Christmas Eve Dinner Recap

This year was my husband's and my first Christmas as a married couple, so it seemed appropriate to host my family's annual Christmas Eve dinner for the first time ever. I thought it would give my mom a nice break, but my ulterior motive was a chance to try out some party food recipes that I'd been filing away for just such an occasion. Here's what I served:

Starters

Crudites with homemade tzatziki (pretty much prepared as printed on Smitten Kitchen plus mint, minus vinegar, and hands-down the best tzatziki any of us have ever tasted), Trader Joe's pastry pups *blush*. We also served some smoked salmon and Italian cheese that my mom brought over.

Main course
* Cambodian beef salad

This is one of my standbys (via Nigella Lawson) and it couldn't be simpler. Just grill a steak (I do mine medium rare), then mix the pan juices with juice from two limes, two serranos (finely chopped), one shallot (thinly sliced), two tablespoons of fish sauce, one teaspoon of brown sugar, and a handful of chopped mint. Drizzle this dressing over some salad mix, with the slices of steak served on top. To turn this into a main course, just add a handful of cooked bean thread noodles. They will soak up the crazy-addictive dressing and add some heft to the salad. This salad was decimated by the end of the night.

* Tiny twice-baked potatoes
...because everything tastes better when it's teensy. I had the worst time scooping out the insides of my halved Yukon Golds until I landed on the following technique: fold a paper towel into quarters and place in your left hand (to protect it from the hot potato). Grab the potato firmly with the protected hand. Using a demitasse spoon, break into the center of the potato about a centimeter from the edge and work your way around the outside, sort of scooping as you go.

Mash the centers with about a cup of sour cream, a handful of chopped chives, 5 pieces of crisp, crumbled, applewood-smoked bacon, and the leaves from a few sprigs of thyme. I also added about ¼ teaspoon of salt. Restuff the potatoes, top with Parmesan, and cook in an oven at 450 for about 15 minutes. The original recipe came from Fine Cooking. Do you like how I pretty much doubled the suggested amount of bacon?

* Spaghetti squash with lemon-ginger dressing

This was kind of disappointing on two counts. I accidentally overcooked the spaghetti squash, so it wasn't quite as crunchy as I like it. And the infamous Otsu dressing that I found mentioned on about 101 food blogs wasn't tangy enough for my taste. I preferred this dish the first time I made it, with a super simple ginger/rice vinegar dressing, the details of which I naturally cannot recall right now.

* Brussels sprouts and pancetta from the Lucques cookbook
I love the veggie dishes at all of Suzanne Goin's restaurants, so it makes sense that her recipes for veggies would pretty much rock. Heat up two tablespoons of olive oil and two tablespoons of butter in a large pan (I used my wok). Cook the cleaned brussels in the oil/butter mixture for about 4-5 minutes. Take two shallots and four cloves of garlic and blitz them in the food processor. Add this and about ½ pound of finely diced bacon or pancetta to the pan. Let the bacon get crispy. Add ¼ cup of balsamic vinegar and 1 cup of homemade chicken broth. Let reduce to about ¼ cup of liquid. Taste and add salt if necessary. This was fabulous.

* Two roast ducks from Chinatown

We saved the bones for duck broth, of course.

My sister Jen provided the dessert, which was a chocolate cake and pumpkin pie from Prolific Oven.

The best part? There were hardly any leftovers, so I got to return to my regularly scheduled daily dose of soup noodles the very next day.

Winter Solstice Soup (Tang Yuan)

Going to college was a real eye-opening experience for me. I never realized how great I had it at home, until I was introduced to dorm food. Our cafeteria served a hodgepodge of mystery meats, overcooked veggies, and inedible starches that were half a step above t.v. dinners. Even more shocking to me was how many of my fellow students seemed to be ecstatic about the offerings. I'd come from eating amazing home-cooked, multi-course meals that were both tastier and healthier. To say I found the dorm food disappointing would be a massive understatement.

So in a way, it was inevitable that I would learn how to cook. It was a necessity if one wanted to eat well on a student's budget. And even now, when I can afford to eat pretty much wherever I want, I still prefer a home-cooked meal at least 9 out of 10 times. This winter solstice soup epitomizes the best of home cooking: clean, comforting, tasty food that you just can't find in a restaurant. My mom used to make this only once a year—per Chinese tradition—on the winter solstice, and I would look forward to it all year long. This year, I finally attempted it on my own, and frankly, it may get bumped up to a regular dish, tradition be damned.

The star of the soup is the sticky rice dumplings, also know as yuan, which are kind of like really chewy gnocchi. They are usually served in sweet soups (red bean, for example) as a dessert. But I prefer this satistfying, savory version.

Winter Solstice Soup (aka Tang Yuan)
BROTH
I cooked a pork bone in some existing home-made chicken broth. If you were to make this broth from scratch, you would do the following:

Bones from a chicken carcass
One or two meaty pork bones
Water to cover
3 stalks of green onion
3 slices of ginger
¼ cup of Chinese rice wine (michiu)
Salt to taste

1. Place all your bones, as well as the ginger and onions in a large stockpot. Cover with water.

2. Bring water to a boil. Then skim off any scum that appears. I highly recommend investing in a cheapy scum skimmer, a nifty gadget I learned about on Steamy Kitchen. A spoon will suffice, however.

3. After the initial skim, add the rice wine, lower the heat, and simmer for at least an hour.

4. Salt to taste. Remove the bones, ginger, and onion, reserving the pork bones for their meat.

SOUP
½ daikon, peeled and cut into 3 inch chunks
8 shitake mushrooms, sliced (I used fresh; if you use dried, you will need to rehydrate them in warm water for about 20 minutes)
3 lap cheung (Chinese sausage), sliced
Reserved pork from making the broth (removed from the bone)

Place ingredients in the broth and cook over medium heat for half an hour.

DUMPLINGS (enough for two)
1½ cups of glutinous rice flour
Roughly ½ warm (just under boiling) water

Place rice flour in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Add your water a little bit at a time until it forms a dry dough, stirring with a chopstick. The dough should be about the consistency of play-doh and should not stick to your hands. I ended up using about just a smidge over ½ cup of very warm water. Set the dough aside to rest, covered in plastic wrap, for about half an hour.

After half an hour, pinch off a marble-sized piece of dough and roll it between your palms until it forms a ball. If you have slave labor kids, this is a perfect project for them. Place rolled dumplings on a plate, making sure they don't touch.

Boil a pot of water. Once the water is boiling, drop the dumplings in, one by one. As soon as they float (it should be about three minutes), they're done. Remove with a slotted spoon.

TO SERVE
Place about a dozen dumplings in the bottom of a soup bowl. Spoon a few ladles of soup on top. Garnish with cilantro and fried shallots.

Choucroute Garni

I'm Chinese, and my husband is French. As I mentioned in my last post, this can lead to a subtle East/West tug-of-war during mealtimes, but more often, it leads to wonderful new discoveries. I introduced my spice-loving husband to the incendiary Szechuan hotpot, a dish he now requests with frightening regularity, and he has enlightened me about dozens of obscure cheeses, fed me my first bite of pigeon (a revelation), and given me a glimpse of French home-cooking, including this tasty dish.

Choucroute garni is a dietitian's nightmare: loaded with sodium, sausages, and a full pound of bacon. Still, on a cold winter's night, it's pretty hard to beat. The smoky meat and spicy sausages are complemented by hot mustard and sauerkraut, with bland, comforting potatoes providing a welcome respite from the assault of salty flavors. Most of the recipes I read during my research make an intimidating 8-12 servings. Here, I present a more manageable version, which feeds four very hungry eaters.

Petit Choucroute Inspired loosely by Martha Stewart

3 pounds good quality sauerkraut (I used Bubbies from the bulk bin at Rainbow Grocery)
8 baby Yukon Gold potatoes
1 small yellow onion, sliced thinly
1 pound smoked bacon (I think I would use half of this next time)
2 smoked pork chops
4-5 assorted smoked sausages (I used bratwurst, Lousiana hot link, and andouille. If using uncooked sausages, you will have to cook them before adding them in step 7 below.)
2 cups of low-sodium store-bought chicken stock
1 cup of dry white wine (I used sauvignon blanc.)

Bouquet Garni:
15 black peppercorns
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
3 whole cloves
2 bay leaves
2 whole, peeled garlic cloves

Note: I made this in my 5½ quart Le Creuset Dutch oven, which was perfect. Any heavy-bottomed large pot with a tight-fitting lid would probably also work.

1. Rinse sauerkraut in cold water and drain well.

2. Most recipes call for goose fat or lard, but seeing as I had a pound of bacon earmarked for the pot, I cooked this in about ½ tablespoon of olive oil to render the fat and then removed the bacon and set it aside. Cook onion in bacon fat until soft, about 7-8 minutes.

3. Add wine, chicken stock, and a cup of water to the pot. Stir. Add in the drained sauerkraut. Add the smoked pork chops and reserved bacon.

4. Place all the spices, etc. for the bouquet garni into a metal mesh spice ball. Put this in the pot.

5. Bring everything to the boil, then turn the heat down and cook, covered, at a strong simmer for an hour.

6. In a separate pot, boil water and cook the potatoes for about 20 minutes, or until they are just slightly undercooked. You will finish these off in the choucroute pot.

7. 20 minutes before serving, place potatoes and smoked sausages in the pot and heat through.

8. Serve with assorted spicy mustards and bread for sopping up the juices.