Christmas dinner was just right

It was just the three of us for Christmas dinner this year. I poured through cookbooks, scoured my favorite foodie websites and mulled it over for days. What in the world would we have for dinner? I grew up with this particular holiday being a "thing."

My parents always hosted a Christmas open house, all 22 years I lived at home and even before I was born. It was quite a production. We started welcoming guests about 1 p.m. and sent the last ones home about 2 a.m. the next morning. Both of my parents have large families, and one year I counted -- 72 people came to our party.

The gathering itself was casual, with food served buffet style mostly in the dining room. On the table, Mom used a tablecloth my Dad's grandmother made. It is white with a red embroidery pattern. Mom put a piece of hard plastic down over it that was the same size as the table, which helped keep it white all those years. I'm really glad she did, since now it's mine. The slow cookers with meatballs and sausage and hot roast beef for sandwiches were in the kitchen. We had chairs and small tables set up everywhere and somehow, we had enough room. Usually my Mom's family came in the afternoon, and my Dad's family came at night. Friends and neighbors dropped in here and there.

We cooked for days to get ready. My Mom didn't really like to cook, but she had these party preparations down to a science. She had a folder of recipes we used every year. Some things were added and some we dropped if they weren't popular. There was always ambrosia, jello mold with fruit, coleslaw and potato salad (more on the McGarry potato salad in a future post), macaroni salad, pineapple casserole and petit fours from a local bakery.

We also opened our presents and had our family Christmas at night, usually after midnight mass. Then it was up and at 'em early on Christmas day, chopping vegetables and spooning out dishes we'd made the day before. It was a lot of work, but I enjoyed it.

I knew I wouldn't have to cook for days for just the three of us, but I still wanted to do something special (without spending all day in the kitchen). Hello London Broil.
I marinated the meat for about three hours, in nothing more than equal parts olive oil and balsamic vinegar, a really big clove of smashed garlic and some black pepper. I caramelized some shallots and made a butter with those, salt and pepper and fresh thyme. I sauteed some pancetta and shallots to go with green beans, and I made some potatoes. I boiled small Yukon gold potatoes, smashed them a little and drizzled with a little olive oil. Some salt and pepper and shredded cheddar and they were ready for the broiler after the steak was finished. And that was it. Simple in terms of effort, yet fancy enough to call it a holiday meal. It was just what I wanted for my family. I hope all of you enjoyed your family celebrations as much as I enjoyed ours.

Date Night Part 2 - Cooking with My Sweet Baboo

Boy have we been busy. The three of us have been working as backstage help for Brunswick Little Theatre's production of "Into the Woods" and I haven't had much time to write. But I do want to share our other recent date night story.

You may have already read about our fabulous dinner out at Mr. P's Bistro while John was visiting his grandparents in PA. Another night we had a date night of sorts at home. We love to cook together, and risotto is the perfect couples dish to cook.

Risotto takes time to cook. Not a long time, but enough that we can have a glass of wine and take turns stirring (that's Jeffrey's thumb in the picture). This night, I tried a new chicken dish with garlic and lemons. Check out the recipe here. As usual, I used it as sort of a guide and made some tweaks. I didn't use a whole bulb of garlic because that seemed a bit much. And I used dried thyme because that's what I had. I also used just chicken thighs. So I got the chicken going and then Jeff and I cooked risotto. We made Parmesan risotto that night. We have made risotto enough times that I don't look at a recipe anymore. And I don't really measure anything besides the stock and the rice. When we first started cooking risotto, we used this Rachael Ray recipe. Now when we make it, we usually start by cooking some diced Pancetta. (Look for a future blog post on why Pancetta makes everything better). We take the cooked Pancetta out and cook the shallots in the pan (we add a little butter to the Pancetta grease). I also put in a little salt and pepper at this stage. Then we pour in the rice and get it nice and toasty. Then we add wine. Risotto is traditionally made with white wine, but sometimes we like to be rebels and use red instead. We also do the "add wine and reduce it down" step twice. If once is good, then twice is better, right? Then we add the stock (chicken with white wine and beef with red wine) little by little until it is all gone and the risotto is creamy. And then it's time to eat.

We do like a good risotto. But that's just part of the reason to cook it. We also like having some wine and good conversation. Our attention is focused only on the task at hand and each other. We don't mind that it takes a while to get dinner on the table. The journey to the dinner table (or TV trays in the living room so we can watch a good Disney movie while eating) is easily half the fun.