The Dinner Files

We have a pretty clear Christmas Eve tradition at my parents’ house. Those who go to church go to a 4 o’clock service and sing about the Baby Jesus, we re-convene at some time between 5 and 6, drink champagne or whiskey, depending on our taste, and eat various seafood-y appetizer-y things for dinner in the living room. Then we exchange gifts. My mom used to be in charge of the food, then for awhile I sort of helped her and a few years ago I just took the food over because I like it and she doesn’t.

The coup d’état was a peaceful one, but as with any regime shift, there were some practical and even ideological changes made. We always had tasty food, but the spread didn’t always have menu cohesion. I pared down, tweaked, and started experimenting with different combinations. I re-focused the whole thing back onto seafood, letting the gravlax hold court with an attending platter of shrimp. Baked clams have been involved, as have oysters on the half shell. This year I kept it more simple than usual – I figured with my 2 1/2 year-old nephew and 17 month-old niece on hand we might want to try and make a quicker work of dinner than we have in the past.

My task was made all the easier since my Manhattan-based mother-in-law joined us. She went to Zabar’s, bossed around some guys behind the fish counter, and arrived in Minnesota with a beautiful white fish and over a pound of supremely cut nova in her bag. I just needed to platter those players up with some cream cheese, red onion, and rye bread. I made some easy-to-eat salads, some garlic-stufffed mushrooms, and blue cheese-stuffed bacon-wrapped dates and was about to call it a day.

My husband, my son, and my brother all made it very clear, however, that a platter of shrimp was expected. They weren’t a-holes about it or anything, but when I asked people if there was anything they definitely wanted they all piped up with the same request: make and serve what I wanted, but they really liked the shrimp.

Tough position. I know they wanted those big, fat shrimp to dip into cocktail sauce. Yet the only shrimp that size available at the market were farmed and imported. I’m sure there are some shrimp farms in other places doing perfectly fine work, but the vast majority of them are ecological nightmares and the resulting shrimp are full of antibiotics and their own crap. So I went with the Key West pink shrimp from Florida that I know to be a well managed fishery. The shrimp were flavorful but small. I later heard my husband defending my choice to his mother, who, like everyone else, likes her finger-food shrimp big. In the end the shrimp platter thrilled no one, I suppose, but at least I didn’t feel bad serving it. You know what else I didn’t do? I didn’t apologize or explain it. The shrimp were delicious, so, really, there was nothing to apologize for, and no one wants to hear a lecture about shrimp fisheries on Christmas Eve. I mean, I’ve gone out of my way specifically to hear lectures about shrimp fisheries, I know I don’t want to hear one in Christmas Eve.

So I was a wee bit pleased with myself. I walked the walk – making the purchase I felt good about – but I also kept the focus on the delicious, not the politics, of the meal. And in an effort to mix things up a bit I made a spicy rémoulade to serve with the shrimp: I whisked the pastured egg plus one egg white with a bit of ground mustard before dripping in the oil ever so slowly so it would all emulsify into a springy mayonnaise (feel free to use store-bought if whipping up mayo isn’t your thing) . I stirred in plenty of mustard and Tabasco and added the minced scallion and capers and some parsley.I adjusted the seasoning to get it just spicy enough to tingle a bit but not so spicy you didn’t want many more bites. As I was putting everything out I had the Shrimp Triad taste it. As the three of them stood in my parents’ kitchen in their Christmas Eve Casual finest, they all agreed: it was delicious, they really liked it, and they would also like some cocktail sauce. I looked at my dashing husband, my omnivorous son, and my baby brother and quite seriously thought about telling them to go stuff themselves. A younger me might have, indeed, argued with them. She very likely would have at least explained why the spicy rémoulade was better.

Instead of lecturing or cajoling or debating, 2011-me shook my head and, as they watched, I pulled a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of horseradish out of the fridge, dumped ketchup and horseradish into a bowl, gave it a few stirs, and handed it to them to bring out to the coffee table.

Merry Christmas, I said. And I meant it.

Ask and you shall receive. I’ve finally posted my famous recipe for cranberry cordial, a homemade cranberry liqueur I’ve referenced and teased you with for years now. My secret is out. Everyone I’ve ever given it to can now see how lazy I am – making a big deal about this easy-as-pie concoction.

Serve it chilled in wee cordial glasses like the ones I tracked down at a thrift store somewhere on the 101 between here and Los Angeles on a road trip with my dashing husband back when he was simply dashing, or use to make the best kirs or kir royales you’ve ever had. I’ve used big batches of the stuff to doctor up the second (maybe third) crappiest sparkling wine at the market into delicious cocktails that made for very festive gatherings indeed. I wish you many such events in the coming weeks, or, rather, as many as you can stand.

Have you noticed that I don’t post a ton of sweets here? I’m not a real dessert-y sort of gal. A bite or two of whatever usually does it for me, much to my son’s chagrin. The poor thing has taken to lapping up a spoonful of honey for dessert more than once while pulling a face at the offer of a juicy ripe satsuma or a bitter square of dark chocolate studded with almonds and sea salt.

These pecan cookies, however, whether studded with crunchy bitter cacao nibs or delicate shavings of dark chocolate, are right up my alley, they are buttery and crisp and not all that sweet but perfect with a cup of coffee or a spot of tea, and they aren’t out of place with a dram of whiskey either. They are inspired by cookies from the fabulous Alice Medrich. I once made them with finely chopped chocolate when I couldn’t find cacao nibs. They were, to some palates, even more delicious.

Find other cookies I genuinely adore at this list of potential christmas cookies.

Luscious. Silky. Salty. Fishy. Yum.

This gravlax was all of these lovely things. It was also cured in the trunk of my car. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

It started, as all salmon do, as an egg (yum, salmon roe!) in a creek or riverbed in a tributary that drains into the Copper River in Alaska. It grew and swam (and was swept) downstream into the cold, rich waters of the Pacific Ocean. The cold water made it develop a lot of fat, tasty fat that doesn’t congeal in the cold and thus is healthful and all things good for us humans to eat. It ate lots of stuff – crustaceans, squids, jellies, and other things that eat lots of marine plants and even smaller things that eat more marine plants. You know those omega 3 essential fatty acids health people are always going on about? They are mainly found in marine plants. So when things eat those plants and then other things – like salmon – eat them, the omega 3s build up in a most pleasing and beneficial way. Yet, like magic, this salmon remained low in mercury – they eat fairly low on the food chain compared to, say, swordfish or sharks, and they also simply don’t live that long enough (about 3 to 5 years) to build up mercury the way longer-loved fish do. Nice work, salmon.

This particular fish then had the great misfortune (or is that supreme honor?) to end up in Bill Weber’s gillnet last September (it was on its way to spawn – and die– in the same river where it was an egg). If I know Bill, and I don’t know him well but I have met him and heard him speak at length about how he handles his fish, this salmon was hand-picked off the net, bled (which drastically slows down decomposition), and immediately put on ice. Bill has all kinds of special and advanced methods because, at heart, the man is an inventor of things, an improver of ways.

There are people who will say – and they are probably right – that the wild salmon population is not doing so well and that, really, we probably shouldn’t be eating any of these creatures. We should let them all spawn and reproduce as much as possible. Fishermen and the communities they support, of course, have many arguments against this stance. I’ve decided that if there are only so many salmon left and other people are eating them, I want my share. I don’t eat it very often and when I do I buy it from fishermen I know are fishing responsibly and with great care so the fish I get is as awesome as possible.

And I did. Behold! A thing of great beauty!

It was then packed and shipped to SFO where my editor and pal Bruce Cole picked it up and brought it to his garage. I arrived, fillet knife in hand, and – visualizing but in no way imitating the clean, swift lines of the professionals I witnessed in Cordova – filleted this lovely creature while Bruce laughed at my lack of upper body strength (it’s a BIG fish!). I then took full advantage of my excellent fine motor skills, superlative manual dexterity, and expensive professional tweezers to pull out the pin bones one by one:

I then lugged it home in a trash bag with a few of its equally mangled brethren and one to fillet at home (so I could photoshoot it for you! see above!), packed it up very carefully, and put it in the deep freezer.

The Sunday before Christmas, I pulled this salmon out (yes, the whole salmon, both sides) and let it thaw. I did this because there is Norwegian in me and every Christmas (usually on the Eve) we have gravlax. It is what we do.

On Tuesday I rinsed the salmon, patted it dry, lay the two halves on a very clean counter skin-side-down, and sprinkled each half with 2 tablespoons of horseradish-infused vodka (usually I’d use aquavit, but we were out – yes, we usually have it in the freezer and yes, we ran out; what can I say, it was a trying fall). I then sprinkled each half with about a third of a mixture made of 1/3 cup fine sea salt, 1/3 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper. A person could add dill to this mixture – about ¼ cup chopped – if they were so inclined and I would be so inclined except that my dashing husband really doesn’t like dill and really, really, really loves gravlax and Christmas is, despite how some people may choose to proceed, not a time to torture loved ones.

I put one half of the salmon skin-down in a large baking dish and laid the other half skin-up on top of it so the flesh more or less matched up. I covered it with foil and plastic wrap, weighed it down with a cutting board that fit inside the dish, put it in the fridge and laid a few wine bottles on top to weigh it down further.

On that Wednesday morning I woke up at the ass crack of dawn. I took the salmon out of its dish, patted it dry, and transferred it to a small baking sheet I had sprinkled with half of the remaining salt-sugar mixture (leaving the two sides cleaving to one another the whole time but flipping it so the fillet on the bottom was now on the top) and sprinkled the top of the salmon with the rest of the sugar-salt. I then wrapped this whole thing in foil and plastic wrap and transferred it to its new home – a small $1.99 Ikea cooler lined with a kitchen garbage bag with several ice packs at the bottom. I then worked a small cutting board (that fit into the cooler) on to of the wrapped fish, put the various bottles of champagne we were bringing to Christmas on top to weigh it down, added more ice packs to top the whole thing off, tied the garbage bag shut, and zipped the cooler closed.

We put the cooler – FACING UP AT ALL TIMES FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY DON’T MOVE THE COOLER! – in the trunk of my Honda Civic with scads and scads of presents (our luggage had to go in the backseat), filled our travel mugs with coffee, and carried a very sleepy son to the backseat where I’d made a nest with his favorite quilt, a pillow, and all our luggage. We hit highway 101 before the sun rose and drove north for two days (with plenty of stops to hike in redwoods, eat seafood, and buy one hell of a fabulous late-60s dress at a junk shop) until we got to Manzanita, Oregon.

On Thursday evening, I ransacked the cupboards of my friend’s mother’s beach house for a baking dish, unpacked the fish, flipped it again while transferring it to its new home, re-jiggered the fridge and found place for both fish and champagne. Then I said hello to the various lovely people with whom we were to pass our holiday.

Christmas morning, after Santa’s good will had been fully investigated, we got out the fish.

My dashing husband carved it and we put it – with or without cream cheese and red onion and capers as individual tastes dictated – on rye crackers, baguette, pumpernickel, and/or lefse.

We ate, we drank coffee, and before we knew it, our work was done.

I hope you all had holidays that were just as delicious and lovely and extended as mine were. It’s good to be back.