so, in my family, we don’t really have a traditional christmas dinner. we stick pretty close to the books for thanksgiving – the small child in me does not feel like everything is right with the world if there is not stuffing, or green beany glop, or pumpkin pie (turkey and sweet potatoes are nice too, but if i have the others, i am appeased). but after those cravings are knocked out in november, it’s really up in the air what will happen for christmas. we Have made another turkey, especially when my dad’s old work used to give everybody one as a holiday bonus, and we Have made ham, i’m pretty sure. but at the end of the day, the only real requirement is that we have something special. last year, i think we had buffalo steaks, and this leek and wild mushroom stuffing that i wanted to try out, and the hands-down best asparagus that can be made in 15 minutes or less (and a good contender for the best in any time period, so go make some… now!).

this year, we hadn’t really thought about it until yesterday. nobody really had a hankering for poultry of any variety, or for anything else for that matter. lloyd offered to make lasagna, which is nice, but it didn’t seem quite right to me, and when i said so, i was given the job of finding a replacement.

fair enough.

i decided that we should have trout, because that seemed like a good thing to make while i was back in colorado, and, well, because it sounded good. i hadn’t had trout in a long while.
i poked around online, getting some use out of this recipe search engine that i had discovered a couple of weeks ago and had been waiting for a chance to try. it served me pretty well, and i picked out a menu that made me quite excited:

• Trout with Haricots Verts (that means green beans) and Almonds
• Baked Mushrooms with Brazil Nut Stuffing
• Wild Rice and Toasted Almond Pilaf
• Popped Cranberry Tarts

in case you’re interested in a glimpse of my current del.icio.us playground, that list is also available here.

the tarts were far and away the hardest part, and they were really only time-consuming – i had to make the crust and the cream filling last night because they both had to chill. today they were easy as, um… tarts!

next hardest were the mushrooms, and they were really only a little annoying – they require one to grind up a cup of brazil nuts.
that’s a cup of nuts, in addition to the butter and the cream… i’m going to file those little suckers away in case anyone ever asks me to define ‘decadent.’ and on that note – david, consider this my first (pressure-free, as always) suggestion for an appetizer for next year’s dgp. they might pack a punch equivalent to a slice of cheesecake, but i can’t say they don’t make an argument for being worth it… damn.

on the whole it was blissfully easy for how fancy it sounds – i will make the trout in less than a half-hour, any day of the week, for anyone who will buy the ingredients (i would say the same for the rice but that shiznit takes a long time to cook, so we’d need to plan ahead a bit more). i am quite pleased with how well things turned out, and my family was very gracious in agreeing with that assessment. everyone seemed happy, my dad did the dishes, and we still have to eat the tarts! (hopefully i won’t curse that experience by writing this while everything else digests a little, but i’m thinking they’ll be ok, and it’s Not because i already ate some of the berries, and some of the custardy filling, and some of the crust…)

so christmas ends, and so chanukah begins.
i shall raise a glass of wine to that.
[clink]

oh! and santa brought me a sweet little chef’s knife, so it was even fun to chop the onions.
seriously.
this knife is Sharp.

now let’s see if i can muster the energy to finish a post i’m writing about narnia, shall we?

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 25th, 2005 at 10:46 pm and is filed under family, food, links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.