Gotham Diary:
Gone On
26 December 2012
Here’s hoping that everyone is taking it easy, now that the holidays, which, despite Mayan forecasts, have occurred in due order. They’re not really over, of course; there’s still New Year’s Eve to cope with, and Kathleen and I are expected at a Boxing Day at-home later today. Right now, I can’t imagine actually leaving the building, much less going to a party. The weather is about to be frightful — in an agreeably seasonal way; nothing too tempestuous — and, while I can’t exactly claim to be sick, I certainly do feel “on the edge.” It’s probably just fatigue. Early Monday afternoon, when it came time to tidy the apartment for the evening’s dinner (already cooked), I had one of those I-can’t-go-on/I’ll-go-on moments, and the reason you do go on in these situations is that, no matter how knocked-out you are, not going on really is the unbearable option. We had a lovely evening. Right now, though, I’m very glad that I don’t have to go on.
For Christmas Eve dinner, we had the dilled blanquette de veau that I’ve been making ever since I got my copy of the Silver Palate Cookbook, but this time it was different. It was really, really good, and there are two possible explanations. Well, three. The third is that I’ve attained a new level of culinary competence. Because I no longer try to do new things, but only variations on the same old things, I’ve really mastered the basic techniques that I happen to need, and learned how to work around the ones that are still tricky. So I’m not thinking about how you make a stew, whether it’s boeuf bourgignon or ragù bolognese. Stew is stew; sauté is sauté. I know these things like a mother knows her child’s habits. This frees me to think about local variations, tweaks, and one-off flights of fancy that, because I don’t write them down immediately (and, besides, you had to be there), I’ll never repeat.
Back to the two more likely explanations. First, I bought the veal cubes from Holland Court, the proper butcher. It was expensive, but top-of-the-like meat. So, there was that. The other possibility is that the blanquette, by the time I served it, had gone slightly off. Just slightly! I find that making French stews falls into two stages, in the second one of which you make a sauce out of the liquid in which the stew has been cooked. (You do this by preparing a roux of flour and butter and then pouring in the boiling liquid. How something so elemental can infuse divine flavors is a question for Harold McGee.) The second stage needn’t follow the first immediately, and, as a matter of course, I have cooked the stew the day before serving and then let it sit overnight, making the sauce shortly before sitting down at the table. This time, I made the stew two days before serving, and it sat in the cooling, then cold oven for well over twenty-four hours. I had it over low heat for most of Christmas Eve, but I worried that I had let it go for too long. Happily, I hadn’t. For once, the redolence of veal, a flavor that I associate with the fragrances of an autumn afternoon spent planting bulbs, overmatched the insistent dill.
The Silver Palate version of blanquette de veau reflects New York’s German and Jewish constitution. The very presence of dill seems un-French. The carrrots are not canonical, either. And the pearl onions that make all French stews something of a pain to cook are replaced by chopped sweet onions that go into the stew raw. They just about completely disappear in the cooking, so that the finished dish consists of fork-tender chunks of veal and thin carrot slices basking in a green-flecked gravy. Served with steamed arborio rice, it’s scrumptuous. Fossil Darling had two complete helpings, and then some.
I’d also made a chicken liver pâté, inspired by a recipe in last week’s Times Magazine. I spread the pâté on toasted sliced baguette, and handed it round during cocktails. Thus it was desirable to begin the dinner proper with a salad. I chopped Belgian endive and green onions and tossed them in lime vinegar, with a tablespoon of lightly-blended grainy mustard and safflower oil. I spooned this mixture — there was more to it, but, as I say, I didn’t write it down — over eighths of Comice pears. Quite good.
Dessert? A store-bought pecan pie with my own whipped cream. I can’t say that I’m proud of that, but there were no leftovers.
***
If I cut corners here and there through the holidays, it was because the I’ll-go-on always prevailed over the I-can’t-go-on. I refused to allow Platonic ideas defeat or exhaust me. At every point, I asked, what’s the point? And then I stuck with the simplest answer. What’s the point of having a tree? Lights and ornaments glimmering from branches of fir. The tree need not be large. Not this year, without the balcony to take up knick-knacks displaced by the Christmas show. Christmas cards? Couldn’t find them. So I sent postcards, and not seasonal ones, either, but New Yorker covers through the ages. I had Will covered months ago, and all Kathleen had to do was wrap the behemoth. (Which overawed Will at first: such a big rig!) I got through it, and if there were moments that were less than stellar, there were non to be ashamed of, and here I am, in one piece, exhausted but deeply pleased.
***
Many years ago, an old friend gave us a small Christmas crèche, made in Spain out of resin (to simulate carved wood), that consists of two recumbent animals (a mule and a cow), a small manger, and the Holy Family. Traditionally, the Baby Jesus was withheld until Christmas, but this year I lay Him in the manger on Christmas Eve and was done with it (see above). Later, I found myself staring at this sweet ensemble, aware of something jarringly wrong. The Baby Jesus is an appealing little boy of about Will’s age, not remotely infantine, and he is raising his arms as if waiting to be picked up. But for a diapery cloth, he is also naked, exposed to the Christmas cold. The figure of His Mother, however, has crossed her arms over her chest, as if in adoration. I cannot imagine any actual mother responding to her little one in this way. In paintings, Madonnas always hold their Child, but for some reason the crèche trope endows the Baby with an untouchable divinity. It is, and it is probably supposed to be, profoundly unnatural.