New Year's Eve 2020

Another 2020 holiday - you know the deal, we spent it by ourselves but had a lot of fun cooking and watching the annual Phish concert. On to the pics!

For the main item on the menu, we settled on a traditional standing rib roast, which Leah's family normally eats on Christmas day. I was already leaning toward this idea when I saw Alton Brown's timely post for his recipe, which cinched it due to the inclusion of Yorkshire pudding.

Step one entailed air-drying the roast for a week in the refrigerator, before seasoning and placing into a 250F oven until the internal temperature reached 118F, which was about 2 1/2 hours. 

Once the roast was cooked through, we pulled it out to rest. In the meantime we got to work on the Yorkshire pudding, using the roast drippings and rendered beef fat in both the batter and the pan. This conveniently baked for the same duration that the roast rested. 

While all that was going on, I prepared the ingredients for our other side dish, a classic Caesar salad. Not much work here, just some lettuce prep, dressing making, and crouton baking. 

When the Yorkshire pudding was finished, we pulled it out and set it aside, then returned the rested roast to the oven, cranked up the heat to 550F, and blasted it for ten minutes to sear the outside. This method worked absolutely perfectly, yielding a delicious brown crust. The best part is that since the roast was already cooked through internally and had sat for 30 minutes, it required no further resting - we were able to go straight from the oven to slicing, so we each got a hot, crisp piece. Thanks Alton! 

The only downside was the massive amount of smoke that filled our apartment...

Walter Gibson

Old Home Distillers Gin

Tito's Vodka

Old Home Distillers Applejack

Dolin Dry Vermouth

Cocchi Americano

Simple Syrup

Cocktail Onions

I previously mixed this same cocktail on Christmas Eve. The recipe came courtesy of the NoMad Bar, where Leah and I enjoyed the drink back on New Year's Eve in 2017, but since theirs has a few esoteric ingredients (like pineapple gomme), I had to make some substitutions, listed above. 

Caesar Salad

Romaine

Homemade Caesar Dressing

Sourdough Croutons

Pecorino Romano

Standing Rib Roast

Yorkshire Pudding

Horseradish-Chive Cream

Happy wife, happy life

A shot of our beautiful New Year's Eve spread - I think we did a pretty good job! 

Bûche de Noël

Tequila-Soaked Sponge

Coffee Buttercream Filling

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Cold Brew Coffee w/ Frangelico

We ate the last two slices of Bûche de Noël for dessert, along with a cold glass of strong coffee with booze - a great end to a great meal!

And of course it wouldn't be New Year's Eve without a champagne toast, although we opened ours around 8pm when the Phish show started rather than at midnight. I can't remember what we actually drank - it was a bottle that had been sitting unopened in our fridge for months, likely something a friend brought over earlier in the year.

Either way, a great end to a not so great year!

Christmas 2020

As with Thanksgiving, we spent Christmas solo this year. Though we missed our families, it was also an opportunity to plan our own meals, which turned out to be a lot of fun. 

Christmas Eve

Christmas Cookies

A huge pre-holiday care package of Christmas Cookies from my mom!

Pre-Dinner Cocktails

Left - Walter Gibson

Right - Manhattan

Fritto Misto

Fried Calamari, Shrimp, and Scallops

Marinara Sauce & Anchovy-Caper Mayo

Fish on Christmas Eve is a big deal for my family, which spent many years doing the traditional southern Italian Feast of the Seven Fishes. Leah and I of course didn't prepare all seven, but we managed to get four in (though the anchovies are more of a technical inclusion). I loved the next course but would have also been perfectly happy eating fried fish all night. 

Poached Salmon

Hollandaise

Fried Skin

Herb-Buttered Potatoes

Peas

For the main course we observed Leah's family's tradition of eating poached salmon with Hollandaise sauce. Since we already had the deep fryer out from preparing the fried fish appetizer, we blasted the salmon skin and made some delicious chips to go along with the meal. 

Bûche de Noël

Tequila-Soaked Sponge

Coffee Buttercream Filling

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

Another pickup from Leah's family, and one of my all-time favorite desserts. Though we used Leah's mom's recipe, we customized the flavors to our liking, which was fun to brainstorm. We ultimately settled on tequila, coffee, and chocolate, which was a delicious combination. Leah expertly rolled the cake without any tearing, showing those chumps on the Great British Baking Show how it's done. We enjoyed eating this dessert for about a week after the holiday - our slices became progressively larger as we made our way through the log. 

Christmas Day

Fried Fish "Kaftero"

For lunch on Christmas Day we heated up the remaining fried fish in a dry non-stick skillet, which did a decent job at re-crisping it all. I remembered serving (and eating) a delicious dish at the Tenafly Diner, where I worked years ago, called Calamari Kaftero - they would drop calamari straight from the fryer into a hot pan along with chilies and lemon. We tried a similar version here, adding pickled jalapeños, chili flakes, and capers. It was a fantastic way to eat the leftovers. 

Lasagna

Homemade Pasta

Bolognese, Béchamel, & Marinara Sauces

Pecorino Romano

Lasagna is my family's Christmas Day dish, and one of my favorite things in the world - it would probably be my deathbed meal. Our lasagna is Neapolitan, meaning it has a lot of "fancy" stuff in it - tiny meatballs, two types of sausage, bits of salami, finely diced hardboiled egg, multiple cheeses, and "gravy" (marinara sauce flavored with meat). It's pretty over-the-top and eats like a brick, in the best way possible.

On my own though, I like to make a different type of lasagna from northern Italy using thin sheets of homemade pasta layered with small amounts of Bolognese and béchamel sauces and a bit of grated cheese (here I also added marinara sauce, which is untraditional). 

I had originally planned on baking this using the free-standing method developed by Mark Ladner for his famous 100-layer lasagne at Del Posto. However I screwed up the pasta dough somehow (I think I over-kneaded) and it became too tough to properly roll out, leaving me with only about a quarter batch of usable pasta for all my work. It wasn't a total loss though, as there was enough to bake one small lasagna which was plenty to share for one meal.

As they serve it at Del Posto, we lightly baked the lasagna in advance, then refrigerated it until ready to eat. At meal time, we cut thick slices and seared them in butter on one side in a hot pan, creating a delicious crispy crust that contrasts with the almost creamy inner pasta layers. Served over warm marinara sauce and topped with a bit more grated cheese, it was heavenly. Though it if were my last meal, I'd still probably want my mom's lasagna. 

Turkey Soup

Just a couple quick pics of the turkey stock and soup I made with our leftover Thanksgiving bird. Stock made with the turkey carcass, onions, garlic, celery, carrots, parsley, thyme, rosemary, salt, and peppercorns. For the soup itself, we used the picked turkey carcass meat, carrots, onions, parsley, and egg noodles. Honestly, way more delicious than the turkey by itself!