Christmas Confidential

Last year Matt, Karina, and I began a Christmas dinner tradition over at there place that included all the Puerto Rican customs.  This year, we expanded the event to a two day sleepover extravaganza, starting Christmas Eve.  Most of the Puerto Rican traditions fell to the wayside except my favorite, coquito, Puerto Rican eggnog.  I sipped away on the creamy drink and watched my favorite Christmas movies while Karina prepared the rest of the meal.

The first things to come out of the oven were biscuits with Toscano cheese and fig butter.  This was a wonderful appetizer that was a nice step up from the rolls that you usually see on the Christmas table.  The sweet fig butter worked well with the firm, salty cheese.  Once we finished those, Karina had a tomato/mozzarella salad ready that was the perfect grab-and-go.  It was nice having something on toothpicks so we could run back and forth between the kitchen and the living room since watching movies like A Christmas Story, Love Actually, and Elf are as much a part of the Christmas celebration as Jesus.  The third dish was brussels sprouts in maple syrup with pomegranate seeds.  This was probably my favorite item of the night.  In addition to being a new, sweet preparation of the vegetable, it was just so festively red and green.  True, I intentionally dressed in Christmas colors for dinner, but it's nice to see the food did the same.  While we munched on the sprouts, I popped my contribution to the meal into the oven: an asparagus, onion, and goat cheese tart.  I'm a big fan of puff pastry these days because once it thaws, there are all sorts of things that can be done with it.  The middle of the tart didn't get as flaky as I would have liked, but I was pleased with the overall result.  The main course was cod and onions in a tomato, white wine, saffron, and pine nut sauce.  I will definitely be making this one on my own.  Saffron is an expensive spice, but it made all the difference in this dish.  There may have been six courses by this point (I'm counting coquito as a course because it's so thick and rich), but it was vegetable-heavy so we didn't feel overstuffed.  Finally, we each had a couple mugs of Matt's homemade hot buttered bourbon cider.  The cloves and cinnamon made the whole house smell like Christmas and the butter made the drink lip-smacking.  It wasn't long before the bourbon kicked in and we were all ready for bed.

But like I said, this was a two-day celebration: we woke up the morning of the 25th and opened Christmas/Chanukah presents in our pajamas.  The pajamas then stayed on all through Karina's fabulous brunch.  I have heard about her french toast but never got to try it since I have never found myself waking up in her apartment.  She makes it with challah and uses cardamom in the batter.  Instead of syrup, we topped it with strawberries that had macerated in honey and vanilla.  This was some ridiculous french toast.  I get why Karina likes to make it - she's really good at it.  In addition to the french toast, we had smoked salmon with pomegranate seeds that was a take on a raw dish Matt and Karina recently tried at the home of a chef friend.  It doesn't sound like that combo would work, but salmon seems to go very well with fruit so it was a surprising addition to the table and was better than bagels and lox.  After brunch, it was more lazy time before we decided to finally get dressed and go to an evening movie, which was the perfect end to a two-day Christmas feast.  This holiday is all about two of my favorite things: eating and family pajama time.  Can't wait til next year!