Since I realized I've totally forgotten to post about any of them! So here's the whole Christmas-to-New Years week in one photo-bomb of a post, with commentary!
These were the cookies we made for our attempt to keep to the tradition of making cookies. Oatmeal scotchies--they turned out perfectly, except that the recipe on the oatmeal tin said to cook them for sixteen to nineteen minutes and these were cooked for barely ten; more and they would have been charcoal!
Apparently, the family up here has a tradition of spaghetti dinners on Christmas Eve, and since there were so many people here this year, my sister decided to add chicken parm to the mix to make it more substantial. It was DELICIOUS. She did the usual flour-eggwash-Italian breadcrumbs thing to the chicken, then fried them until they got golden, then finished them in the oven, and it kept the chicken tender and juicy. We each got two chicken boobs, and I could have gladly eaten, like, at least one more and maybe more than that!
This was the brother's idea, since he and dad also have a tradition of coming up with a new drink for each holiday. This was a Dark Mojito--made like a regular one, but with a little more sugar and lime, and with that new Captain Morgan Black Spiced Rum. It tasted sort of like a really grown-up cream soda, which was unexpected, but it was SO GOOD. And huge, as you can see.
Guava paste and cream cheese on galletas!
Yellow plantains / platanos! Bro made these before dinner and they were gone in minutes. The plantains were very ripe, but just enough under black that they were crispy and chewy and sweet, very caramelized by the frying, and not at all slimy or squishy, which platanos tend to be. And which is why I usually prefer the green ones. You make them by frying them, draining them, then frying them again until they're almost black.
Cuban Feast! When Gramma H and Abuela and Nino (gramma's brother) were alive, we had almost exactly this every year on Christmas Day, and since they're all gone and we're all moved away, we decided to add it to our rotation and keep the tradition going. Because well-made Cuban food is something close to heaven!
This is, from the top and going clockwise:
- Mojo slow-cooker pork that sister made - I don't know what all goes into it, but there were onions, garlic, orange juice and green herbs in the pot
- Tostones / green plantains - made like the yellow ones, but before the second frying, you squish them flat.
- Picadillo bro made - the kind with no potatoes and two different kinds of raisins so that it's a little sweet as well as savory; he made it the day before so that it'd sit in the fridge and marry, and so the raisins would rehydrate with the tomato-y sauce and become little bombs of wonderfulness. The leftovers were even better!
- My black beans and rice - soak the beans overnight, then replace the water and cook for hours with a whole head of garlic, a big onion, scads of cumin, salt and pepper, and a few bay leaves; keep adding seasoning until it doesn't taste just like onions and water, and it sort of all magically comes together after about two hours.
We're talking about adding Ropa Vieja and Yucca next year!
Flan! This is the second time mom has made it, and it's not yet as creamy and delicate as Abuela's, but the flavor is amazing and it gets better every year. This recipe involved cooking down milk because we couldn't get cream, and it made ten of these ramekins. The caramel seized up on us TWICE and we finally made it without any water and it turned out perfect.
Leftover blackbeans and rice with Sazon-Garlic-Lime chicken. The beans were good for almost a week after Christmas--I made enough to serve at a restaurant!--and the chicken was just cooked on the stove with all the stuff in the pan. We shredded it to make it go further, and it was so much more orange than this picture lets on. And delicious.
New Years Chicken and Dumplings! Made from memory of H's recipe, and I think I did pretty well. Next year, if we have more people (as we might), I think I'll make two chickens and start sooner in the day; chicken didn't have time before we deboned it, and I burned my fingers a lot, and there was just enough for each of us to have one plate without seconds or leftovers, and I'd feel better if we had more wiggle room. But it went over fabulously--A, a good Southern boy, loved it, the baby ate as much as a grownup, Mom said she hadn't had any since her mom used to make it when she was a kid and it was as good as she remembered, and so on.
And pie! These were just frozen cream pies--banana and chocolate--and the choc defrosted perfectly while the banana stayed frozen, so we had icy naners and smooth chocolate, but they were both tasty!
And now we're back to barely subsisting, though me and mom have decided that we're going to cook at least one decent meal a week when I get back, and we're going to try out recipes from all over the world. First up is France, sometime after Rez.
