Christmas Dinner

[Ben Hong]

Tur-key, or not tur-key, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The squash and yams of outrageous cookery,

Or to take spoons to unctuous gravy,

And by consuming it, end it? To dine, to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartburn and the thousand gaseous burps

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consumption,

Devoutly wished to be spurned....

(Great epicurian apologies to Will Shakespeare).

As a member of a biracial household it is my fate to have to eat turkey at least once a year, though I would much prefer something less prosaic. What do the rest of you have for Christmas dinner?

Oh, and a Merry Christmas to all.

[hzrt8w]

Unfortunately we are to eat turkey twice a year, both Thanks Giving and Christmas. Traditions of the in-laws. Personally I would rather have Cantonese Roast Chicken or Roast Duck, if a bird must be had. I was appointed to cook up a chow mein dish - with considerations to the Chinese elders. So between the dry turkey meat, cranberry sauce and green peas, one can have chow mein on the side. Perhaps we can steam up some Chinese pancakes and use turkey slices as if they were Peking duck and roll them up with hoisin sauce and green onions...

[jackal10]

Nothing wrong with tradition:

Champagne

(crakers and paper crowns)

Smoked salmon

1975 Cos D'Estournel

Turkey (cooked 18 hours at 58.5C, then skin crisped)

Stuffing, bacon rolls, chipolatas

Roast potatoes, parsnips, onions, jerusalem artichokes, garlic

Brussel sprouts (and stem centre), chestnuts, baby carrots

Dom Zilio PX

Home made Xmas pudding

Brandy Butter

Cream

Ware 1977

Stilton

Tangerines, desert

Now I cannot move and need not eat for a week...

Edited December 25, 2007 by jackal10 (log)

[sheetz]

Our big holiday dinner won't be until next week. At this point I'm thinking spiral ham, scalloped potatoes, baby carrots, homemade rolls. Not sure what else yet.

[K8memphis]

We're gonna find something to eat today but Saturday we drove to Virginia to see Chef-boy and were privileged to have our Daughter with us. So we celebrated Sunday at The Inn At Little Washington for our 29th Wedding Anniversary and for Christmas but most especially for being together. Now you might be able to find a post of mine that says we celebrated our 29th last year. And we did for while until our daughter nuked the celebration of our 29th last year by reminding us it was our 28th. So even if we can't count too well, we celebrated well.

All of our selections had to be cleared with Chef-boy, who of course works there. We had so much fun ordering and getting all his insights to the dishes as well as to who was in the kitchen preparing things and of course him knowing our individual tastes.

Well actually before we started Patrick O'Connell graciously sent us over a champagne toast. And we got the poppy seed rolls and the magical salt crusted currant rye bread with the whooppie butter that is from France I think and very special for reasons I cannot remember. I of course, promptly started eating my husband's...You can dress 'em up...

We started with a beautiful array of amuse on the cool spoons. I got the chips & dip and the beet thingy. So I got extra points from CB for indavertently picking the best things on the dish. Cool. We shamelessly shared food like three year olds. I gave Dennis a bite of chip & dip. But at Chef-boy's insistence, put the whole rest of it in my mouth. Wonderful. So by the time I got to the beet thingy, I just downed it. Fabulous.

Then they brought us the coolest thing. One of the most coolest things I've ever had in a restaurant. We got two bowls of popcorn. And a white gloved waiter shredded black truffle over it. It is made with white truffle oil so it was beyond wonderfully flavorful. So homey and out of place in the context of The Inn yet so exquisite and high end. Stunning juxtaposition. I mean nobody could eat just one. Really really good and fun and down to earth and upper crust.

Then we played menu roulette with Chef-boy and had the best time discussing everything. Dude, they filled glasses in harmony and added bread whenever our supplies of anything dipped down. The service was sparkling and magical.

Grace chose the wines with Tyler our sommelier's assistance. I'm not a wine person. Can't remember. A white and a red. A white semisweet flume blanc from central France 2003 and a 2000 red spanish rojo. They were both great though.

The best part of this year's 29th was all of us being together.

It was beyond so very very good.

To be continued...

[Domestic Goddess]

Christmas morn and my hubby and I wake up with the meanest cold bug ever. Through the chorus of hacking, sneezing and coughing, we both agreed to order out for lunch.

Me and our youngest son got Korean Food delivery.

Son got the Tonkatsu plate complete with the requisite ketchup+mayo combo over julienned veggies (and half a tangerine).

I got a steaming bowl of Kalbi Tnag (Beef Ribs Soup) to help decongest my nose and such. This one got bits of ginseng in it and a jujube fruit, very tasty. Everything is saranwrapped for convenience and food safety.

Korean food delivery comes with your very own set of cutlery, kimchee and pickled radish slices and even condiments. After eating, you just put all the dirty dishes and cutlery outside for the delivery guy to come back and pick up. No mess, no dish washing and no hassle.

Hubby wanted korean fried chicken and he settled for the Nene Chicken brand. This one gave us a pink alarm clock for ordering on Christmas day.

The slot that you see in the topmost portion of the box is where a small bottle of Pepsi goes. Pretty neat, ain't it?

And that sums up our Christmas meal. Aaachooo!

[Della]

We are having duck breasts with a ruby port sauce for dinner tonight Brussels Sprouts with homemade bacon, fingerling potatoes fried in duck fat, a nice Willamette Pinot Noir and as much sparkling bubbles as we can drink! Merry Merry and Ho Ho Ho!

[pennylane]

I made a nut roast, for the first time ever (part of my quest to try as many crazy and different recipes as possible), with a potato and wild mushroom gratin, cranberry sauce, and brussels sprouts, followed by mulled wine, mince tarts and about a dozen different types of cookies (inspired by the Christmas cookies thread, though I did not feel worthy enough to contribute!).

[rarerollingobject]

We went for yum cha, godless heathens that we are.

AND it was really crowded, interestingly. Moreso than usual, even.

[ngr00]

Well we already had turkey for Thanksgiving and no one in the family is a fan of Ham... so we made standing rib roast (followed Tyler Florence's recipe off Food Network http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/re...6_29348,00.html and cooked it to rare) it came out excellent! Easy and very tasty, offered with gravy made with the drippings and plenty of horse-radish (from a jar, couldn't find any fresh).

It was accompanied by Rosemary red-skin new potatoes and a large Greek Salad (romaine, spinach, cucumbers, red onions, tomatoes, feta cheese and calamatta olives).

Merry Christmas, everyone!

[Prawncrackers]

This year we escaped the tyranny of bland & dry turkey. We had a three bird roast of goose, chicken & pheasant and a smoked ham. Everyone was delighted with it, i think the turkey has finally seen it's day in our family. Good riddance i say to cheap and nasty white meat. For starters i did some gravdlax salmon too, here are some pics;

[Tepee]

Unfortunately we are to eat turkey twice a year, both Thanks Giving and Christmas.  Traditions of the in-laws.  Personally I would rather have Cantonese Roast Chicken or Roast Duck, if a bird must be had.

←

A friend suggested to me to do turkey the chiuchow/teochew duck way. I agree that would make a very moist bird. Trick is to find a pot huge enough.

Reading about RRO's yumcha meal, we did have one at Din Tai Fung on the eve....heheh...where we had beef tendons on behalf of Dai Gah Jeh Dejah.

For christmas dinner, we were invited to 2 places 'which we had to go'.

My sis - turkey, various homemade pizzas, shepherd's pie, mee siam, curry chicken, a teochew dumpling filled with braised jicama, satay, brownies, fruit cake, marble cheesecake, macadamia nuts.

As if we were not stuffed enough, we continued at...

My hubby's eldest bro's: More pizzas (Domino's ), fried noodles, Rice and chicken (from a middle-eastern restaurant), salad, chocolate cake, fried chicken.

To both places, I brought an agar-agar dessert made with honey sea coconut and lychees, flavoured with pandan leaves and palm sugar. It was appreciated in both places...I find people here prefer a light refreshing dessert, and would be more welcomed than the yule log I was thinking of making.

The christmas cum youngest birthday-do at our home will be this Sunday, where we usually 'open' our home to friends and family. I'm expecting around 50...I'm keeping the invite list as short as possible...but since it's an 'open house' thing, no uninvited guests will be turned away.

Edited December 26, 2007 by Tepee (log)

[hzrt8w]

AND it was really crowded, interestingly. Moreso than usual, even.

←

I think there are 2 main reasons:

1) The Chinese (who don't work in the restaurant business) have Christmas holiday off. Family gathering time.

2) Those who don't celebrate Christmas come to eat Chinese, because we (and other Asians) are about the only restaurants who are not closed on Christmas day.

Edited December 26, 2007 by hzrt8w (log)

[sheetz]

AND it was really crowded, interestingly. Moreso than usual, even.

←

I think there are 2 main reasons:

1) The Chinese (who don't work in the restaurant business) have Christmas holiday off. Family gathering time.

And Chinese customarily have large get togethers at restaurants more often than they do at home.

2) Those who don't celebrate Christmas come to eat Chinese, because we (and other Asians) are about the only restaurants who are not closed on Christmas day. 

←

Of course that means greater profits on Christmas and other holidays, so there's no way a Chinese restaurant would be closed!

[mizducky]

AND it was really crowded, interestingly. Moreso than usual, even.

←

I think there are 2 main reasons:

1) The Chinese (who don't work in the restaurant business) have Christmas holiday off. Family gathering time.

2) Those who don't celebrate Christmas come to eat Chinese, because we (and other Asians) are about the only restaurants who are not closed on Christmas day.

←

Oh yeah ... hitting the local Chinese restaurant on Christmas Day is a sort of tradition among Jewish Americans, as imortalized in this admittedly shaggy parody (note the Boston references, such as the "T" and the proximity of Chinatown to Park Street Station and the old "Combat Zone")

[rarerollingobject]

AND it was really crowded, interestingly. Moreso than usual, even.

←

I think there are 2 main reasons:

1) The Chinese (who don't work in the restaurant business) have Christmas holiday off. Family gathering time.

2) Those who don't celebrate Christmas come to eat Chinese, because we (and other Asians) are about the only restaurants who are not closed on Christmas day.

←

Agreed re these possibilities, although the interesting part was that the crowd had much greater Caucasian presence than I was expecting, and more than this restaurant normally has.. and some of them celebrate Christmas or at least like the trappings of it, as had brought along Christmas crackers and party hats..!

We were speculating that perhaps many were tourists/travellers who happened to be in town for Christmas day, or, like us, had no distinguishing reason for being there, other than a serious addiction to yum cha and a serious aversion to the Christmas day cook-up/clean-up.

Either way, the more the merrier..nothing worse than an EMPTY yum cha restaurant!

[K8memphis]

So yesterday we certainly circled the area looking for a Chinese restaurent we could agree on but when I took a wrong turn wound up at IHOP.

But back to the story of eating at The Inn, for first courses, we had the Beet Fantasia which was wonderful, I had the crabcakes which were good and I think Jonathan had the carpaccio of herb crusted baby lamb with tabouli & rosemary mustard and my husband had the fire and ice seared tuna with daikon radish and cucumber sorbet. Lovely lovely.

Second course I had the hot & cold foie gras with fig preserves. I had foie once before somewhere else and it was supposed to be served hot and it was lukewarm and not so good. This dish was served at the correct temperatures and it was wonderful. So hurray for giving foie gras a second chance. Then there were a lot of black truffle dusted diver's scallops. I'm not sure what else was at the table, I was really enjoying my course and feeding people bites. I also had a little mini slice of brioche toast for the cold fois. That fois gras dish was amazing. I knew I would like it properly crisped and warm. It was fabulous.

Main courses. Jon had the parsley encursted Elysian Fields Farm Lamb Loin w/seared fois. This was probably the favorite tasting main we had. Really wonderful. Then Dennis had the Olive oil poached Atlantic Haddock with parsely risotto and ginger stewed tomatoes and stuff. Very good. Grace had the prime rib with truffled Yorkshire pudding. Very good. I had the bunny. Medallions of rabbit loin wrapped in pancetta surrounding a lillipution rabbit rib roast resting on a pillow of rutabaga puree. The presentation was superb and the whole course was perfect for me. Jonathan was amazing at hitting our tastes perfectly.

Oh dessert, Dennis had the selection of sorbets, like 7 or 8 sorbets with some clever cookie dealies. I got so enwrapped in my dessert I forgot to get bites of his. Grace had the mint ice cream with the chocolate cap that melts down into the glass when the hot fudge is poured over. Splendid but she was kinda stuffed at this point. And Jonathy got the cheese cart. What an experience.

The cheese cart was so so way way cool. It's an actual 1/3 the size replica of a prize winning cow with a tray full of magical cheeses on it and the little moo cow noise maker rounding out the happening with audible mooing effects. Grace went nuts over every one of the cheeses. Robin makes a great presenter. It was very special. I had the chocolate trio. The mousse was nice. The chocolate cream brulee was exquisite and the black forest cake was, what can I say, I want more. Suffice it to say, I did not share the black forest mini cake.

We got a tour of the kitchen and also received the sweet little baskets of cookies that are trademarks of The Inn. It was a very special occassion and we were fully charmed and ever grateful for such a stellar splendid evening with our family at The Inn.

In the lobby

Edited December 26, 2007 by K8memphis (log)

[liuzhou]

I am still in the Chinese food section, amn't I?

[Ben Hong]

I am still in the Chinese food section, amn't I?

←

Yes you are, but what the hay, dinner is dinner. It's Christmas Dinner too.

[WYF]

We had:

Turkey breast (dry cured, then cooked sous vide at 145F for about 3 hrs and finished in the oven)

Turkey leg dry cured w/ herbs and mustard under the skin

Roasted squash, parsnips and carrots

Sauteed green beans

Steamed brussel sprouts

Baked sweet potatoes

Roasted beets with aged balsamic

Stuffed peppers

Vietnamese tofu skin rolls

Sticky rice with chestnuts

Turkey jus

Squash pot de creme

Black sesame angel food cake

[sheetz]

I am still in the Chinese food section, amn't I?

←

Yes you are, but what the hay, dinner is dinner. It's Christmas Dinner too.

←

HAHA! Well, I should add that even though I'm preparing an American style Xmas dinner, I'm also planning dishes with an eye towards appealing to parents with more traditional Cantonese tastebuds. Hence dishes like ham, potatoes, carrots, rolls, etc. In other words, fairly plain with simple flavors.

[Dejah]

This has got to be the craziest thread for Chinese forum, but as Ben Sook said,"Hey! It's Christmas!" I guess we DO have to deviate once in a while.

I am so happy that we are out of the restaurant biz during these times - money was good, but OI! I wish it was more evenly distributed throughout the year rather than crazy-as-all-get-out on Xmas eve, Xmas day, 30th and 31st as well as days like Mother's Day. It used to be so hectic getting home by 8 on the 24th and finish getting supper ready and wrapping gifts.

This year, I was so ready I kept thinking I forgot a food item or someone's gift. The kids and families all got in on the 24th - started with late afternoon snacks with hot'n'sour soup, and we sat down to 2 roasted boneless legs of lamb marinaded with raspberry wine vinegar, fresh rosemary, fresh mint, cracked tri-coloured peppercorns and garlic, fresh mint sauce, letteuce wraps with various diced vegetables and shitaki mushrooms, mixed vegetables, pan roasted potatoes, saffron/cumin basmati rice, shrimp stir-fried with citrus pepper, bottles of red wine, and ambrosia delight dessert (not the marshmellow salad!). The rest of the evening was spent nibbling shortbread cookies, skor-bits slice, butter tarts, and other various slices.

Xmas Day was the traditional dinner at older brother's with all of his kids and families: I did the turkey and works, and English trifle as is the tradition, augmented with baked ham, brussel sprouts, oven baked vegetable medley, pickled cucumber Chinese style (s-i-l's specialty), curried beef in flaky pastry, scalloped potatoes, rice, mixed vegetables. Dessert was trifle, lau po bang from Vancouver, and all the other dainties.

Today - chow ho fun for lunch, and then beef and tomato as part of supper. Will make watercress soup for something a bit lighter!

Happy Boxing Day and a Happy and Good Eats in 2008 to everyone!

[sheetz]

We ended up having our Xmas dinner last night. The dishes I made were ham with honey mustard sauce, rolls, carrots, brussels sprouts, scalloped potatoes, and corn pudding. And despite my mother shadowing me the entire time I was cooking and complaining that 'everybody' would rather have Chinese food, she did end up admitting to me afterwards that it was pretty good.

Edited December 29, 2007 by sheetz (log)

[racheld]

Tur-key, or not tur-key, that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The squash and yams of outrageous cookery,

Or to take spoons to unctuous gravy,

And by consuming it, end it? To dine, to sleep;

No more; and by a sleep to say we end

The heartburn and the thousand gaseous burps

That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consumption,

Devoutly wished to be spurned....

(Great epicurian apologies to Will Shakespeare).