Christmas

christmaspudding.jpgIf you have any Canadian friends who are good cooks, they can sometimes go to the effort to recreate dishes often referred to in Christmas Carols. Its that whole British thing and  “Hey, I’m a Royal Subject, eh?” But after Pfeffernusse, Sugar Cookies, Flaming Plum and Figgy Pudding, parties with lavish cheese plates and the holiday Honeybaked Ham, I get a little toxic.

I start to crave more than your every day palate cleanser. It’s more like a yen for a culinary high colonic. A clean fresh salad is what my body calls for and I’m always amazed when this happens.

When my kids were young and I’d fret about not being able to get them to eat enough vegetables and fruit, or protein, the ‘experts’ would invariably assure me in that annoyingly supercilious New Age Parenting tone that “They’ll just naturally take the nutrition their bodies need.” Yeah, that was some bullshit. Like they’d just select the carrots and celery from a table with the big bowl of Cheetos.

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firestonerecordI was the youngest of five boys, most of them out on their own by the time I have any real Christmas memories. Being the baby of the family, and 8-years-younger than my closest brother, I had a different relationship with my dad than they did. He was an old-fashioned father and my arrival had been quite a surprise (they were hoping for a girl.) My mother passed away when I was five-years-old and my dad was forced to raise my brother Paul and me by himself for a few years before he remarried.

Our lives as a blended family weren't always easy, but Christmas was a time for tradition and like many people we had old ones and new ones. The week after Thanksgiving my dad and I would head out to the local tree lot. We always had a real tree and it had to be a Noble Fir, which has the best branches and spacing for decorations. If Dad was going to pay good money for a tree he wanted as many options as possible and the earlier you went the better the selection. Once we found our perfect tree, up it went onto the roof of our Buick Estate Wagon for the long journey home.

Since we had to wait for everyone to be home to decorate the tree - another immovable tradition - it sat outside in our backyard in a bucket of water so it would stay fresh until the "big night." Sometimes it was Christmas Eve, some years the weekend before. I always wished it was up longer, but the rules were the rules. To set the mood my dad would put on the Firestone Christmas album he got from his local tire dealer every year and then bring down the boxes of ornaments and lights the family had collected.

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feast-eliz.jpgThe Christmas Feast:
The Christmas feast was an elaborate affair, and in grand households, often featured an array of food beyond modern imagining: roasted swan, venison, peacocks (with spread tail and gilded beak) and – the crowning achievement – a boar’s head.  There was also a variant on mincemeat pie…a huge stuffed pastry, filled with minced meats that had been sweetened with sugar and dried fruits.  Christmas pudding was also popular, but it was a savory affair, made with meat broth, chopped tongue, raisins, fruit juice, wine and spices, thickened with breadcrumbs.  And the holidays had a special comfort food, as well: furmenty, a hot cereal made with wheat slowly stewed in milk, served with raisins, sugar and spices, was quite popular.
 
The Christmas Season:
Parliament was out of session, and upper class families retired to their country homes for the Christmas season, where they enlivened the local shire with festivities a-plenty.  In fact, it’s been said that the locals in the countryside voiced displeasure if the “great families” chose to spend the Christmas season in town (London), rather than organizing activities around their estates.  Hunting was among the most popular winter activities, and traditionally, the day after Christmas brought a festive foxhunt!

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mccrestaurantChristmas traditions abound all over the world. For instance, in recent years KFC has become somewhat of a Christmas meal tradition in Japan, mind boggling tidbit that it is. However did you ever wonder how noted chefs and restaurateurs celebrate Christmas? As it is usually their busiest season, with all of the parties and holiday dining, some shine it on and let someone else do the cooking, preferring to lay low and veg out on the couch in front of the tube. Others go the busman’s holiday route, keeping their home fires burning while stirring their pots and aiming those meat thermometers straight into the middle of the roast.

Michael McCarty, the iconic restaurateur, creator/owner of Michael’s in Santa Monica and Michael’s in New York City is definitely your DIY Christmas Traditionalist. He’s the whiz kid/enfant terrible who brashly and boldly opened the Santa Monica restaurant at the ripe young age of 25, and did he ever cause a ruckus! In what has proven over the years to be both his nature and his signature style, even at 25 he had the knowledge, taste, and chutzpah to wake LA and shake it up. He created a glorious outdoor dining patio and interior rooms where diners could look at museum quality art by LA’s top artists including David Hockney, Ed Ruscha, Ed Moses and Robert Graham to name a few. The excellent cuisine, made from the finest, freshest ingredients, was perfectly and elegantly served in this beautiful art filled environment. It may sound like a big reach for one so young, but not for Michael who set himself on this course 35 years ago and hasn’t strayed since.

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From the Huffington Post

xmastamaleWhen you think of Christmas dinner, what's on the table? Maybe a standing rib roast? A turkey with all the trimmings? Maybe a ham? For us, and for lots of excitable eaters across the Southwest, we also think of tamales. This traditional Mexican comfort food, eaten for breakfast or dinner (or anything in between really), is a cornmeal dumpling, stuffed with other goodies and steamed in a corn husk.

The most traditional tamales are stuffed with pork simmered for hours in a red chile sauce, green chiles and cheese or chicken with salsa verde. But we've also enjoyed sweet dessert tamales filled with raisins and pineapple on occasion. We want to warn you: you'd be hard-pressed to find a tamales recipe that isn't a bit of a project. Simmering pork requires time.

Blending the masa harina with the -- ahem -- lard (or whichever fat you decide to use) takes patience. Filling the corn husks with the right amount of filling takes practice and a willingness to mess up a few times.

But the result is completely worth it. Tamales are some of the heartiest, most comforting winter fare we can think of. Whether they're brand new to your family and friends, or a long-lost tradition, we really think 2012 is the tamale's year. Happy holidays and don't overfill your corn husks!

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