Today I'm thinking about cookery. I just finished reading My Life in France, by Julia Child, and in light of our Christmas dinner debacle, I am thinking back to a time when I just plain did not see the point of cooking. Don't get me wrong, I love food. And not in that, I'd eat a dozen donuts if no one was looking way. I love it in the way that, if invited to dine with good people (gourmands of my own type) at a good restaurant (good based on my own criteria) I'd hock jewelry or max a credit card to do so, especially if there was the chance of a tasting menu with wine pairings.
Now I married someone who likes to cook and who is very good at choosing recipes. He has a subscription to Bon Appetit and has never thrown away one issue in over 12 years, as far as I can tell. Sometimes I find very old, crusty and stained issues on the kitchen counter and realize they were originally sent to a wife he isn't married to anymore, at an address he left when the boy was 6 or 7 (Boy is now nearly 18.) But a recipe does not exactly go out of date. Sometimes on Top Chef a judge like Gail (Editor at Large for Food and Wine) will say some dish reminds her of the 1990's. Well, okay - food goes in and out of fashion, like the episode of Friends where Monica meets her soul-mate and both proclaim sun-dried tomatoes are "so last year," but really, if you like sun dried tomatoes in the first place, have you ever really stopped eating them? Not as long as you can still find them at the supermarket, I'm willing to bet.
But I digress. Despite the fact that Man had been planning on cooking Christmas dinner, I lobbied for a change. He was going to make beef, and that brought up all kinds of those Christmas memories for me that are the kind that make people hate Christmas and stop speaking to their relatives. I don't hate Christmas and still speak to my relatives but it's still a matter of some sensitivity that years ago when I did not eat red meat, my mother would persist in doing a giant prime rib because my brother-in-law (who is Jewish!) seemed to like it. So, I would fly 2300 miles through crowded airports to celebrate this holiday by "filling up on sides." Vegetarians have to do this all the time, I know - and I have lobbied for one of my nieces, based upon my own experience of how absolutely dreary it is to "feast" on potatoes sans gravy, rolls (which may or may not be from Costco or Sam's Club, since the only reason they're on the table is to fill you up), a micro-waved vegetable and if you're lucky, maybe a decent salad of some fashion.
Man wasn't particularly happy about the change of plans, and wanted no part in collaboration. So, after I interviewed Boy on his dietary preferences (lamb or duck was okay) I checked out the internet and ventured out shopping, 3 days before Christmas. Well, it's been snowing here, a lot. I drive a small car and it's not terrible in snow, but it's no SUV. The biggest issue is that when there's a lot of snow and the plows come, the hills of plowed snow make it difficult to see around corners. This was something I experienced six times, in entering and leaving parking lots of 3 different stores, including one actual meat market, a long way apart, without either lamb chops or duck breast, growing more and more upset at each turn.
Now one of the things we discussed having was the item I was most fond of for Christmas dinner the whole time I lived in Seattle: salmon. The food I like best to celebrate with on my birthday is Alaskan King Crab. These two items I encountered in solidly frozen and in the case of the salmon, heartily smoked form, in abundance at both the grocery stores. No duck breasts were to be had anywhere, and although there were numerous legs of lamb, I found nary a chop! (My mother had ironically selected salmon as her own main dish this Christmas.) The sight of those mountains of ice-coated crab legs just depressed me to no end. I got extremely homesick ("This would never happen in Seattle!") and when I arrived empty handed back at the house, I told Man I hated living in the MidWest, this was a stupid place where there was no good food and I didn't know why anyone lived here at all. Then I burst into tears. He agreed to go to Woodman's (where we mistakenly believe they "have everything!") and came back with...nothing, except a new opinion on the price of goose. I went back to the web, tearfully resigned not to cook either delicious recipe I'd previously chosen, and
was convinced eventually I could make a whole duck. It would feed 3 and I might as well, since there wasn't anything else left in the stores anyway. Later a whole frozen duck appeared in the refrigerator, and Man spent the rest of the evening commenting on the price of goose (which I gather is outrageously high.)
Well, I cooked it. You are instructed to pierce the entire duck with a skewer to render the fat. I guess I didn't understand how much fat we were talking about here. It was a lot of fat, so much so that I was pouring it off every 20 minutes as instructed and feeling that the bird was out of the oven more than it was in the oven. Essentially, it's pretty easy to cook a duck, but in the end, it's just not really that worth it. Sure, potatoes cooked in the rendered fat later were good, but the duck itself was so unappetizing after having spent the better part of my day with it, and it's grease, I was ready to order Chinese food. It was much harder to carve than a chicken or a turkey, just because there's all that duck fat - the carving fork got away from me, the knife was slicked with oiliness and I my hands were so slippery it was difficult to grab a leg and remove it. It's a miracle no one was hurt. But no, it's not hard to cook a duck, seriously! It's just hard to eat it after you've cooked it. There's not much meat on a duck, but we had an okay meal. Not really a feast of any manner, since I once again found myself tempted to "fill up on sides."
There are many among my readers (if I have readers!) who will find my tail of woe just disgusting. I know most of my friends from days gone by aren't going to be happy that I even looked for lamb chops, but I'd like to point out that the first time I ate a lamb chop I was at
Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, and that was just what they were serving that night - I had very little choice, I was an invited guest! (Although filling up on sides at Chez Panisse would raise the whole practice up a big notch.) I don't know when the first time I ate duck was, but I suspect it was somewhere nearly as important. I do not argue with the menus of chefs who have changed our entire way of eating as Americans. Also, living, as I do, here in the dreaded midwest, I actually have been to the fair and seen those 4H lambs being raised by children whose parents are just praying their knees off that the kids will want to stay and run the family farm. Karma gets real tricky when you know farmers personally.
I know I should just be happy to have Christmas dinner at all. Sides to fill up on are a true luxury. All the leftovers were really delicious (because Man got out the Emeril Lagasse cookbook and generated magic, bless him!) and now that the oven has been cleaned and no longer smells of duck, I know I will order it at restaurants in the future, if I'm lucky enough to find it on the menu. We will remember this Christmas dinner at our house. And next year go back to beef. I think we're going to look up a good recipe for hot gin punch, too, as it seemed to make the Cratchits feel a lot better about their extremely small (and apparently deceptively priced) goose.
