Christmas Eve and Christmas dinners

On Christmas Eve, or the day before if they will close, pick up two rabbits (about two and a half pounds each) from the butcher, along with half a pound of bacon. Have the butcher cut each rabbit into six pieces: the saddle into two, each hind leg, and the fore-section in half through the backbone (so that the forelegs are attached to the ribs). Each rabbit feeds four people, or three if they're very hungry.

From the fish market, collect live crabs (one per every two people) and oysters (small is easier; two to four per person).

Also have the following vegetables from the local organic market: lettuce for two nights, one head celery, a few carrots, some fennel, six or eight parsnips, and plenty of Brussels sprouts. I assume you have plenty of dried herbs and spices on hand, but be sure also to have some white wine for cooking, two pints of heavy cream, and your best wine for the table.

From the bakery, pick up a loaf of good bread for Christmas Eve, and another for Christmas for good measure (they'll be closed).

Early in the afternoon, prepare the rabbit. Remove the livers, hearts, and kidneys and set aside in a covered bowl in the fridge for some other project (the hearts can go in a bad labeled "soup stock", or saute them and enjoy; use the offal within a few days, says the internet). Transfer the meat to a large bowl, season generously with salt and pepper, and add ¾ cup prepared Dijon mustard, 2 teaspoons ground mustard seed, 2 cups heavy cream (or 1 ½ cup crème fraîche), 8 large garlic cloves (peeled and barley crushed), 4 bay leaves, 2 tablespoons fresh or 2 teaspoons dried thyme, and 2 tablespoons fresh chopped sage. Cut the ½ pound high-end thick-sliced bacon into ¼-inch lardons, and add to the rabbit. With your hands, smear the ingredients all over the rabbit pieces to mix and coat evenly. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Bring water to a boil in every large pot you have. Get very good at pot-juggling.

Melt a tablespoon or two butter in a medium pan. Add most of a head of celery, chopped (save the rest of the celery in a bag labeled "soup stock"). You can also add a leek if you like. Salt the celery, cover the pot, and let it saute until the celery is very tender, about twenty minutes. When ready, transfer celery and 1 cup dry white cooking wine to a blender and puree until smooth. Return to the pot. Add another cup wine and one to two cups cream, and bring to a boil. Simmer a little, adjust the salt, and keep hot.

Meanwhile, wash the oysters, and then shuck them. (Or try to anyway. Discover that the shucking knife you bought at the grocery store is useless. Call all the neighbors asking to borrow a replacement, only to discover that none of your neighbors have ever shucked an oyster. Eventually get into the oysters with an old-fashioned can opener and a large flat-head screwdriver.) Provided you do not break two many shells, prepare a platter with some of the nicer oysters for serving on the half-shell as finger food while the family waits for dinner. Save the rest of the shucked oysters and their juices in a bowl set over a little ice.

When the water is fully a boil, cook the crabs. Twenty minutes is usually the right amount of time; drain them, rinse in cold water until you can handle them, and proceed to clean them out and break the bodies into two pieces each. Save the outer shells in a bag marked "crab stock". The yellow "crab butter" is good too (if you trust that your crabs came from a clean stretch of ocean), but not so much the mustard-colored stuff near the inner organs. Don't save the inner organs — the gills in particular you should throw away, as they accumulate pollutants throughout the crab's life. At the end of the meal, gather the shells for the crab stock bag.

Wash lettuce for a salad, and thinly slice the fennel bulb into it. Dress the salad lightly with a vinaigrette made with a nice white wine or champagne vinegar.

When the crabs are about ready, return the celery puree to a full boil, and add the shucked oysters and their liquid. Poach the oysters in the bisque for three to five minutes, and then serve in small bowls or tea cups.

Serve the oyster-and-celery bisque and the crabs with a good French or sourdough bread, and a fine white wine. The meal appreciates slightly sweeter table wines; this is a good night to have that expensive Riesling you've been saving.

Happy Christmas Eve!

Begin the following day with the traditional presents rituals and a large breakfast of quince pancakes with maple syrup.

In the mid-afternoon, remove the rabbit from the refrigerator and let it begin to return to room temperature. Preheat both ovens to 400°F, and get out every glass lasagna pan you have in the kitchen.

Transfer the rabbit to two 9x13 pans. The meat should fit in a single layer but fairly snugly. Pour all the sauce and bacon over the rabbit. Bake 1 hour, checking occasionally and turning the meat as it browns. The juices should reduce a bit; if they reduce too much, add some white wine or chicken broth or rabbit broth. The rabbit should be cooked throughout and browned on top when ready; serve in its pan and juices, and set a spoon out at the table along with the meat fork.

While the rabbit is baking, halve the Brussels sprouts and slice the parsnips into ¼-inch rounds. Butter two lasagna pans, one for the sprouts and one for the roots. Add the vegetables and mix each with some dried thyme and salt. Top each pan with slices of butter. Add some broth or wine to the Brussels sprouts, and cover them with foil. Bake both Brussles sprouts (covered) and parsnips (uncovered) for thirty minutes or so; check them occasionally, and stir them if you don't feel like they're cooking evenly.

Wash lettuce for a salad. Slice up some carrots and green peppers. Dress it with plenty of olive oil and red wine vinegar.

Open a very good bottle of red wine — we had the Cakebread merlot — and enjoy the company of your family while dinner is in the oven. Set the table with enough pads to protect the table from four different hot lasagna pans. Serve the feast.

Merry Christmas!

The rabbit in mustard sauce is from the inestimable Platter of Figs by David Tanis, and was definitely the high point of quite a few meals. The rest of the two dinners did not follow published recipes, but were also delicious.

Salad with red onion, cubed celery root, the last garden tomatoes, and seared tuna

Mashed celery root, brussels sprouts, and broiled seabass with onion

Various veggies and couscous pilaf

For a "what's in the fridge" dinner, had: sauteed green beans; steamed spinach; a saute of sweet peppers, onions, and Tokyo turnips; and couscous cooked with raisins and a little red wine.

Seared ahi tuna, steamed broccoli, and mashed potatoes with celery root

Roast goat

Long-time readers of this blog know that a few years ago we were fairly committed vegetarians — I used to be the kitchen manager at a vegetarian/vegan co-op! But we have in the last few months started eating fish at every meal, and "lapsing" further: pork from our CSA, rabbit in Spain. I think we're currently not so much "vegetarians" as "Farmers' Marketarians".

To this end, for our second and final dinner with my dad in Eugene, we brought home two and a half pounds of leg-of-goat from the Eugene Saturday Market. We also bought potatoes, for mashing with garlic from my parents CSA; beets, onions, and carrots, for roasting with the goal; and green figs, for pickling. Yes, pickled figs: a week ago or so, B's uncle took us out to eat at Revival Bar and Kitchen (the new restaurant started by the owner of Venus), where I ordered the goat, and it was served with pickled figs. So, while I was out getting my hair cut, B began by bringing to a boil equal parts water and vinegar, with salt and whole cumin, and pouring the mixture over quartered figs packed into a jar.

Then he prepared the roast. (Did I mention that B did all the cooking, and made it all fantastic?) He chopped the root vegetables and layered them in a glass baking pan. We had some shallot-and-sage butter from the previous night, and he used it to stuff and tenderize the meat. The roast and a bouquet garni followed, and then red wine. He baked the roast for about an hour, basting it regularly. He added about half the figs near the end of cooking, and the acidity provided a nice counterpoint to the sugars in the root roasted root veggies.

Finally, B mashed some potatoes with the roasted garlic from the previous dinner. My dad broke out a particularly nice bottle of wine for the occasion, and we had a wonderful dinner.

Summer soup for the Harvest Moon

Tonight we were treated to a once-in-three-decades event: a full moon on night of the Autumn Equinox. Every year, the Harvest Moon is the full moon closest to the equinox, but this year "closest" means "five and a half hours" rather than "ten days".

We began by making a hearty whole-wheat bread. Combine three cups whole wheat flour, one tablespoon wheat gluten, two teaspoons salt, and one tablespoon yeast. Also mix in one cup cooked wheat berries. Our flour and berries are from the always excellent Massa Organics, and after tonight's bread, we need to buy more of both. Then slowly add about one and a half cups water, mixing while you go. Knead a little bit and let the dough sit for a few hours. Bake the bread for about fifty minutes if you make it all into just one loaf, and let cool ten to twenty minutes before slicing.

Our soup was really more of a vegetable stew. Begin by sauteing half a red onion and some garlic in salted olive oil. Then add two bunches turnips, thinly sliced, and three quarters cup wine and six cups water, and adjust the salt. Bring to a boil and add one cup dried French green lentils. The lentils should cook a total of about thirty minutes, so take a short break and do dishes.

In a separate fry-pan or wok, heat some olive oil into which you have ground some black pepper. When the oil is hot, fry about half a pound thinly-sliced summer squash. Add the squash to the soup.

Also add the corn cut off of two or three ears, and one bunch greens (some quick-cooking kind: red chard, which is what we used, is particularly pretty; alternately, use the greens from the turnips if they are still fresh). Cook about ten minutes while you finish setting the table. Right before serving the soup, stir in two very fresh heirloom tomatoes, cut into wedges.

Serve the soup with the whole-wheat bread, butter for the bread, grated grana padamo for the soup, and a chilled white wine.

Leftovers and a composed salad

We had enough leftovers to make half a meal, so the decision was a composed salad and squash soup.

The salad consisted of:

• A wonderful potato salad, made with tartar sauce that we pasturized and to which we added some dried dill.
• Some cold cooked slaw.
• A wonderful mixture of shredded raw beets and carrots, tossed with a wonderful white wine vinegar from Big Paw.
• A lettuce salad with a balsamic vinaigrette.

Root veggies cooked in the dutch oven

Begin preheating the oven, and place the dutch oven on the stove over medium. Melt some butter, and assemble the casserole on the stove, working in layers: the veggies that need to cook longer (squash, beets, leeks, turnips) near the bottom, and the faster cookers (carrots, beet greens, very young turnips) at the top. Salt between each layer, and pour some cream over the whole thing. Rub the inside lid of the dutch oven with butter, cover, and bake until soft throughout.

Broiled tuna and French vetegable sauté

Heat butter on low with a little salt. Add in order: garlic, sliced thin; carrots, cut on the diagonal; tokyo turnip roots, quartered; cauliflower, keeping the small heads in tact; the greens, shredded; a splash of white wine. While cooking, alternate between sautéing and steaming covered — the vegetables should cook on low and end up brilliantly colored. Meanwhile, butter the bottom part of a broiling pan; rub tuna with salt and broil 10-15 minutes in the buttered pan. Serve with a pinot noir.

Tuna steaks and turnip gratin

A good wintry dinner. Slice thin red potatoes, red turnips, white onion, and garlic; layer in a cast-iron dutch oven with grated cheese. Cover with 1 cup cream, sprinkle more cheese on top, and bake one hour, with the lid removed only for the last ten minutes.

Marinade the tuna steaks in olive oil mixed with thyme, black pepper, and whole garlic. Broil ten to fifteen minutes, depending on the thickness of the steaks and how well-done you like your tuna.

January 21: Roots in cast iron

7 December 2008

The beans (black-eyed peas, soaked overnight and boiled, then cooked with olive oil, leeks, shallots, herbs, and spices) were great. The roasted root veggies entirely failed. I'm not entirely sure why, but they were gross.

18 November 2008: moved

After three days of doing nothing but moving, we were finally ready to celebrate with roasted root vegetables, a mushroom soufflé, and a bottle of champaign.

25 October 2008: another ragout

This one included turnips and their greens. Turnips are a close cousin of kale and broccoli. As always, our ragouts consist of winter squash, roots, butter, leeks, fennel, and sage, and usually beans.

Dinner party: purple veggies, summer soup

We had a dinner party a while back — I'm very behind in blogging my dinners — for some folks from my department. In addition to salad and bread and homemade beer the guests brewed, we had a summer soup and roasted purple veggies. The soup showcased our new soup tureen, which we found in a Free Box in the Berkeley hills.

Wash, peel, and slice red onions, beets, blue potatoes, and purple sweet potatoes. Toss in a glass lasagna pan with dried thyme and salt, and bake 400 degree or so for a while (one hour?), until the roots tenderize.

For the soup, shell one pound fresh beans (a mix of canellini and cranberry). In a saucepan, sauté onions and diced poblano peppers. Add beans, corn sliced from the cob, and vegetable stock. Flavor with marjoram, minced smoked paprika peppers, and salt and pepper. Cook half an hour until beans soften.

Polenta with blue cheese and black beans; polenta lasagna; beet cake

Prepare this recipe for polenta squares with gorgonzola black beans, but substitute half the vegetable broth for red cooking wine, and use blue cheese since the grocer had a minimal cheese collection. If you are me, worry that the recipe won't make enough for four people, so double it, and end up with twice as much as you need.

Plate the polenta squares in the kitchen, and top with a simple light tomato sauce: just heat

• 1 can diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 large slicing tomato, washed and diced
• fresh parsley, fresh basil, and a little salt.

Since you will have too much polenta, make the leftovers into polenta lasagna. Prepare the fillings, then make layers and cook until casserole is warm throughout:

1. Polenta leftovers should press easily as a bottom layer and a top layer
2. canned diced tomatoes, possibly warmed up, make a great layer by themselves
3. spinach should be washed and sauteed with onions and mushrooms and summer squash — remember that spinach cooks down a lot
4. ricotta cheese can be used as-is, or combined with grated parmesan.

The same night I made the polenta squares, my boyfriend made a "red velvet" beet cake. He followed this recipe, but didn't put in all the sugar, added some cocoa powder, and used three fresh beets (washed, peeled, chopped, boiled, and blended) in place of the canned beets. This, it turns out, is a lot of beet: I liked how vegetal the cake resulted, whereas he did not. For frosting, combine cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla.

Coleslaw

Here's an easy coleslaw, which I took to a potluck tonight.

Thinly slice a small head of green cabbage, and transfer to a large salad or mixing bowl. Wash, peel, and grate one bunch (raw) red beets, and add to salad. Wash and grate (but young carrots do not need peeling) half a bunch carrots, and add these as well. Sprinkle with generous doses of salt, moscatel vinegar, and a nice olive oil, and mix. Let sit refrigerated a few hours before serving, so the vegetables have a chance to soften in the acid.

Last dinner in Oregon

My last dinner before returning to Berkeley started, as many dinners do, with a morning trip to Farmers' Market. Oregon is a month behind California with respect to vegetables: we ended up with rhubarb (for bringing back to Berkeley; for whatever reason, the market there never had much), rainbow chard, very small red beets, carrots, green onion, and basil. Add to this wheat berry, feta, chevre, and garden oregano, and we get two fantastic dishes. Both are nice combinations and brilliantly colored, and could sit happily next to each other in the salad display case at a gourmet deli. (A high-end restaurant could make the wheat berry as described, garnished with a sprig of oregano. The salad would be composed on individual plates.)

Wheat Berry, Greek-Inspired
Set salted water and two cups wheat berry boiling. We started with two cups water, then added another two later, and then a little more. Sauté diced green onion, and stir into the wheat berry. While wheat berry cooks, prep remaining ingredients.

After about an hour, stir in one head chopped rainbow chard, and allow to cook two minutes. Remove from heat and add cubed feta, fresh oregano (we have two large oregano bushes: a plain oregano, and a very spicy "Greek" oregano), olive oil, and just a touch of lemon juice. Serve warm.

Salad with beets, carrots, basil, and chevre
Our beets were roughly one-inch diameter. If yours are larger, slice them. Wash and peel one bunch beets, reserving stems and greens. Cover beets with water, and bring to boil. After three to five minutes, beets should be just tender enough that you can get a fork in with some effort. Add washed and chopped stems and greens, cover, and let cook three more minutes. Drain in colander and rinse in cold water.

In a salad bowl, combine olive oil, lemon juice, and salt. Add cooked beets, and mix. Then add, mixing each time, one bunch carrots, washed and chopped (young carrots do not need peeling); half a bag of basil, washed and with stems removed, but leave leaves whole; and four ounces chevre. Serve cool.

Cooked Fall/Winter/Spring salad

I'm in the process of eating up my winter storage foods, to make space for summer crops. I have two gallons of frozen peaches: those go in pies, cookie bars, and hot breakfast cereal.

I had leftover phyllo dough from a dinner I haven't blogged yet. Let phyllo defrost in the fridge overnight. In a small/medium saucepan, prepare a spicy peach pie filling: frozen peaches, lemon juice, honey, lavender, cinnamon, clove, and corn starch. Also melt a few Tablespoons of butter, or for vegan use oil. Cut phyllo into few-inch strips, and place filling at one end, and fold up. Some people place butter between the layers, but I don't. I do use three or so strips per triangle, since my filling is pretty juicy. Bake in a buttered pan, and brush the melted butter on top of the pastries.


Squash also needs to be eaten. So my dinner tonight was a mix of vegetables best in different seasons. My apologies. All are local, and purchased seasonally. In any case, wash and halve one delicata squash, and remove seeds and strings with a spoon. Peel with peeler (you don't have to be too careful; the skin of the delicata is relatively tender), and chop into small cubes. Bake in an open oven-safe dish, having first tossed squash with oil and salt.

Meanwhile, wash, peel, and chop one bunch beats. Place in small pan and cover with salted water. Bring to a boil, and simmer covered until tender.

Shell a pound of fresh peas into serving bowl (one pound pods yields one cup peas). Toss with some marmalade, olive oil, and dijon mustard. Beats should be tender by now; drain in colander and rinse in running water. Toss with peas to coat with dressing. By now, squash is done; mix that in too. Salad will be brightly colored and sweet. Serves one.