Tuesday, December 25, 2012.
Christmas For Twenty-Five. In The Rain.
This Christmas was a lot like Thanksgiving. Mary Ann's sister Sylvia, who usually hosts the extended family on this day, is away with her son in Maryland. We're eager enough for visitors to the Cool Water Ranch to step into this breach, pull on our breeches, and get to work.
The coming of Jude's GF increased the need for our feast to look sharp. But we were falling behind almost as soon as we started. Although I only had four dishes to cook, they were all complex, and stretched our facilities to their limits.
It had been decided that we would have three major meats. First was prime rib, a classic dish for Christmas. Second, the root-beer-glazed ham. All our guests--even the ones who were here on Thanksgiving, when also baked our family ham--insist upon it. Third was a turkey. "In my family, we always had a turkey on every occasion," Mary Ann said. "I always looked forward to the next turkey dinner."
I began around six-thirty to fire up the Big Green Egg. While it heated up, I seasoned the prime rib. Four bones across, a major fat cap, a nice spinalis section. Not much went on it: salt and pepper, mostly, with a little Creole seasoning. When the temperature in the pit reached 350, into it went the roast.
Now the ham. My plan was for it to share the bottom oven with the rib roast at around 250 degrees for as many hours as I could keep it there. But the ham needed some 375-degree time to itself at the beginning, to set the glaze and the dry mixture of brown sugar, ginger, and mustard.
Meanwhile, back at the rib roast, enough fat had coated the charcoal that a blast of flames blew out when I opened the Egg. Almost enough to singe my hair. I expected this, but perhaps not as dramatic. Dialing back both top and bottom vents brought things under control. I turned the beef, then went after the turkey.
Dump the brine, rinse the bird, jam the cavity with fruits, vegetables and herbs, season the exterior. The turkey was ready to go where the beef was currently residing. A few more turns of the beef had it well-browned, its surface actually bubbling here and there. Temperature on the inside: fifty degrees. Just what I wanted. Time for the long, slow oven roasting to keep that wonderful, juicy, soft interior.
Getting the beef into the oven with the ham wasn't easy--not enough room in there. But once I had them both in there, they would coexist perfectly at the lowered 225 degrees. A Chisesi VIP ham (which is what I use) is ready to eat as it comes from the market. The baking step just changes its texture and flavor. But that could be done slowly.
It all would have been perfect had things progressed the way I thought they would. But after five hours in the oven, neither the beef nor the roast were near to being ready. I would not find out until tomorrow why the roasting was taking so much time.
With the roast in the oven, the Egg was now ready to start working on the turkey. I can do that in my sleep--this is something like my fiftieth turkey smoke-roasted this way. At least this one thing would be right.
From the opportunities I've had to work in restaurant kitchens, the most important lesson I took away was that if you don't clean up your space as you go, you are heading for a crisis. I was doing okay until around noon. That's when I began doing nothing but cleanup, and very little cooking. The Marys were taking full advantage of my cleanup imperative, and then some. No matter how fast I worked, the counters and the sinks collected a rising tide of used pans, wrappers, food, plates, and other detritus.
Fortunately, all I had left on my list was (I thought) the bread pudding. A stale French bread loaf left over from Thanksgiving and an equally stale challah with raisins would have made a great pudding. If only we had more than a dozen eggs remaining from what I thought was a large supply. And so it was that I learned again the keys to great bread pudding: a) making twice as much of the custard mixture as your instincts call for, and 2) baking it in a slow oven for a couple of hours. I could do neither today. The Marys were clamoring for the use of the top oven. The bottom one was impossibly clogged with a ham and a rib roast.
And Mary Ann wanted me to do something like Drago's char-broiled oysters with the mammoth, beautiful, eminently delicious oysters Sal Sunseri had delivered to me a few days ago. The recipe was quick and easy, but it needed full broiler heat from the oven. That would force out everything else from the top oven for a few minutes.
The Marys gave me withering looks. How does Dad come to have complete command of all of the oven space? I had no good answer. None of what I was preparing could be done in advance. Certainly not the oysters. I just hurried along and kept working on the mountain of dirty pots and pans.
I would never catch up. When such a thing happens, the only thing to do is send out your best shot. In this case, it was the oysters, bubbling in garlic and herb butter. Great reviews came forth on that. MA filled the table with her usual overkill of side dishes, dips, breads, and sausages. Nobody was going hungry. Some people were going thirsty, because I'm apparently the only person in my extended family who knows how to open a bottle of wine.
I took the ham out at about two and started carving it. The turkey was also ready. (I will never understand how the Egg can smoke a perfect turkey in three hours, when at the same temperature the grill it replaced took six or seven.) The rib roast was at 135 degrees inside. The sample I tried was everything I was hoping for in texture and flavor. But too rare for this crowd. I had to put it back into the oven and crank up the heat to 400. Why was the oven not getting the job done? (Answer tomorrow.)
I gave up on cleaning the kitchen, poured myself a glass of wine, and flopped down onto the sofa for the first time all day. The crowd seemed to be happy. The turkey and ham received their usual accolades. I did a better job than usual with carving the turkey.
When the roast finally reached medium, the cutting board was a mess, but the results were fine. Still juicy, still very flavorful. It had a lot of marbling, which at $82 it better damn well have.
The bread pudding was a disaster. Not enough custard. Not only that, but the meringue (my mother's special touch, which I preserve assiduously) rose so high that it got hooked on the oven rack above it. It looked terrible and was very dry. I took it out of circulation almost immediately before I put it out there. We had many other sweets anyway.
The weather was not good. It rained all day, occasionally in torrents. Jude's GF said that the lightest rain she'd seen today would be considered a deluge in her Los Angeles hometown, and the more drenching periods unthinkable--like something you'd only see on television.
The weather ran most of our guests off early, barely after dark. We had vastly too much food, which I think may make it all seem less appetizing than if we'd has half as much. I will try to remember that for the next time we have a feast at the Cool Water Ranch.
