OMG a Recipe: Ho-Ho-Holiday Home Stretch

Can you believe we're almost through the holidays? Through the YEAR, even? Thanksgiving flashed by before our eyes. Christmas -- here and gone in a flash. And New Years Eve...?! Sure, you can go out, but many gatherings are with family and friends, so you're expected to bring something else a little more festive than a sixer of High Life and a bag of chips. Wasabi to the rescue, with an easy make-ahead dessert and Avengers-Assemble! appetizers.

Be fancy, schmancy and effortless with pancetta-wrapped persimmons - Photo by Wasabi Prime

UnRecipe: Deck the Halls with Leftover (Meat)Balls

One of the best thing about the holidays, from Thanksgiving through New Years is the food, food, FOOD! It's everywhere. The roasted turkey, the whole ham, crown roasts of pork or lamb, prime rib, feasts of several fishes -- it's no wonder we promise ourselves diet resolutions in the new year from the ample feasting that goes for a steady two months. But even when our well-intentioned resolutions fade, we're all left with the same thing: leftovers. Don't roll your eyes and groan -- leftovers are a wonderful, beautiful thing. They are brand-spankin' new meals waiting to happen!

Christmas dinner, all rolled up into a bite-sized piece! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

When I say "leftovers," I'm not talking about the good leftovers, the marvelous whole pieces of ham and turkey that can get layered into Dagwood Bumstead-sized sandwiches, I'm talking about the dribs and drabs of this and that, stuff that most would probably just throw out. Miscellany that fits the smallest of your tupperware containers. Barely a full meal, just a buffet of small bites. It's the most maddening of leftovers -- you hate to waste food, but what do you do with such a shotgun blast of random crap?? I can credit my father for being a compulsive food/leftover hoarder -- he never lets a thing go to waste, even to my mother's irritation for finding a container with barely a bite of food being kept for some rainy day. Thanks to him, I was introduced to croquettes -- traditionally a French fritter made with potato and other chopped vegetables and meats, but it's been co-opted by many cultures who all face the universal quandry of leftover food and refuse to give in to waste. After only scraps of a holiday meal remained, my dad would refuse to throw it all out and my mom would make what could only be described as Leftover Spam -- chopped up bits of everything mixed together, bound with egg, battered and fried. Croquettes are just a prettier, Frenchier way of saying: crap we don't know what to do with, so we make a fritter out of it. See, everything sounds better in French.

Holiday ham and the many secondhand meals it provides - Photos by Wasabi Prime

I took a cue from Wasabi Dad's post-holiday meal game plan and made a couple of batches of croquettes from our sizeable supply of leftovers. We had a banner season of festive meals: Christmas Eve I cooked a whole ham, basting this hoggy mountain of meat with a whiskey honey glaze, serving it alongside a creamy cauliflower gratin. Don't ask why, but the ham wound up looking like a meaty rosebud when it cooked. Christmas Dinner, I cooked my first duck (I know, weird that I'd never cooked waterfowl before, but there's a first time for everything). Served alongside the duck were potatoes that were roasted in the fat that came off the duck as it cooked, and a dressing made with quinoa, walnuts and dried fruit. The Mister loves cranberry sauce, so even though it wasn't Thanksgiving, I made another batch of  it to go with the ham and duck. Leftover ham is good for every meal -- it got whittled down with several breakfasts, and I was inspired by a friend's "French" toast stamp and made ham and cheese paninis in our waffle iron for several mornings. I don't have a sandwich press, but I have to say, a waffle iron makes for a great ghetto panini press, as long as you have thick slices of bread.

Falafel that inspired Christmas duck croquettes with jam a week later. - Photos by Wasabi Prime

But back to the B-Team Leftovers, as in, a few handfuls of quinoa dressing, scraps of duck meat and mostly duck skin... and more quinoa. I know -- what's with the quinoa? It's been my new favorite side dish and it ends up being a great component for croquettes or, in an earlier meal of spherical leftovers, falafel. I mashed drained/rinsed chickpeas into a paste, added finely minced garlic and parsley, and leftover plain quinoa. One egg was mixed in to help bind, and I throw in a little cornmeal, just to help soak up any excess moisture. They're formed into little balls and pan-fried. I made a batch of these that stretched scraps into a couple of meals. They were such a nice treat, that idea stuck with me through Christmas when I made croquettes with finely minced duck, the dried fruit/quinoa mix, and gave each little leftover ball a cheesy center of melty havarti.

A feast of beasts... and yes, Indy got to sample some of the duck and ham - Photos by Wasabi Prime

The duck croquettes truly made leftovers magical. These little spheres were like something a wizard made, they were so good. The duck meat was from random scraps and the little wings, which is more skin than meat, really. I removed the bone and minced everything super-fine. I put the bits into a hot skillet to further render the fat and make crispy whatever was there, skin and all -- I wanted crunch, not rubbery, overly fatty bits. I put that crisped duck into the leftover quinoa dressing, which had an egg added to help bind. I formed balls around small bite sized pieces of havarti cheese. The croquettes were still sticky, so I rolled them in some breadcrumbs before frying them up in the same skillet that had the duck fat because... well why wouldn't you? The cheesy center got melty from the heat, the outer crumb coating made a strong enough shell to keep the center from oozing out. The croquettes were perfectly browned, savory bites, but with a little sweetness from the dried fruit. Eating them with a berry jam or the cranberry sauce was a perfect pairing -- duck goes nicely with fruit. It was one of those things where you create the dish in your mind, it comes together well during execution phase, and it tastes exactly as how you anticipated. In that sense, leftovers are perfection.

Never throw out leftovers - there's still good meals to be had! - Photos by Wasabi Prime

Literally nothing went to waste over the holidays, which is great -- I hate when food goes to waste. Christmas Eve's ham bone was made into Portuguese bean soup for New Year's Eve and the duck croquettes went well with salads, which were a welcome change from all the super-rich food. It was nice to skip going to the grocery store and fret about what to cook. And the benefit of playing with one's food yields new meals and keeps the boredom away at the thought of having dreaded leftovers again. So cheers to recycled holiday food!

Mixed Plate: Home for the Holidays

There's no season I love more than Christmas. For all the complaints about how early it starts, with a kickoff from the retail industry, decorated trees up as early as September, I still look forward to the time of year. As a child, it was of course about Santa and getting the equivalent of the Red Rider BB gun without shooting my eye out, and then in my late teen/early twenties, I lost sight of the holidays. I would sit staring at the tree and wonder if the day would be any different than the next, disappointed to not easily have that holiday joy again. It felt as though something important was misplaced and you were left frustrated, looking everywhere to find it, feeling even more distressed having known you once had it and now it was lost. It wasn't until being apart from family, losing the things you had begun to take for granted that you realized the holidays were for celebrating the times of togetherness and maybe trying to recapture a little of what was lost. That's when Christmas came back for me, and why it was important to make a big deal out of something, at least once a year.

Tis the Season to Celebrate - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Not to get all maudlin about the holidays, but since Christmas has just passed us by, it feels a little silly to list off holiday food ideas and suggestions. Plus I think everyone's probably sugar plummed out by now. It's more important to see why we make such a fuss over this time, especially since there's so much effort into the lead-up to December 25th. We did our share this year, but with a measured effort. For the first time, I didn't decorate a tree, mostly because my schedule was too stressed and I knew in my mind it would come down to a question of taking time to dress up a tree or use that time for spending with friends, and quite frankly, myself. What they say is true, if you don't take care of yourself, you can't take very good care of others, and the season is all about giving of yourself and your time. And even if we weren't planning anything extraordinary for Christmas, I wanted it to be a good and comfortable one. The Mister and I were long overdue for the recharge.

So our big Christmas feast was shared by a few friends who came over and I made a heaping pile of spaghetti and meatballs. Extravagant, no? Mostly because some of our other friends made the clever suggestion to do a Flying Spaghetti Monster dinner party, a kind of internet meme secular feast. Also, spaghetti and meatballs is a pretty easy dish to make ahead of time, which was a good thing, since our Christmas dinner was a little touch and go -- a sudden windstorm knocked out the power for a short time and we were having flashback fears of a previous holiday when the storm knocked out power for days. Luckily, this was not the case. Power was restored, friends gathered, we drank several bottles of wine and totally carbed-out on pasta, bread and tiramisu for dessert.

Feast of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (with Meatballs!) - Photos by Wasabi Prime

You're seeing an Italian theme, albeit an Americanized variation. Everything revolved around the spaghetti and meatballs. I said that's what I was planning on making and everyone was happy to have it. Regardless of one's background, it's the one dish that evokes a lot of comforting childhood food memories, and maybe that helped make it a good holiday choice. Since neither the Mister nor I are particularly religious, there's no compelling ritual we adhere to outside of the fact that we just want everyone to have a good time and not feel like this was fancy. I was wearing fuzzy PJ pants through dinner! I made a big batch of antipasti, which was like a Kitchen Sink salad of everything -- artichoke hearts, fresh cucumber, roasted bell pepper, garbanzo beans, salami, cheese, all tossed together with some pesto and left to marinate in the fridge. I also made a tapenade to spread on toasted bread, made of sundried tomatoes, kalamata olives, capers and pistachios. I have to say, adding pistachios is fantastic for pesto -- gives it a nice sweetness and a nice alternative to the typical pine nuts.

Dinner was finished off with little tiramisu parfaits. A more personalized and pretty way of presenting dessert. Plus one of the people we had over was having a birthday -- sharing your big b-day with JC, that's a tough room, no? And a little tiramisu parfait looks just dandy with a little birthday candle in it. I used the basics of this tiramisu recipe from Epicurious, swapping out the traditional ladyfingers with sliced chunks of pound cake. Total cheat, yes, but tis the season to take shortcuts. Knowing the cake would be layered in a little glass, the ladyfingers would be too bulky and the smaller bits of cake made for even layering. And for the coffee sugar syrup, I used amaretto instead of marsala, which gave the cake a fragrant almond flavor - definitely doing that again. For as many times as I've eaten this dessert, it was the first time I'd ever made it, and I was really pleased with how it turned out. I could have eaten just the creamy mascarpone layer on its own!

Pesto is made best-o with chopped pistachios, a new tasty addition - Photos by Wasabi Prime

As for our Christmas at home, it was one that was becoming a growing tradition in our small household, since I've stopped spending the holidays with family. Brock and I wake up, we give our dog Indy a Christmas Morning snuggle (no different than other lazy weekend snuggles, but special all the same), and we have a good hearty breakfast. This Christmas breakfast was a taste of Hawaii -- I had made some Spam fried rice earlier and seared up some Portuguese sausage and fried some eggs to go with the rice. Not exactly the same as waking up to a tropical Christmas, but good enough. We stay in our cozy robes, having our very own Forever Lazy/Snuggie morning, opening presents and taking calls from family.


Christmas gifts galore, Indy is the happiest dog in the world - Photos by Wasabi Prime

We always give each other one special Christmas gift -- Brock got a membership to the Rare Beer of the Month club, so weirdo beers are starting to arrive to our house. I got a very special gift from the Mister -- all new cookware. He's a nut for researching products and chose a set of stainless steel, heavy-duty pots and pans. It wasn't the gazillion-piece set, where you wind up with odd-sized cookware you never use; he chose a select few pots and saucepans the size we'd use and not so heavy so that I couldn't easily handle and clean. To some, this may sound like a Bad Husband Gift, the bowling ball with "Homer" engraved on it, but it was really special to me because number one, I really needed new cookware, I've been using pots and pans from college, and number two, he knew I'd never have bought them for myself. He knows how I am -- any spare bit of money goes towards savings or bills; buying something like good quality cookware, despite how much I'd use them, would feel too extravagant. My brain tends to work this way: I have pots and pans, why buy new ones? Even if those ones I have are so old, the bottoms are totally warped to a curve and the handles are plastic, aka, not oven-safe (yet I put 'em in the oven anyways). I'm fairly sure the old nonstick coating flaked off ages ago, and it's just a miracle we haven't been poisoned or gone blind from some weird metal poisoning. Yeah, this new cookware is a total godsend! You totally rock, Mr. Wasabi!

Christmas goodies, including what everyone needs, an inflatable turkey - Photos by Wasabi Prime

And so another Christmas has come and gone. The madness of the holidays can subside for another three hundred and sixty-odd days until the decorated trees get propped up around September, or maybe even earlier next year. We didn't have a big decorated tree this year, but I didn't need to stare at it blankly, trying to find the spirit of Father Christmas somehow nestled in its pine needle-filled boughs. I'm thankful to find the holiday spirit so much easier these days, especially after this year minus the crutch of a big Christmas tree. It was found in the time spent with friends, silly and sweet gifts, food that's more familiar than fancy, and in the appreciation for changing traditions. I hope you all had a good holiday, no matter how you celebrate this season, and I hope you find the spirit of goodwill stays with you throughout the coming year.

UnRecipe: Yippie-Kai-Yay Holiday

The holidays are all about tradtion, so for as much holly-jolly spirit as one feels when Charlie Brown gets the pathetic twig of a tree for the Christmas pageant, or hearing Jimmy Stewart scream "Merry Christmas, everybody!!" as he runs through winter streets like a lunatic, or even the many warnings of "You'll shoot your eye out," traditions don't necessarily replace one another, they simply build and become like a collection of memories to call upon when the holidays come calling. This year was a first for the Prime -- after last year's icy-hell travel experience, I skipped traveling to spend Christmas with the parental-sans for the first in my thirty-odd years (I love my family, I know it's weird), and decided to start building some new traditions in my Pacific Northwest home.

Holiday dinner for eight... even though we only had six chairs - Photo by Wasabi Prime

I wasn't the only one staying home for the holidays -- several friends had no definite plans for the evening of the 25th and we opened our doors for another 'Fugee Holiday. Mr. Wasabi and I had a dinner for eight on our hands, so under the watchful eye of Miss Indy, the kitchen went into mad prep mode a few days in advance.

From the First Thanksgiving experience, along with previous large meal preparations, I've come to the same conclusion that many other home cooks probably discovered: it sucks to be sweating over the stove when guests are about. Plus it's no fun when everyone else has a cocktail in hand and you're stuck sweating over a skillet sizzling with hot oil. So despite preparation taking over previous days, it was worth doing as much of the work ahead of time, so all that needed to be done the day-of was warming things in the oven, a quick pan-sear and oven bake, and throwing items together at the last minute.

The dinner prep of Gibraltar, but it's worth doing in advance! - Photos by Mr. and Ms. Wasabi

Despite the UnRecipe header, I relied on two recipe books for the menu, based on their manageable ingredient list, what could be made ahead of time, and then some UnRecipe alterations along the way. The amazing local talent of Chef Jerry Traunfeld's The Herbal Kitchen provided a recipe for a salad of greens with wine-poached cherries, as well as an eye-poppingly rich chocolate pot de creme dessert. The main course was a roasted pork tenderloin with green lentils and root vegetables, by Szmania's Chef Ludger Szmania, from a book and program supporting nonprofit groups called Celebrated Chefs, which includes a collection of Seattle area restaurant recipes. I signed up and got the book months ago, but have only just begun to start cooking through some of the dishes -- for providing email and personal information, it's not a bad tradeoff, as the book is a nicely-bound hardback featuring recipes from good restaurants in the Seattle area. And I haven't been inundated with emails saying I have an inheritence from a long-lost relative in Nigeria, so I figure they can't be totally selling my information off.

Festive swine! Photo by Wasabi Prime

I couldn't help myself from modifying the tenderloin recipe by brining the pork first, using Thomas Keller's poultry brine recipe from Ad Hoc, which perfumes the meat with a nice citrus and parsley flavor. I doubled both the brine and the seasoning rub because I had two pork tenderloins, plus a small chicken. The lentil and root vegetables were cooked a day in advance, so all they needed was a reheat in the stove.

Among the other make-aheads included the decadent pot de creme chocolate custards, which I substituted Earl Grey tea for jasmine (more UnRecipe meddling!). Dried cherries with a bit of red wine and a sprig of thyme were poached a day in advance and kept in the fridge before being sprinkled over the salad. A bit of the holiday mulled cranberry spiced drink was made ahead of time as well. By making and preparing as much as possible, it left the seasoning and searing of the meats for Christmas Day, with a finish-off in the oven, which also reheated the lentils and vegetable side dish.

Getting our snack on with cheese, crackers and booze - Photos by Wasabi Prime

For appetizers, a large wheel of Brie was wrapped in store-bought puff pastry and baked until crisp the day-of. There was a bit of flourish added: I had had steeped balsamic vinegar with dried figs and a vanilla bean for a Christmas gift for Mr. Wasabi. Not wanting to waste anything, I kept the figs and chopped them small, sprinkling over the finished baked Brie with a drizzle of honey. The cheese was served with sliced apples and crackers brought by friend Sassy J. A mix of olives tossed with lemon zest and warmed in the oven were served as a savory snack, and an array of bubbly cocktails, wine from Miss Alice's collection, the mulled cranberry spiced wine, and homebrew beer from Mr. K were served. Let it never be said that the House of Wasabi doesn't like to get their drank on.

Winter salad where even the cherries were drunk on wine - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Once everyone had some snacks and a frosty beverage or three, salad, meats, and lentils were laid out. I will say having the oven keep everything warm and just setting everything out, already done, is a nice thing. When I watch cooking shows and the celebrity cooks and chefs flipping food in skillets to the amazement of their guests, I'm always kind of baffled. My friends like to sit, eat, drink, and relax -- and dammit, so do I, especially at my own home. So with some minor salad construction and plating the main courses on serving platters, it was time to get our grub on.

Pan-seared and baked pork tenderloin and chicken - roast beast was not available. Photos by Wasabi Prime

This was probably the largest sit-down dinner the Wasabi Household had hosted. We'll either do small dinners with friends or a big twenty-something gathering where it's more of a stand and wander while you snack. I much prefer smaller gatherings these days, but seating can be tricky when you only have six chairs. Mr. Wasabi solved this by creating the new tradition of casually gathering around the warmth of a large television to watch what we would like to consider a new Christmas classic. Nothing says "holiday" like watching Bruce Willis, circa 1988, with a lot more hair, running from Severus Snape and his band of Euro-terrorists in Die Hard.

Semi s'more dessert, way better than Twinkies - Photos by Wasabi Prime

With the power of  John McClane's action hero wit, we Mystery Science Theater-ed the hell out of this movie, calling out its holiday movie relevance at every turn: "Ho-ho-ho, now I have a machine gun," written on a recently deceased terrorist -- totally a Christmas movie. We balanced the wine and food with a wicked sugar high brought on by baked treats provided by good pal Miss SJBe and the chocolate pot de cremes. I had also made a batch of homemade marshmallows, not wanting the Epic Fail of a previous attempt to haunt my holiday steps forever. These mallows from Alton Brown's recipe were nowhere near perfect, but plopped atop each custard and hand-torched with the force of an explosive Nakatomi Tower, who the hell cares, as fire truly made it better. There was so much sugar being eaten, I think we could see into another dimension -- yippie-kai-yay, indeed.

Bruno wants to roast marshmallows - screencap from Die Hard/photos by Wasabi Prime

Sometimes traditions are just as much about breaking with the old and starting anew, even if they're a little off-kilter... and violent. While the holiday was tinged with a bit of sadness over missing Christmas with Wasabi Mom and Dad, creating new traditions with much beloved friends made for a very special holiday the Prime will not soon forget. Many, many thanks to the fabulous friends who made it out to the homestead to join us for a holiday dinner -- you made this Christmas at home so very special and happily memorable.