Rich Mintz  

So tonight we cooked two things I thought were too hard, and they both came out okay: fried chicken (from Mark Bittman’s recipe), and a pear frangipane tart. (We also made black-eyed peas, of course — what, do you think I’m crazy? — and Tyler Florence’s potato gratin.)

The chicken made me a little nervous. Everyone knows fried chicken is hard, right? Well, turns out it isn’t actually that hard. The three things you need to remember are (1) Use a large, heavy pan, for even heating and so you don’t crowd the pieces; (2) use more oil than you want to; and (3) cook hotter and longer than you think you should. Bittman has you cover the pan for 7 minutes while the first side cooks (which in effect poaches the second side, helping with doneness).

We did one pan with half bacon grease and half canola oil, and the second pan with all canola. The half-and-half batch was in my heavy seasoned skillet, and I expected it to cook more evenly, but the results from the larger but lighter all-canola pan were much better. Maybe the smaller pan was too crowded.

As for the frangipane — we used this recipe. It was a zillion steps, and the crust was fussy (what pastry crust isn’t?), but the end product came out delicious. I’m about to go have some more. And as a bonus, we were left with 3 cups of orange-pear-vanilla-and-clove sugar syrup, which will make a superb ingredient in rye cocktails (I already verified this, can you tell?).

Have a good year, everyone!

OK, the crèmes caramel are out of the oven. They set up fine, more or less, but half the caramel syrup recrystallized into hard little sugar discs on the bottom of the pots, and I don’t know why. Any ideas?

I’m happy to make crème caramel over and over and over and over until this problem is resolved…

Building on the successful coconut custard pie, we’re making crème caramel from Mark Bittman’s recipe. Step one is to make browned sugar syrup to pour in the bottom of the cups, which is essentially a matter of cooking sugar on the stove until it melts, starts to thicken into a candy state, then turns brown. I don’t understand much about candy-making, and on our first try, for no apparent reason, it failed — specifically, the sugar seized up (turned back into chunky crystals) as described here. On a second try, we got what we expected — sugar syrup that thickened, then started to brown.

That blog post suggests that the issue might have been that we had the mixture boiling too early (before the sugar was fully dissolved) — is that possible? Does anyone know any more?

My task of winnowing down my “to read” list got a little tougher as I read this review by Neal Ascherson, in the London Review of Books, of Norman Davies’ new book, Vanished Kingdoms: The Rise and Fall of States and Nations. Not just this book, but some of Davies’ earlier ones, including his 1981 history of Poland, are going on my list.

I’ve often thought of reading a history of Poland. I’m fascinated by the fact that (as young Jews of my generation learned) in the early 20th century, within the memory of my grandmother, Warsaw was one of the greatest Jewish cultural centers in the history of the world; and that by the time I was born, all of that was gone. My father’s family came from near Minsk, in an area of Europe’s east that has changed political hands many times in the past two hundred years. But my interest in Poland is more than personal. As Ascherson points out, Davies has done much to set Poland at the geographic center of European history; centuries of political developments have whirled about it.

Davies’ latest book delves into the passing of a dozen European states, some of which died of natural causes, some of which were murdered, and some of which were stillborn or nearly so. I’m particularly interested in his chapter on the United Kingdom, which he contends has been on its way to dissolution almost since the Act of Union.

Well, we came back late last night from Christmas dinner in Harlem, a small dinner with friends that turned into a potluck for twenty. We ate well. Because the hosts are English, the meal ended with mince pies and brandy butter. And because they’re extremely dedicated people and their guests all like to eat, it wasn’t the sort of potluck table that ends up with four separate containers of KFC mashed potatoes; there was a turkey and a wide range of trimmings, well coordinated and well prepared, along with some surprises like homemade bouillabaisse. So a good time was had by etc.

The experience reminded me how much I enjoy entertaining — not in the big-party sense, but in the “let’s cook a nice dinner and invite four people” sense. I did a lot of that in my thirties, and even more of it in my twenties, but so far my forties have been a bit light on the home-cooking-for-guests. Part of that is because New York, or at least a certain stratum of it, doesn’t do it so well; apartments are cramped, people are too busy to cook, some people are too special to bla bla bla. Part of it is that here in New York I don’t know as many people well enough to invite them to dinner as I have in other places I’ve lived. (And that, in turn, is partly New York itself, and partly having come here at an age when a lot of people are already settled into their adult lives.)

But you know what? Screw all that. It’s easy enough to establish a monthly or even weekly tradition; for a while 20 years ago, I had one. On, say, Friday nights, you make a nice dinner and you invite four people. You don’t have to decorate the house (although you do tidy it up). You don’t need nine courses, and you don’t need to spend the preceding 24 hours cooking. Just pick a few dishes that go together that you’re comfortable making — or be aspirational, but only mildly so, because the point isn’t to make yourself anxious. Shop 2 days before; plan and prep 1 day before, and set the table; come home an hour early and cook the evening of; and serve. Not so hard!

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Just saw the late Jennifer Paterson of “Two Fat Ladies” roll out a pastry crust, then roll it up on a rolling pin and then unroll it into the dish, rather than trying to lift it flat and lay it in. This is such an obviously brilliant idea (and I’ve had so many pie crusts fall apart trying to get them into the plate) that I can’t believe I’m only hearing about it in my mid-forties. It makes me want to go make a pie right now, just to prove it’s a brilliant idea!

Today I roasted a mountain of vegetables for Christmas dinner with friends — carrots and parsnips and garlic and a leek, tossed with salt and spices — and we made a batch of potato latkes (for the fourth time in 5 days) to take with us too. In the past few days, I’ve also made a brisket; a modified version of Tyler Florence’s potato gratin (no cabbage); roasted beets and roasted brussels sprouts; fresh-toasted seasoned almonds; a coconut custard pie; and about 400 potato latkes. In the fridge we have the makings for spaghetti and homemade meatballs for tomorrow, along with fresh sausages to grill if we turn out not to be in the mood. So we’re eating very well, and isn’t that what holidays are all about?

So it’s Christmas.

Here we are, another year later. Still alive (and that’s good), still in good health (ditto). Somewhat further along some of our aspirational life paths (fab, obv), less far along others.

This year I’m with some of the people I love. From others, I’m a very long way in both space and spirit. And from still others, I feel so distant as to be estranged, whether we admit it or not.

On Christmas Day — even when you’re not physically close to them, even when you don’t speak to them, even if you aren’t even Christian — you think of all the people you love. You think of holiday time with family when you were a young child, unwrapping your new footie pajamas, going to pick up your new bike and crying when it wasn’t ready, eating mountains of corn pancakes and bacon. You think of holidays with friends as a young adult, hosting for the first time, learning that yes, you can actually make a brisket and bake a pie, it isn’t rocket science and even if it were, you know how to figure things out. You think of your first taste of turrón, of rosca de reyes, of mincemeat (that was a long, long, long time ago, the last time people did their own canning, to give you an idea).

You remember Christmases; you remember Rosh Hashanahs, or is that Reshei Hashanah?; you remember that lesbian wedding party in 1988, back when lesbian weddings were thrillingly transgressive, when the speakers blew out and you had to run out to the Caldor on Alewife Brook Parkway in the middle of the night for a fuse.

You remember the times, and the places, and the sounds and smells, but you mostly remember the people — not their faces, but the way it felt to be with them and the way you felt about them. Even at this distance, when a fragrance or a sound or even a color reminds you, which happens a lot at this time of year, you remember it all.

I wish I could stay current with everyone. I wish I could be everywhere at once, be with everyone, be all the versions of “me” at once that all those friends and family members and ex-whatevers want me to be. That, of course, is impossible; and the faux-everywhereness of Facebook, which “connects” you in the same way to people you see every day and to people you haven’t seen in 35 years and don’t care to, is a constant reminder that you can’t be all those people at once. All you can do is try to be someone, as best you can, and hope that a selection of the people you love will continue to find that someone worth knowing.

Or that’s one of the things you can do, anyway. The other thing you can do is be forgiving of yourself for drifting apart from people, and be forgiving of people for drifting apart from you. Something I don’t think we acknowledge often enough is that everyone, but everyone, is just trying their best, in a world in which disappointment and pain are parceled out generously and more or less evenly in the long run.

Don’t get me wrong — I love this time of year. I love the cold weather and the warm hearts, the closed shops (for a day or two) and the open homes. I love the spirit of hopefulness, which I think is real and contagious and touches even the grouchiest. I love the traditional foods, the sweet and spicy treats, the rich once-a-year specialties, the laden-with-more-than-you-could-possibly-eat tables. And I love the time with people I love and the memories of people I won’t be seeing this year. I simply find the cheer balanced with a note of wisfulness, which sounds louder as I get older.

This recipe for potato gratin with a layer of garlicky bacony sautéed cabbage in the middle may not look like much, but I just watched Tyler Florence make it on the Food Network, and I think it might be my new favorite dish. I do have a sort of a cruciferous vegetable fetish (they cook up nutty and buttery and rich, especially when roasted or braised), and I imagine that after an hour of cooking, the cabbage layer almost melts into a sort of sauce. After I try this I’ll report back.

I saw this blog post about pie in a jar (not a bad idea, all things considered) and it reminded me that I’ve been wanting to make a coconut custard pie for ages.

(Before I leave the subject of “pie in a jar” entirely: I don’t think I’d go out and buy half-height Mason jars just for occasional use as jar-pie holders, but I do have about a zillion Pyrex custard cups in two sizes that would work fine for tiny pies. They wouldn’t freeze as well, but wrapped in tight plastic wrap, they should do adequately. So maybe I will try this sometime. On the other hand, the real problem with pie-in-a-jar is “who ever wants only six ounces of pie?” But I digress.)

In any case, I poked around for some coconut custard pie recipes yesterday, after laying in extra eggs and some whole milk just in case. I used to love egg custard as a child — I think of it as a food that used to be vastly more common and much more fashionable than it is now, and that’s probably true, given that it has to be cooked rather than simply heated up, and it’s rumored to be fussy, and it’s full of cholesterol and fat and so forth.

It’s also, however, delicious, with a subtlety of flavor that isn’t so common nowadays, what with sugar and fat so cheap and plentiful. I note that I’m now old enough to say “nowadays” only semi-ironically, which is distressing in its own way, but, again I digress.

And if you’re going to put egg custard in a pie, you might as well put coconut in it, because, well, why not?

All the egg custard pie recipes out there seem more or less the same, with a few variations. (I’m discounting the pretenders that use cornstarch instead of eggs; that’s not custard.) I ended up going with Bittman’s. The proportions seem to be roughly 5 ounces milk to one egg to one ounce sugar, with four eggs and 20 ounces of milk and half a cup of sugar to fill a pie shell. Some call for a pre-baked shell and some bake the shell and custard together, but one of the things I hate most is a gummy pie crust, so I decided to pre-bake.

As I said above, people say egg custard is fussy, and I worried. But it came out perfectly, and most of the pie is already gone. The worst part, in fact, was the pie crust — I used a new Cuisinart for mixing, and ended up overbeating and overheating the crumble, then added too much extra flour, then had to correct with a little water. The resulting mass, even after chilling, wouldn’t roll out properly, so I ended up having to hand-place it in the pan in strips and blobs and press them together, and after baking it was more like a short-crust tart than a pie. But, you know, who gives a crap, it sliced up fine and came out delicious, and the custard set up perfectly.

Bittman suggests toasting coconut in a saucepan on the stovetop, rather than in the oven on a baking sheet like we did when I was a child; I actually like the results better (you end up with a more unevenly done product, which is an improvement) and will do it that way in future.