Christmas Feast

What a fabulous meal! A meal that almost wasn't, for so many reasons. I'm so glad we moved back from NYC to continue this tradition here together with our family. 

But the other reason this almost wasn't....the ham. Last time we got the Smithfield Ham online, but this year I found them sold at Pavillions. However when I went to pick one up they were sold out! I went to four different stores before I secured the "last one"...whew!!! I hugged the ham AND the butcher and sauntered off to my car with a grin on my face, relieved that the holiday dinner was saved. 

There is simply no substitute for a Smithfield Ham (unless you made Prime Rib and Yorkshire Pudding, ahem). Anyway, this dinner rocked. Ham, cranberry ginger chutney, cranberry bread, no knead bread, summer squash from dad's garden, spinach salad, and parmesan smashed potatoes. YUM! Best of all every last bit of it was made by us! Everyone was in the kitchen cooking together. I'm so blessed to have a big enough space and a family so gifted. I love you guys.

(Recipes from Barefoot Contessa (Potatoes), Smithfield (Ham), NY Times (No Knead Bread), Murina (Chutney) then adapted from this, Mom (Cranberry Bread), Dad (Squash), and ourselves (Spinach Salad--see earlier post).

Chocolate Guinness Brownies, Holiday Style

These are our favorite brownies. I've made them dozens of times over the years and experimented with different Guinness (bottle vs can) as well as lots of different brands of chocolate. We like them best with Ghirardelli chocolate ( I buy the 60% cacao Ghirardelli chips along with the white chocolate chips). I use King Arthur flour and Land O'Lakes butter in all my recipes.

This is not like other brownie batters; it looks totally normal until the last minute when you "whisk in the Guinness" and turns the whole batter to a chocolate-liquid-soup. In my experience the 8" pan and the 25 minutes in the oven combination doesn't work; the center doesn't cook all the way through even with baking up to 40 minutes. I've tried making them in a 9x12 pan and baking only 20 minutes but they aren't as moist inside. I'll experiment with them in cupcake form soon.

We also prefer them with non-whipped cream cheese frosting because it cuts the bitter chocolate nicely and looks like the head on a Guinness! This particular version has a few peppermint candies sprinkled on top. And another hint is to make them a day ahead of time because they taste *way* better the next day! 

(I discovered this recipe for Grace Neill's Chocolate and Guinness Brownies inside Chocolatier Magazine, then found it online at npr.org --along with some fabulous looking Irish fare!)

Making Cheese

Today we went to a friend's place and made manchego cheese. It was SO much fun! It is a very precise artform, much more than I've experienced with baking. We brought the milk up to 86 degrees and had a thermometer to keep it hovering there while we added the starters, lipase and rennet. Then we had to raise the temperature 2 degrees every five minutes to another measure point. There was a lot of stirring, then we cut the curds, did more stirring, then strained the whey out through cheesecloth (my first actual application of CHEESE CLOTH) and put the curds into a press. After pressing at a certain amount of weight for the prescribed time, we flipped the curds (now in a tubular form) and pressed them again. At the end it gets an oil bath overnight. 

The whole process took about 6 hours with us having to do something every 5-30 minutes at first (during the pressing we had time to eat dinner and watch a movie). We didn't get to eat the one we made but instead (food show style) he popped a chunck of  homemeade colby out of the fridge and we tasted that. I was in HEAVEN. YUM! We boiled up the leftover whey and made ricotta and then gobbled that right up still warm out of the pan. 

This was a truly unique experience and I can't wait to do it again! There is another acquaintance who makes beer and bread. We're having a party very soon :)

Chicken Pot Pie, again!

I made this again and this time with a friend. It's so friggin yummy!!

(Recipe from Sunset Magazine)