noodles and an experimental pear chutney. I’ve made noodles many times before but would be winging it this time around with the chutney. Fortunately, after looking at several recipes involving much more fruit than I had on hand (or even would have wanted at the time), I managed to reduce the various recipes to a simple formula 3:1:1. That is fruit:vinegar:sugar. My fruit was cubed fresh pears and a much smaller amount of raisins. Apple cider vinegar and a mix of granulated and brown sugar then completed the formula, with only spices left to add. A real chef, I’m sure, would not have used allspice and red pepper flakes in two recipes for the same meal, but I did, and I also repeated chopping shallots to simmer with the fruit. 

The rule for a chutney is that it’s done when you can drag a spoon through it and have a path remaining.

Choosing a pork roast instead of beef or turkey was another twist on tradition but one I knew would meet with approval in our household.

The menu, then, for Christmas dinner was as follows:

 

Pork roast

Pear chutney

Homemade noodles with mushroom gravy

Brussels sprouts with sauteed, sliced almonds

Cranberry-walnut relish

 

I’m happy to report that the dinner was a complete success, although it’s good we were alone, because the roast took much more than the 2 hours, 40 minutes I’d worked out from The Joy of Cooking. Advice to cook: Even without a meat thermometer, you don’t even have to stab the roast to see if the juices are still running red or pink if no drippings have yet run into the pan beneath the rack. No drippings means you’ve got a long way to go. So take that pasta water off the boil, and hold off on cooking your vegetable. It will be worth the wait.

A Simple Farmhouse Christmas

Christmas Eve supper for me is macaroni and cheese. I can put it together fairly quickly and, once it’s gone into the oven, turn my attention to preparing for the next day. My only suggestion for mac and cheese, since everyone has his or her own way of making it, is to use a flat-bottomed whisk like the one above to stir the Béchamel sauce for the perfect velvety texture.

The more familiar wire whisk also had a job to do on Thursday evening, as I’d decided to make a quiche for our now-traditional Christmas Day breakfast in bed. Since David likes cold, day-after quiche better than fresh-out-of-the-oven quiche, that meant I could make it the night before. Havarti cheese, plenty of soft, sauteed onions, chopped spinach, mushrooms, and then (the whisk’s job) beaten eggs, milk, heavy cream, and Swiss cheese. I’ve had more photogenic crusts than this one – it was a little skimpy on the edges – but except for its look, it was a complete success.

Yes, heavy cream in the quiche! Shocking, I know. But I could hardly wait for the next morning and a special, not merely a café au lait but un café crème, the most luxurious beginning possible to a festive day. We live in a simple old farmhouse, and my kitchen is tiny, but bottles of Shetler’s milk and cream in the refrigerator make me feel rich!

For several years we have not traveled on holidays. I feel a need to be in my bookstore as much as possible when other people’s relatives are coming home to Northport, and then (though it would have been no problem this year) there is the unpredictable nature of weather in November and December. Short driving days, dark coming on early, crowded highways, possibilities of ice and snow, added to the possibility of book-buying customers -- all this conspires to keep us at home. It makes for a quiet Christmas, but we’ve adjusted to it.

Not long ago I had to have presents under a tree in the living room and, like an impatient child, would wake early and fret until I could get David out of bed, into his robe, and out to the living room to open presents. Finally I faced reality: I was a child no longer, and he had no desire to leave the coziness of bed for the chill of another room. Opening presents by a tree didn’t mean much, if anything, to him. So I capitulated. Now we have breakfast and presents in bed, where we are as cozy as cozy can be, and where this year our new windows and freshly painted bedroom walls added to the morning’s splendor.

The pack had a luscious day of lying around. I had a good book to read in bed (The Book of Lights, by Chaim Potok), NPR gave us soft instrumental and chorale music for a while before changing over to stories, and Sarah, having gone for a big walk with me up the hill before breakfast, was content simply to be with us.

Lamplight on the walls was lovely, as were random patterns of willow branches outside the window.

Later we went for a long, slow ride in the car, finishing up with a walk for me and run for Sarah. I threw sticks, and she chased after them. The temperature was dropping, though, and the sun lowering to the horizon, and we were all content to be going back home again, where oranges and pistachios graced the table and kept human appetites in check during the remaining time before dinner.

When I had asked David what he wanted for Christmas dinner, he said not to go to any trouble, which was fine, but I still wanted to do something out of our ordinary run of meals. My solution met both requirements. David loves pork ribs (which we almost never have at home) and doesn’t like anything at all done to them – no marinade, no sauce, no nothing. Just very well-done, crispy ribs, slow-roasted in the oven, and nothing could be easier than that, I figured. He requested double-baked potatoes, another rarity in our house, and that was fine, too.

I forgot to photograph my holiday vegetable dish once it was put together, and that’s a shame, because it could not have been prettier: broccoli, red pepper, walnuts, vinaigrette tossed together. The pepper can be sauteed in olive oil at the start of meal preparation, but the broccoli should be steamed only just before it’s all tossed together and brought to the table, to keep the vegetable bright green. The colors should sing!

Two kinds of cranberry sauce, the tart with orange for David, the sweet cooked kind for me. Simple, traditional.

Dessert was simple, too. (I confess we had already had homemade shortbread and spice cookies for dessert with our breakfast. Thank you, friend Sally!) You can see we are a Shetler’s household, but finding their eggnog custard ice cream at NJ’s was a delightful surprise. Square of Lindt dark chocolate tucked into each small dish.

So, only two meals for us on Christmas, and we refrained from having seconds. We got outdoors for scenery and exercise and fresh air. We lazed around like pashas. It was a lovely, lovely day. We felt deep gratitude. Even without snow.