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:
We have a traditional Christmas dinner. We've been doing it for twenty-two years. There are fourteen people involved – eight parents and six children – and we all get together at Jim and Phoebe's during
Christmas week to exchange presents and make predictions about events
in the coming year.
Each of us brings part of the dinner. Maggie brings the hors
d'oeuvres. Like all people assigned to bring hors d'oeuvres, Maggie
is not really into cooking, but she happens to be an exceptional
purchaser of hors d'oeuvres. Joe and Phoebe do the main course
because the dinner is at their house. This year they're cooking a
turkey. Jane and I were always in charge of desserts. Jane's
specialty was a wonderful bread pudding. I can never settle on just
one dessert, so I often make three – something chocolate (like a
chocolate cream pie), a fruit pie (like a tarte tatin) and a
traditional plum pudding which no one ever eats but me. I love
making desserts for Christmas dinner, and I have always believed that I
make excellent desserts. But now that everything has gone to hell and
I've been forced to replay the last twenty-two years of Christmas
dinners, I realize that the only dessert anyone ate with real
enthusiasm was Jane's bread pudding; no one ever said anything complimentary about any of mine. How I could have sat through Christmas dinner all this time and not realized
this simple truth is one of the most puzzling aspects of this story.
I associate mail order food with my father. When I was growing up, he and I had very few connections. He took me to only one professional football game. He never came to Back-to-School Night and had no interest in any of my hobbies. I remember him as dour, not very talkative and disapproving. I was part of his second family and he was, I’m certain, just a bit too old to have a young kid running around.
Added to that, my father was burdened by tragedy. He was the eldest son of a prosperous Jewish family in Odessa on the Black Sea. Unfortunately when the Russian Revolution swept across the country, Bolsheviks rampaged through his neighborhood, lining up and shooting many people, including my father’s family. Being Jewish and well-to-do were two strikes too many at a time when “line them up against the wall” was taken literally.
Luckily for my father, when all this happened, he was studying at the University of Kiev. He learned later that his mother had survived because she had very thick hair. When she was shot at point blank range, the gunpowder was apparently so weak that the bullet merely lodged in her hair, knocking her unconscious and otherwise leaving her unharmed. My father never returned home to Odessa, having been told that he needed to flee the country, which he promptly did.
Elegant Entertaining
by Holly Palance
All I want for Christmas is my caviar pie. Which is a jolly good thing, since it's the only dish I take joy in creating.
Born without the cooking gene, my talent was always for producing and managing parties, until Brent Power, my best friend from grade school served up a delectable dip Christmas Eve 1982 at my wedding shower and I was hooked. I actually broke down, copied the recipe (my first ASK ever) and have been serving it and bringing it as my pot luck contribution ever since to ooh's and ahh's.
Ina Garten’s Roasted Eggplant Spread
Leek & Saffron Broiled Oysters
Here in Maine we await a "super storm" that is huge and rushing across the United States, or so they say. Six to twelve inches of snow, turning to freezing rain with high winds. Sounds like Winter weather in Maine, not too unusual. It isn't the size of the storm it's what you find to make it fun that counts and I have a plan to enjoy it! In between plowing I will be making our Mother's tortiere pies and perhaps having a slice for lunch and another with a pot of hot tea in the afternoon to warm up.
What is tortiere pie? To my family it is a ground pork and beef pie flavored with chopped onions, spices and thickened with mashed Maine potatoes then put into a double butter crust. I said my family, the Gagne family, my Mother's recipe, made the same way for at least 5 generations. It isn't like the Belanger's who add no beef just pork, a totally different spice mixture and a Crisco crust or the Bourassa family that adds small chunks of pork instead of ground pork, they add no potatoes, quatre spice and a lard pastry crust.