Monthly Archives: December 2007

New Year’s Eve 2007

Matt out on new year's eve 2007

Matt and Jon rolled in about 3:45 a.m. from their big night on the town in SF.  They went to see the fireworks display at the Embarcadero and then ate in Chinatown with Wesley and Ross and one other person, I think.  Matt sent us a bunch of video clips of the fireworks as we sat and watched TV while hacking at a wheel of brie.  We almost never go out on New Year’s Eve anymore given the traffic and hassle.  We figure we’re too old for that nonsense and have just as good a time with the annual Twilight Zone marathon on the SciFi channel – which now runs a full 48 hours.  At about 11:30 p.m. we always tune in to KRON 4’s totally lame-ass coverage of the evening’s events in the City, which was even more lame-ass this year given that the “party” was no longer at the Hyatt Regency and no longer an actual party but some sort of ridiculous dance contest at The Palace.  When the fireworks finally came on, they kept showing The Palace and a whole bunch of other nonsense when all we wanted to see was the fireworks.  Never again.

Great Szechuan in Richmond

Matt and I went to Pacific East Mall so he could make use of the new camera he got for Christmas.  He wants to Photoshop the inside of the mall, adding a monorail.  Lunch first, though, at Great Szechuan (3288 Pierce Street, Richmond) at the back of the mall.  I’ve written about this place before, but let me say again how authentic the food is.  Two dishes of note today:  Szechwan spicy fish ($9.95) and dry cooked chicken wings ($11,95).  The fish entree was generous beyond belief – a large number of deep-fried fillets of moist, white-fleshed fish served on a wooden tray under a mountain of chili peppers, jalapenos and a few red and green bell pepper chunks.  There was chili oil in there, too, and methinks the fish batter was laced with something hot, but this might have been my inability to detect exactly where the heat was coming from once I reached DEFCON 1 on the Scoville scale.  The wings were like salt and pepper wings, but much, much hotter.  Both dishes, though fried, were not greasy.   Both were flaming hot, but complex.  For example, the fish had plenty of whole Sichuan peppercorns on top that provided a nice numbing contrast.  Be sure to order plenty of rice to cut the heat.  If you drink water, it’ll just spread it around your palate.

Christmas Day 2007

Yorkshire puddings ready to serve

Christmas Day and we had two guests joining us for a prime rib dinner.  Accompaniments included Yorkshire pudding made right in the roasting pan while the meat rested, fresh buttered green beans, mashed potatoes and pan gravy.  We also had, as we do each year, jellied canned cranberry sauce – the kind that looks like burgundy dog food when you slide it out of the can.  I have always loved this and prefer it to those homemade whole berry relishes that people have with their holiday meals nowadays.  Maybe this has something to do with my dislike of berries, which might be traced back to my childhood.  My parents loved to pick berries, and I hated it.  I avoided going on drives with them during the summer unless there was a specific destination in mind, because they would inevitably make a pit stop when they spied wild berry bushes by the side of the road.  I would stay in the car and roast in the heat rather than chance being accosted by stinging bugs, which I was terrified of.  I certainly don’t mind homemade cranberry sauce as long as it is jellied or aspiced, is served cold and has no whole cranberries in it — but this kind hasn’t shown up with a holiday dinner guest since 1972.  I made plenty of Yorkshire pudding, spooning out beef fat from the roasting pan into two loaf pans so I would have two small extra ones in case the large one didn’t suffice.

Christmas Eve 2007

Christmas Eve spread

Christmas Eve, a happy day, but seemed like an anticlimax what with all the activity leading up to it, which I suppose you have to enjoy in its own right.  The bottom line is we suffered from some level of wurst lameness due to not ordering early enough.  The Christmas ordering deadlines for two of the German meat processors we usually order from were a few days earlier than usual, which meant we had to rely on Karl Ehmer for most of our pork products.  Karl Ehmer is very good, but they tend to use a little too much cure for my taste and so I like to round out the evening with other products that have less of that characteristic.  Karl Ehmer has free shipping for orders over $60, which is excellent, but they raised their prices to such an extent that they may not be the best deal anymore for a number of items, gratis shipping notwithstanding.  Next year I’ll have to get on the stick.  We were particularly unhappy with the lack of variety with liverwurst, which is a nonstarter for a German on Christmas Eve.  We supplemented the cold cuts with Cacio Stagionato al Tartufo, a cheese on the soft side of hard made from both sheep’s and cow’s milk with shaved white truffles.  It’s good but I would not buy it again, mainly because truffles in any kind of quantity seem to have an nauseating effect on me.  I have the same reaction to truffle oil drizzled on something – it’s powerful to me in the same way too many roasted garlic cloves are.  After awhile – bleh!  I don’t seem to have the same problem with Délice de Bourgogne, a marriage of cow’s milk and cream, which I served this evening at its peak of ripeness, which, for me, means running out of the package at the very center and then cream-cheesy toward the rind.  I seem to be able to eat quite a bit of that.  This triple cream indecency was dreamed up by 18th century food übermensch Brillat-Savarin.  If you want to go decadent, this is your cheese.  Once again my attempt to find langostinos, small crustaceans related to crabs, for a lobster-like salad, was foiled.  Simply not to be found, which is a shame, because these guys really taste like lobster and are less expensive and hassle-free in terms of prep.  I went with a basic shrimp salad instead.  The real indulgence this year was the $60 pound of prime filet mignon we had ground into tartare.  Shortly before the evening meal we mixed in some sea salt, fresh pepper and, further tempting a dance with food poisoning, a raw, organic, egg yolk.  We figured we employed due diligence in buying the best and the rest would be fate.

Smoked whitefish at Costco

Whitefish in shrink wrap sold at Costco in December 2007

Joy of joys, they started selling smoked whitefish at my Costco.  This is a cleaned whitefish that has been fully deboned, though the skin remains.  They put the two halves of the cleaned fish together in the package so it looks more or less like a whole fish.  My mother made some whitefish salad out of this, meaning she flaked the fish and mixed it with Hellman’s and a bit of sour cream.  Not bad, but this is one salty whitefish.  In fact, this is the saltiest smoked whitefish I ever bought.  If you can deal with that, and I can, since it is this or nothing, then give it a go.  I don’t know about your place, but working with smoked fish products here has the dog skidding into the kitchen.

Mom and the dog making whitefish salad in December 2007