Infused with the holiday spirit, I’ve found myself putting eggnog-type flavorings in everything lately, including these French crepes I made for breakfast.
They’d be equally good for dessert, perhaps with a dash of rum in the warmed maple syrup on top?
Here’s the recipe, which makes 8 thin crepes:
My family, while I grew up in Iowa in the 1970's, had no traditions save one. For 364 dinner days of the year, it was my mother who performed culinary magic at home. (Today her dinners would be heralded by food critics as tempura-style but back then it was just “frying floured foods in fat”.) Her lipid of choice was Crisco but on Christmas Eve the can of Crisco was put away and my father took out the stew pots.
My father, who was a local politician, positively beamed with pride at his singular culinary contribution for the year which was an appealing to no one constituency menu of homemade chili, homemade oyster stew, and store bought pickled herring. He had taken shrapnel at the Battle of the Bulge in WWII and perhaps this affected his judgment but nevertheless he fancied himself a gourmand and this menu was his pride and joy.
Jeff and I have been starving ourselves for the past few days. Well, not actually starving. We did have our morning coffee. Oh, and I sneaked in a couple of double chocolate pomegranate cookies yesterday. But those don't count. I was recipe testing.
Why are we starving ourselves? Because on Christmas Eve night, we will be enjoying a traditional Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. That means fried calamari, fried smelts, and crab cakes. Snail salad, bacala (a dried, salted fish), and shrimp cocktail. (Those are just the starters.) Then comes the pasta. Two types of pasta, actually -- one with mixed seafood including shrimp, scallops, and lobster; the other with olive oil, clam sauce, and parsley. Then we'll finish with jumbo stuffed shrimp and garlicky broccoli rabe.
It’s the holiday season and along with sipping cocoa by the fire, it’s the perfect time to cozy up with a good book. We thought we’d take the time to share some classic titles for your twelve days of Christmas. Maybe we’ll introduce you to a new title or two.
A Christmas Carol
How the Grinch Stole Christmas
The Elf on the Shelf by Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell – If you’re a parent of tiny children, you probably have embraced this new Christmas tradition of inviting one of Santa’s elves to help keep an eye on what’s going on around the house.
My son Ethan and I once tried to cook our way through Jamie Oliver’s
Italy—he was going off to school and had some delusional fantasy that
there would be a kitchen in his dorm (not!) and that he would be able
to cook for his friends and his girlfriends and somehow simulate some
of the cuisine he was accustomed to... It was great. Everything we
made was perfect. I don’t even like swordfish and Jamie Oliver’s
swordfish is one of the best things I’ve ever had. He thinks “fruit is
lovely”, he uses words like “drizzle” and you sort of feel like he’s in
the kitchen with you.
So, I was really excited when Jamie Oliver’s new book “Jamie at Home” arrived in the mail. And it’s xmas and it’s chaotic and I haven’t had time to even begin to cook my way through it. But I’m really pleased that they’re allowing us to excerpt some of Jamie Oliver’s new recipes.
We’re going to try his recipe for Orchard Eve Pudding at our Xmas dinner.
