Hi, beautiful friends and family! Happy and belated New Year!!!!! My first order of business is to ask your forgiveness for my absence. If you can imagine the Tazmanian Devil with tinsel, sugar, wrapping paper and mennorah candles swirling around him, then you will understand my holiday season! But it was a lovely kind of madness. The holiday tree (combination of Christmas tree and Chanukkah bush) Greg and I make every year at his apartment consists mainly of animals hanging off of every branch. Our tree represents everything we love :-) I have to laugh when I realized that I, Jewish lady, had many more Christmas ornaments than my Catholic boyfriend! But they are mostly tiny stuffed cows, dogs, several kitties represent some of the angels that are no longer with us and the ones that are. We have a couple of Snoopy's alter ego, Joe Cool, a pink plastic donut from Dunkin' and of course, Greg's Patriots and Yankees ornaments! Beneath our fantastic tree was a sea of beautifully wrapped gifts in every shape and size. Santa Claus and Chanukkah Harry were very good to us this year!
The food was, as usual, amazing! I get the unique experience of a Ukranian Christmas Eve dinner at Greg's family's house. We began with his aunt's unbelievable borsht. A beet should only be so lucky as to reach it's full potential in a borsht like this!
Then his mom's simply prepared lightly fried cod. Next were the potato pierogis with its amazing blanket of golden brown sauteed onions and a dollop of fresh sour cream. As Christmas Eve is a no meat holiday (yay!) I enjoyed the next course...vegetarian stuffed cabbage filled with mushrooms and rice! I loved the whole meal because it wasn't a big gluttonous affair with nineteen dishes. It was clean and simple and left me with enough energy to open a couple of gifts later that night!
My contribution to that evening was my Vanilla Bean Cake. This is a recipe from the book by NY Times food writer, Amanda Hesser, called "Cooking for Mr. Latte" who clearly agrees with me that cooking is a very effective way to seduce a man ;-) It's a really simple recipe but the vanilla beans make it extraordinary. Beware... they are expensive! (Even the lady who works at the CT Stop and Shop warned me of this!) Here it is:
Preheat the oven to 325 degrees and heavily butter two loaf pans. Cream together 3 sticks of softened unsalted butter and 2 1/2 cups of sugar until pale and fluffy. Scrape one of your precious vanilla beans into the mixture (slice carefully down the length of your bean, then take your knife and scrape out all the good black "paste" that is inside until the bean is scraped clean), then add 1 Tablespoon pure vanilla extract and 8 large eggs. Beat to mix.
Next, sift 3 Cups unbleached flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon salt into a seperate bowl. Add to batter gently and mix it all together slowly and gently. Pour this gorgeous mixture into your two pans and bake for 25-40 minutes until the top if lightly brown and a cake tester (toothpick for me) comes out clean.
Of course this recipe comes with a fantastic vanilla syrup to drizzle over it and then on each slice while serving. In small saucepan, dissolve 1 3/4 Cups of sugar in 1 Cup of water over medium heat, stirring gently to help it dissolve. Take two vanilla beans and slice them down the center and scrape out the magic seeds and place both seeds and shell into the sugar syrup and stir for a couple of minutes until you can smell the vanilla. Turn off heat and let it sit so that the vanilla flavor can really develop. No, don't drink this...put down the spoon! Brush some of this liquid gold onto the cakes while they are cooling. When you serve it, you can drizzle a little over each slice. Enjoy!
On Christmas Day we had our big feast. Greg's mom spoiled us with her amazing vegetable dishes...squash cooked with cream and mushrooms, roasted brussels sprouts, golden brown potatoes and my potatoes gratin. Every Christmas I immerse thinly sliced potatoes in heavy cream and sauteed onions and cook them until tender. Then they are placed in a glass baking dish with a generous layer of grated Gruyere cheese on top to bake until the cheese melts and lightly browns. What's not to like about that?
We finished it off with tea and my second loaf of Vanilla Bean cake and an Italian Panettone cake....not the yucky one with the candied fruit but a nice one with powdered sugar dusted on top that reminded me of brioche. Wikipedia tells me that it is a sweet bread loaf which originated in Milan, Italy and is usually enjoyed on Christmas in many European countries such as France, Germany and Switzerland (and of course Italy!) I remember its appearance every year growing up with my Sicilian friend in Canarsie, Brooklyn. I owe the begining of my love affair with food to her family. The Gagliano family introduced me to things such as espresso and calamari when I was 14 yrs old and I was fascinated and attracted to it all. Maybe that explains my love of the European traditions I get to enjoy today with Greg's Ukranian family.
So thus ends my Christmas Story and no one had to wear a pink bunny costume...hahaha! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and now we can relax for a bit until Valentine's Day when we can discuss homemade truffles and chocolate dipped strawberries....or you can google your closest Godiva. It's all good.
Peace out....happy eating!
Robina
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