Holiday menus are about tradition and ours are no exception. Every year there is a little of the familiar and a little of the expected. Like a well oiled machine, though, you have to take care that your experimentation does not negatively affect the harmonious workings of the system–chaos results.

Christmas Eve

Larry’s family maintains a tradition of oyster bisque, coldcut sandwiches, and Christmas cookies–all washed down by quality Champagne. This is a very fine tradition, traced back somewhat delicately to his Danish roots, and made all the better by the fact that the chef’s burden is light. My family followed a similar strategy but raised it a notch by simply going out to dinner on Christmas Eve, leaving the cooking and the dishes to someone else. When I began to cook, Christmas Eve became “Red and Green” themed: Crab and Caesar salad, New Mexican Christmas burritos, Pesto & Red Sauce pizza. 

This year, we decided to do Scandinavian a bit more decisively, as follows:

Wild Smoked Salmon with dark rye, capers, shallots, radishes
Swedish Meatballs & mashed yukon golds
Lingonberry Sauce
Cucumber & Meyer Lemon Salad
Christmas Cookies

All washed down with Champagne. As I said, some things are best not monkeyed with.

Christmas Day

As a cook, this is always the highlight for me. In the past, I have massaged a goose, infused vodkas with fennel, lemon, and coriander, and steamed persimmon, carrot, and dried fig puddings. This year was slightly more casual, in that I took the December issue of Gourmet as my cue, markedly reducing the creation and probably the execution of the meal:

Dungeness crab bisque
Roasted rosemary beef tenderloin
Potatoes dauphinois
Roasted pear salad with walnuts & Stilton
Steamed fig pudding with ginger hard sauce

We drank a lovely Muscadet with the bisque, and moved on to a selection of Washington Cabs for the rest of the meal. Tawny and Cognac at the end, of course.

New Years Eve

For me, New Years Eve is all about luxury. The trick to the evening is balancing the richness of the food with the endurance needed to make it somewhere respectably close to midnight still awake. This year, we had the extra-special addition of French foie gras set aside from the trip Mom and I took to the Dordogne back in March:

Foie Gras & Pomegranate Canapes on Brioche
Buckwheat Blinis with Caviar and Creme Fraiche
Sweet Potato Latkes with Wild Smoked Salmon and Homemade Cream Cheese (a la AnnMarie)
Thomas Keller’s Molten Chocolate Souffles

It probably without saying that all of this was accompanied by Veuve.

New Years Day

New Years Day reminds me of days in the Southland, and would not be complete in any way, shape, or form without black-eyed peas. I typically also prepare the holy trinity of Southern food: beans, greens, and corn. This year, we kept it slightly simpler. I roasted a ham glazed with a mixture of the Apple-Sage jelly I made this summer and mustard. The black-eyed peas went alongside, stewed with coriander, garlic, and onions. Green salad with avocado and grapefruit rounded out the meal. No dessert, and no complaints about it–we were spent. The grits and the greens will come with the ham leftovers this week.

Finally, Did I Mention the Grapefruit?

Babs and Otter sent us literally a case of McAllen Ruby Grapefruits. We are still making our way through them, but they found their way into all sorts of dishes this season: Grapefruit Margaritas, grapefruit salad, sliced, diced, snacks. I toyed with making a Grapefruit Curd tart, but never got around to it. No matter–we enjoyed them thoroughly.

Next year.