The Long Christmas Dinner

was a play by Thorton Wilder. My Christmas Dinner was a filling meal for 6 people,, with nods to several times and places.

Tea Eggs garnished with Caviar

Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb

Yorkshire Pudding

Roasted Root Vegetables with Rosemary

Mushroom Risotto

Cold Asparagus with Chinese Flavors

Spicy Tomato Aspic with Cottage Cheese

Old-Fashioned Ambrosia

A Bowl of Smoking Bishop

Jim made the punch, of course and Alyson and Jamie helped with the Ambrosia. My Mom assembled the appetizers and helped me plate the Aspic salad.

The tea eggs and the asparagus are a nod to James' former homeplace, China; and the aspic was something we used to have on every Christmas table in my childhood. I made mine spicy with horseradish and black pepper. It tasted a lot like a Bloody Mary, which was just what I wanted.

Recipes tomorrow. The dishwasher is chugging away with the second post-dinner batch (there were two before dinner also) and dirty dishes still in the sink and on the floor.

The lamb bones have been simmered for stock and Mommo took Ambrosia and Roasted Veggies home. To bed, to bed...snowstorm due tomorrow.

The elusive 5-way sugar cookie

from Life magazine, November 14, 1949, page 90

The aforementioned recipe, as I remember it, in all it's colored glory!

Now here is my transcription of the recipe, and some notes from the first time I made it in 30 years or so...

Ann Pillsbury’s 5-Way Holiday Cookies

From Life magazine November 14, 1949

Yield: 7 dozen medium (I get more)

• 1 ¼ cup shortening (1/2 butter)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup cream
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp. salt

Cream shortening and sugar; add eggs, cream and vanilla and beat until light. Mix all dry ingredients and add to the creamed mixture. Divide the dough into five equal portions and mix in additions, below.

Form cookies by Tablespoonfuls on greased cookie sheet, flattening each spoonful slightly, and bake at 400° for 8 to 10 minutes.

Additions:

For Orange-Pecan: 1T. grated Orange rind (zest) and ¼ cup chopped pecans; top each cookie with a pecan half.

For Coconut: add ½ cup shredded coconut; dip tops in beaten egg (yolk or white) and dip in plain or colored coconut.

For Chocolate-Nut: 1 sq. melted baking chocolate (unsweetened) and ¼ cup chopped nuts and 1 Tablespoon cream.

Fruit: ½ cup chopped candied fruit (fruitcake mix) or mock mincemeat.

Plain: top with colored sugar.

Variations:

These take 10 minutes to bake in my 400° oven. Coconut always seems slightly underbaked and may need another minute.

Fruit and spice: chopped a combination of seeded raisins and candied ginger, total about 1/3 cup and about ½ tsp freshly ground spices (cinnamon, cloves, mace, black pepper and coriander). Good but could use more raisins and spice.

I didn’t much care for the fruitcake variation as a child. The pecan-orange is probably to best balanced and most distinctive flavor combination.

Must go now - gotta start Jamie's birthday cake.

The elusive 5-way sugar cookie

from Life magazine, November 14, 1949, page 90

The aforementioned recipe, as I remember it, in all it's colored glory!

Now here is my transcription of the recipe, and some notes from the first time I made it in 30 years or so...

Ann Pillsbury’s 5-Way Holiday Cookies

From Life magazine November 14, 1949

Yield: 7 dozen medium (I get more)

• 1 ¼ cup shortening (1/2 butter)
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• ¼ cup cream
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 4 cups sifted flour
• 2 tsp. baking soda
• 1 ½ tsp. salt

Cream shortening and sugar; add eggs, cream and vanilla and beat until light. Mix all dry ingredients and add to the creamed mixture. Divide the dough into five equal portions and mix in additions, below.

Form cookies by Tablespoonfuls on greased cookie sheet, flattening each spoonful slightly, and bake at 400° for 8 to 10 minutes.

Additions:

For Orange-Pecan: 1T. grated Orange rind (zest) and ¼ cup chopped pecans; top each cookie with a pecan half.

For Coconut: add ½ cup shredded coconut; dip tops in beaten egg (yolk or white) and dip in plain or colored coconut.

For Chocolate-Nut: 1 sq. melted baking chocolate (unsweetened) and ¼ cup chopped nuts and 1 Tablespoon cream.

Fruit: ½ cup chopped candied fruit (fruitcake mix) or mock mincemeat.

Plain: top with colored sugar.

Variations:

These take 10 minutes to bake in my 400° oven. Coconut always seems slightly underbaked and may need another minute.

Fruit and spice: chopped a combination of seeded raisins and candied ginger, total about 1/3 cup and about ½ tsp freshly ground spices (cinnamon, cloves, mace, black pepper and coriander). Good but could use more raisins and spice.

I didn’t much care for the fruitcake variation as a child. The pecan-orange is probably to best balanced and most distinctive flavor combination.

Must go now - gotta start Jamie's birthday cake.

Searching for Pillsbury

The first memory I have in regards to cooking is of sprin(dumping)kling colored sugar on cookies before they are baked. I believe I was three years old, and it may be my oldest accessible memory.

Certainly before I could read I could roll out sugar cookie dough, cut out the cookies, carefully fitting the cookies together so as not to waste dough, and decorate them. I also put pans into the hot oven, and removed them with cotton looper potholders.

I got a set of miniature cake pans for Christmas when I was five, and after using up the miniature cake mix packaged with them, I made cakes from the Washington Flour single-layer sized mixes, measuring the ingredients when my mother read them off to me.

(pictured-not my real mother)

The following September I started school and learned to read, so by Christmas, I could read the instructions myself.

I think reading those instructions, and other recipes was my first experience of learning a new skill by reading - something I've never stopped.

Lately, I've been trying to find a recipe I remember from childhood. Pillsbury 5-way sugar cookies. I've Googling my brains out, without success.

I asked my Mother to find it, as I remember it from her notebooks, but she's stymied, too.

That WAS, until today.

After I got home from church, I Googled again, this time with 5-way (figure five hyphen way) and Google books rendered up selections from a 1949 Life magazine.

Check back tomorrow - my rendering of the recipe, and my first revisit in thirty or more years.

Chili Cincinnati-style

Yikes! It's been almost a month since my last post. A lot has gone on in the meantime. Last weekend I won second place in the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival's Grand Lamb Cook-Off with my Chili Cincinnlamby - recipe below.

Chili Cincinnlamby by Jan Derry

Ingredients:

Spice Mixture:

2 Tablespoons cinnamon chips (broken cinnamon stick)

2 Teaspoons allspice berries

1 Teaspoon cumin seed

1 Teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 Teaspoon black peppercorns

½ Teaspoon coriander seed

For the chili sauce:

1 lb. ground American Lamb

Non-stick cooking spray, QS

1 cup chopped onion (about 1 medium)

3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 cup canned beef broth

1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz. undrained)

2 Teaspoons dried oregano

1 Teaspoon dried thyme

1 bay leaf

2” stick cinnamon

2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar

1 Tablespoon brown sugar

1 Teaspoon salt

More salt and pepper to taste

To serve:

½ lb. spaghetti, prepared according to package directions

½ lb. shredded cheddar cheese (I like it sharp)

1 cup finely chopped spring onion, white and green parts

Oyster crackers (less than a bagful)

Special equipment: You will need a spice grinder or coffee mill and a sieve to make this

Method:

Prepare spice mixture by combining spices and grinding in a spice mill or clean coffee grinder. Sieve the powder and regrind the coarse tailings. You should have three tablespoons or more of mixture. Set aside.

Prepare your pan with nonstick cooking spray, soften onion without browning it, and add garlic. When garlic is warm and aromatic, add lamb, stirring to break it up.

Add the cup of beef broth and two tablespoons of the spice mixture, the bay leaf and stick cinnamon. Bring mixture to a boil and reduce heat. Simmer 30 minutes.

Add tomatoes with their juice and the rest of the herbs and spices, including 1 teaspoon of salt. Simmer 30 minutes more.

Remove bay leaf and cinnamon stick, taste, correct seasoning with salt, pepper and more spice mixture if needed.

Simmer further only if needed to reduce the liquid to ‘spaghetti-sauce consistency’.

To serve Cincinnati Four-Way:

Place serving of spaghetti in the serving bowl, add meat sauce and stir slightly to coat. Top with green onion, shredded cheese and oyster crackers to taste.

The yield is approximately 4 cups of meat sauce, which in turn yields 4 giant or 6 or 7 more reasonably-sized servings. It takes about 90 minutes to prepare, depending on the time needed to reduce the liquid.

If you freeze the meat sauce, the pepper flavors will be hotter to the taste after reheating – you may want to keep that in mind.

For those who prefer not to grind fresh spices, substitute packaged ground spices as follows.

2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon

2 Teaspoons ground allspice

1 Teaspoon strong red pepper (ancho suggested)

1 Teaspoon ground cumin

½ Teaspoon ground coriander

1 Teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

You may need to add more at the tasting point.

This is my original work, inspired by a magazine recipe for beef chili and after many years of tweaking to my family’s taste. 3/27/2010

I only got 13 out of a possible 20 points for 'Ease of Preparation'; a valid criticism, I think. I believe my recipe had about two or three times the number of ingredients of any of the others, and three stages of preparation, the spice mixture, the ragu and the presentation. But we love this here at my house and I hope you like it too.

Keep an eye on the MS&WF here. Usually new material about the upcoming festival comes out in March.

Leaves

I peeked out the kitchen door this morning, into the seasonable but bitingly cold air to hear the cheerup cheerup of the robins staking out their territories and was startled to realize that the leaves on the beech tree were large. They are big enough to cover a hen's egg, drooping down in a limp and shiny spring green shade that can surely only last a few days before the darker color of maturity arrives.

I thought "Spring has gotten away from me" and almost laughed out loud. As if I were in control of the advance of time, season or entropy.

But it is time - time to start the silkworm eggs a-hatching.

I took a good pinch out the fridge, wanting 20 to 25, but O think I have more like 50 incubating now. At any rate, I'll take out a pinch, of the different cross-breeds, every week until I know I'll have some ready to spin on the second Saturday of June. That will take me up to the Mannings' Spinning Seminar, where I will deliver my Queen of Fibers dog-and-pony show once again.

Riches

My daughter Alyson has been on a spinning binge, and I am the happy beneficiary. A few weeks ago, just when her last full-time job went away she needed a project to occupy her oh-so-clever hands. She brought up from the basement a big vacuum bag (space bag) full of soft white roving, probably merino. So I said, “Knock yourself out” and she just went to town.

Ten or so days later, she had spun up every ounce into a soft, slightly irregular two-ply with an exquisite cashmere-like hand in creamy white. I had already cast on the diamond-shaped “Shoulder shawl in cherry-leaf pattern” from Jane Sowerby’s Victorian Lace Today.

After finishing the first project, she uncovered another bag containing mostly some fine grey finnsheep in a combed sliver. Two-ply again, but this time Alyson spun a smooth, lustrous worsted at 1000 yards per pound (knitting worsted weight).

The white yard averaged 1100 to 1150 YPP on my MacMorran yarn balance, so both are about a ‘light worsted’ weight. After the shawl, including a lace border, is knit up, there will be a lot of the white yarn left. I still haven’t decided what I’ll do with that.

The grey yarn is quite definitely lustrous, firm and compact. Right now, I’m considering making it up as cabled sweater or perhaps a vest.

Just look at these luscious balls of handspun!

• 
Knit on, in confidence and hope, through all crises! (EZ)

B-day Sox

Huzzah! Alyson knitted me socks for my birthday. The pictures cannot convey the soft plushiness I feel on my size 8 1/2s.

Check out the heel stitch and the generous gussets. Nothing but the best for me.

Jim cooked the dumplings for dinner.

For an after-dinner treat I made myself a low-sugar batch of shortbread topped with sugar-free chocolate.

It's snowing now. We are expecting another 10 to 20" over the 22" we got last Friday/Saturday. I'm sleeping in my sox tonight!

Comfort Food

Everybody in the co-op today was buying comfort food, so I got a four-pound chicken and proceeded to roast it casserole-style. Instead of Poulet en cocotte au Bonne Femme, I went for the simpler Casserole style and instead of Tarragon flavoring, I used Rosemary, which I vastly prefer.

I think tarragon tastes bitter and I have had enough of bitterness.

This is what I call 'informal serving' instead of fetching one's own from the filthy kitchen. Sauce flavored with sherry, peas and rice to accompany - it was real nice.

If I don't go to work tomorrow, I'll make chicken stock.

We are expecting another snowstorm tomorrow (my birthday) starting about noon and lasting 24 hours or more. Another 5 to 10 inches are expected on top of this (picture above: around the corner of the hose looking towards my neighbors yard, his three-bar fence half buried and his little SUV a mound) and more power outages anticipated.

Blessings on you, wherever you are. May you stay snug and comfortable - and safe.

snowbound - where are the sweets?

I'm not buying cookies or candy anymore, in an effort to get my eating/weight under control. That's why, when Jim asked if there were any cookies in the house last night, I baked him some shortbread.

2 oz. sugar, a stick of butter and six oz. flour. I used vanilla sugar and grated in some fresh nutmeg for flavoring. (Baked 35 minutes at 300 degrees, cool before breaking.)

It's quite good. So good, in fact, that I boxed up what was left and put it on his desk. Even before breakfast, it was calling my name.

Tonight, Roast Chicken Bonne Femme.

Cold night, warm soup

I'm ashamed that I haven't posted since before Christmas. And I made SUCH a great Christmas dinner, too.

But now, the first of February, I HAD to have some soup and make it quick. It's cold, snowy, icy and I didn't want to wallow in fat. I had onions and potatoes at home, also boxes of chicken broth, but no leeks. Thus, Leek-and-Potato Soup becomes Onion-Potato Soup and I made meatballs with ground turkey to up the protein count. No cream, butter or eggs, and nobody missed them.

I may have added too much herb seasoning to the meatballs, but they're palatable. Thyme, salt and pepper for the soup, which I made with half water and half boxed broth. I cooked it in the pressure cooker for five minutes and simmered it afterwards for 20.

Oh, yeah. I also added the last couple of tablespoons of chopped sorrel from the freezer. Yum.

Thank you, Julia, for the recipe. Thank YOU, Alyson, for the peeling and chopping. We make a good team.

Nut Cookies