Event #23: Seasonings Greetings

Menu
December 24, 2020

The Mains
Roasted Duck with Blackberry Ginger Sauce and Fingerling Potatoes
Acorn Squash, Butternut Squash, and Sweet Potato Gratin
Pomegranate, Beet, Arugula, and Buratta Salad
Japanese Sweet Potato Fritter with Sour Cream
Yorkshire Puddings

The Desserts
Christmas Cake
Gingerbread Cakes

The Beverages
Pence Vineyards Sparkling Wine

With safer-at-home orders in Southern California extended through December 28th, we made the difficult decision to once again have a small holiday feast - limited to John, Sirius, and myself, instead of getting to see friends and family. Typically around this time of year, we do a Holiday AJRB in early December to see some friends and then we try to do something on Christmas Eve with some family, and Christmas Day with other family - as well as loads of other things to celebrate the season with loved ones. However, this year, the holiday season seemed to stretch out with virtual holiday parties starting at the beginning of the month and gifts and cards being received in the mail until the week after Christmas.

We were left to our own devices to determine when to actually have our big Christmas feast though - as we had never been the ones to cook it ourselves. Since we knew that December 25th would likely be full of lots of family love and calls, we selected Christmas Eve (and this way, we figured we could also heat up lots of leftovers for Christmas Day and what is better than leftovers).

Given that we had just cooked a lot of the "traditional" seasonal food for Thanksgiving, we also decided to go with something a little different for our meal, as we were sure we would never be cooking for such a small selection of people ever again. So we went with a roast duck with a delicious blackberry and ginger sauce with potatoes; a squash gratin; a beet, arugula, and burrata salad; sweet potato fritter with sour cream; and yorkshire puddings. For dessert, we went with Christmas cake (more on that below) and gingerbread cake (not a cookie). And to sip with our meal, we had sparkling Pence wine, and peppermint tea to finish the evening.

Given the universal nature of this meal we are excited to share our course-by-course breakdown of how things went.

The Mains

Duck is one of my absolute favorite proteins but I know it isn't for everyone. Here, it is also hard to find in stores unless it is wintertime - so the roast duck with the blackberry ginger sauce was such a treat for Christmas this year. John used the Julia Child Roast Duck recipe and almost every single recipe we used out of there has been a winner.

The squash gratin was really interesting - we selected a recipe to follow but then ended up deviating so much that it only felt loosely inspired and we had no idea how it was going to turn out. That being said, with the beautiful variety of acorn squash, butternut squash, and yams we used covered in a delicious herby cheese sauce, then layered with more grated cheese, what could really go wrong? I would make some tweaks to that dish in the future, but overall, was happy that we had a different, interesting way of serving these expected flavors.

Perhaps the dish that seems the most "different" to me is the pomegranate, beet, arugula, and burrata salad - because we had enjoyed the pomegranate winter salad so much from Thanksgiving and wanted something green so we selected a burrata salad but with the beets instead of the traditional tomato. This was a cool way to have fresh greens on the table and was definitely enjoyed as a break from all the other heaviness.

Sweet potato fritters - these were our crunch element! They were nice and crispy and with that sour cream (served with a little cayenne pepper and green onion), they were something I could definitely keep eating.

Lastly, our carb! The Yorkshire puddings! We made 12 and John had been worried we wouldn't finish them all...and within two days, they were all gone, mostly thanks to me. I love these things - they are similar to popovers since they puff up but I love how light they are and super easy to make.

The Desserts

I'll start first with gingerbread cake, which to me, is a sort of revelation. Last year, for Christmas, John got me a bunch of beautiful cake molds and I was so excited to bust them out this year - and while not as many people would get to enjoy them in person as I would like, I am learning a lot while making them. My biggest goal is getting the most definition possible with the molds, especially with these small ones, so it was nice to have a year to practice...and have lots of time to work with the royal icing to pipe on those details! Plus, it was nice to have the familiar flavor of gingerbread in a light cake.

Christmas cakes were my true adventure this year. I have joined a few Facebook baking groups throughout the pandemic, and around October, a lot of people started mentioning their Christmas cakes... so I wanted to find out more. Turns out, they are basically fruitcakes that you make, then feed with brandy or whisky every two weeks until around Christmastime when you are ready to ice it - and icing it is not buttercream, like I have always done. It was marzipan and fondant! So it was truly an adventure, feeding a cake for months, working with two totally different layers of icing! I learned a ton and it something I definitely want to practice more because I don't think I nailed it on the first go.

The Drinks

The only real drink listed on our menu was the Pence sparkling wine, and truthfully, that's what we drank for the majority of the meal. John even went on to say it was his favorite sparkling wine he's ever had. It was really crisp and light and cut through a lot of the heavy food, so it was exactly what we had hoped it would be. But we always finish our meal with a cup of tea, which in this case, was peppermint!