December 24, 2011 - Christmas Eve Open House



Florence Simon's Van Cliburn Shrimp Mold



December 24, 2011 - Christmas Eve Open House

For most people Christmas is all about gifts and connecting with the baby Jesus on Christmas Day.  For me Christmas is all about cooking a fabulous table full of food and drinking lots of wine and connecting with old and new friends.

I had my best Christmas ever this year.  Due to big snow on Thursday that closed both I-40 and I-25, my brother Billy my sister-in-law Elaine and their daughter (my niece) Rebecca drove to Albuquerque in a tortuous two day drive from Dallas to Las Cruces and then to Albuquerque, arriving around 12:30 and immediately starting to cook their portion of the food.  Willy was home from Vancouver and, with his friends, put out the approximately 300 luminarias (brown paper bags, partially filled with sand and a lit candle) needed to encircle our house in a double row of lights.

Around 5:15 our first guests, who had a 6:00 commitment, arrived and by 6:00 other folks started dropping in.  The most important of whom were Michele Varner and her husband Ed Johnson.  Michele and Ed have an apartment in the Park Plaza but Michel spends most of her time on their farm in Mississippi, about sixty miles east of New Orleans, where she forages for mushrooms in the forest and raises vegetables for sale to fine New Orleans restaurants, when she is not cooking or taking care of the farm and their animals.  Ed is a works for the government and currently is living in Santiago, Chile. 

By 6:15 pm when we placed everyone’s dishes on the table, it was an impressive array of food:  The final menu and who cooked each dish is as follows:

Baked Hubbard Squash garnished with Ricotta salata, toasted hazelnuts and sage pesto  (Suzette, Bob – the squash and Billy – the garnish)

Tapa - artichoke hearts, English peas, ham, pimiento and saffron (Suzette)

Green tomato chutney cream cheese spread (Suzette)

Florence's Van Cliburn Shrimp mold (Bob)

Gravad lax (Bob) with Swedish sweet mustard sauce (Bob) and Sour cream and dill sauce (Bob)

Olive medley with cucumbers (Bob)

Cheese board  - Brie, Dubliner, Saint Andre, goat cheese,

 Explorateur, Manchego, Petit Basque, and Pecorino Romano (Bob)

 All cheeses were purchased at Costco, except Explorateur which was purchased at Whole Foods 

Blanched Green Beans with almonds (Elaine)

Roasted Winter Root Vegetables (Bob and Suzette) Turnips from our garden, beets, carrots, shallots, garlic, and potatoes (Bob and Suzette)

Grilled pork tenderloin served with a cherry/onion port sauce (Billy)

Roasted Winter fruits (cranberries, Granny Smith apples, and Bosc and Concorde pears) with brown sugar

 

Chicken liver pate (Ed)

Chickpea and pimiento Salad (Michele)

Tortilla Español (large sautéed potato and onion omelet (Rebecca and Elaine)

Fresh citrus fruit garden salad (with mature citrus picked two days ago) (Michele)

Cranberry sauce (Elaine)

Green Tomato Chutney sour cream dip (Suzette)

Beef Samosas (the Kassams)

French Bread (The Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery)

Grilled Smoked Salmon (for some reason my prep of gravid lax failed and we were left with a mushy partially uncured salmon, so Suzette put the uncured salmon on a water soaked cedar plank and grilled/smoked it in our propane gas grill outside.

  

Desserts on side board

Chocolate Baked Pudding with Coffee Vanilla Crème Anglais (pouring custard) (Bob)

Noel Bouche (chocolate cake layered with chocolate mousse, rolled into a log and coated with chocolate icing served on a tray with meringue mushrooms (Greenhouse Bistro and Bakery)

Chocolate chocolate chip cookies (Elaine)

Sparkle Twists (Elaine’s Mother, Rita Holsweig)

Lemon Coconut bars (Susan Palmer)

Toll House cookies (Cynthia Elliott)

Christmas Pound Cakes (Buddy Fuqua)

Other cookies

Empanadas

Food and drinks in Kitchen

Mulled wine (page 51 of the Joy of Cooking) (Bob) using magnums of Mondavi Woodridge Cabernet Sauvignon for the red wine)

Mulled fresh pressed Apple Juice.  I took the spices and citrus zest from the mulled wine after cooking the negrus and put it in another large pot and added apple juice to it. (Bob)

Lamb Meatballs in a tomato sauce (Michele) (served warm in a crock pot) (Michele)

White Beans and Manila clams (Bob and Suzette)

On table in Living Room

Red Spanish wines

We must have had over 75 persons show up, if we count Willy’s friends 15 to 20 friends.

Green Beans with Mushrooms

Roasted Fruit with Pecans

            My favorite drink of the night was the hot mulled wine with a small scoop of apple juice with the negrus spices and citrus zest and a dash of Madeira

           

My favorite dish was the lamb meatballs, tender and not greasy and coated with a delicious tomato, onion and herb sauce.

By 11:00 after most of the guests had left, leaving nine of us (Ed and Michele and her sister, , Ricardo and Cynthia, Jim Graff and Diane Souder and us), when Ed mentioned to the group that this was their 20^th wedding anniversary and that he and Michele had married on Gilbralter on Christmas Eve, I decided it was time to start drinking champagne.  The first bottle was a lovely bottle of Spanish Cava brought by Cynthia and Ricardo, then I opened a bottle of Gruet Blanc de Noir and finally I went down stairs and fetched a bottle of Gilbert Gruet 1997 Grand Reserve.  After the light Cava and the heavier more pinot noir oriented Gruet, the Gilbert Gruet Grand Reserve was a delight.  Every one agreed that it had lots of small bubbles and a very long almost sherry like finish, with huge character.  A wine more pleasingly sipped than drunk.  Perhaps this means that it is near the end of its youth and perhaps its realistic life as a champagne.

One of the more interesting snippets of conversation that I heard was Michele discussing how she was inoculating logs with oyster mushroom spore and growing huge oyster mushrooms that she had not yet offered to New Orleans restaurants because she was still enjoying eating them.  Also she said she is the second largest purveyor of chanterelle mushrooms this year, having sold 154 pounds of them to restaurants. 

The other memorable moment was when a friend of Willy asked me for the recipe for the mulled wine and I showed him the recipe on page 51 of the Joy of Cooking and he was amazed when he realized it was a simple recipe.

There are hundreds of other stories, but, for me, it was a great evening.

 

Bon Appètit

Hubbard Squash