Year of the Cow (20 page)

Serving roast beef without horseradish is sort of like buying prescription pills out of the back of a van. Sure, you may still get what you're looking for, but the process is off-putting. It isn't how things should be done. I pull together a quick horseradish cream sauce with sour cream, lemon, and ground horseradish root.

Four hours until dinner. I plan to prepare tableside Caesar salads, old school, so I prep all the ingredients now: minced garlic, eggs, Worcestershire, salt, anchovies, olive oil, lemon juice from our lemon trees in the backyard, and grated Parmesan. Houston: We are go for salad.

Three hours to go. I can't believe it, but I'm actually on schedule. Everything is in its place and ready to go. Dare I say: I have some spare time. Weirdly, thrillingly, impossibly—I could do more.

I consider my audience. Ben is Jewish, but he loves bacon more than any human being I've ever met. He doesn't eat it just with eggs. He's worked bacon into pies, cheesecake, sushi, vodka—and, I believe, ice cream. Allan and Chris share his obsession—for a Super Bowl party one year, the three of them built a replica of the Lombardi trophy out of bacon. You may have seen it on the Internet.

In honor of these porcine prodigies, I figure I'll try to work bacon into the meal somehow. But this entire meal is so over the top, I don't want to do something easy and expected. I want to do something stupid. Something absurd. I decide on bacon–chocolate chip cookies.

I fry up some bacon in my beloved cast-iron skillet, dice the bacon into the smallest pieces that my knife skills allow, and incorporate them into the cookie dough. I cut way back on the amount of butter used in the dough; the dough's fat content will come from bacon fat instead. A half hour later, I have two dozen cookies and a dog who doesn't understand where all the bacon went.

I try a cookie. They turned out pretty well, I suppose, but I'm not sure they're qualitatively better than standard chocolate chip cookies, despite the extra labor required to make them. They're smoky from the cured meat addition, while simultaneously chocolaty and sweet.

These cookies are also a meat-scented chocolate-delivery device. And chocolate is extraordinarily bad for dogs—even lethal in some cases. The cookies go into a sealed container on a high shelf. There's no more room in the microwave. This entire meal is a daylong torment for Basil.

Two hours to go. I place my room-temp roast into the roasting pan. Ordinarily I'd have to tie this roast to keep it from falling apart due to the breakdown of connective tissue during the cooking process. My butcher already tied mine, so I'm set. I slide the roast into the oven, bone side down. The fat on the top of the roast will drip down and marinate the meat, though I'll likely have to do a little basting myself now and then.

I start the roast at high temperature to sear the outside and give it a sexy, golden-brown crust. Then I lower the oven temp and bring the roast slowly to an internal temperature of 120 degrees. That temperature is well below medium rare, but the roast will continue to cook as it rests under foil after I pull it out of the oven. For this beef cut, overcooking is disastrous. Not only would it dry out the roast and make it taste like a bad cafeteria meal, but this is the only standing rib roast I have. If I screw this up, I don't get a second chance.

One hour from mealtime, the doorbell rings. Guests have arrived. The dinner train pulls away from the station.

Course One: Bacon–Chocolate Chip Cookies and crackers with cheese. Cookies don't really belong here, but I already have a dessert planned, so now cookies are appetizers. Accompanied by eggnog and good conversation because I am wildly in favor of both.

I watch my guests sample the cookies with all the subtlety of a toddler with a jack-in-the-box. I don't say anything, but I know what's coming. Now? No. How about now? Huh? Anything kooky about those cookies? Anything? How about now?

Allan speaks first. “What's up with these cookies?”

Bingo! My moment has come. “Bacon! There's bacon in the chocolate chip cookies,” I spout enthusiastically. Sometimes I embarrass even myself.

There's a moment of silence as everyone reassesses their cookie-eating experience. “Chewy,” Allan notes. A long beat.

“Yeah, there's a texture thing going on here,” Chris notes. “And a salty thing I wasn't really expecting.”

Summer nods. “If you've ever wished your cookie tasted more like a pig…” She gestures to her cookie. “This has you covered.”

I nosh on my own cookie. They're not wrong. Too much salt and too much sweet. There's a certain sense that these two things—bacon and cookies—don't really belong together.

“I like it,” Ben insists.

I shake my head. “Nah, it's okay. It was an experiment. Lesson learned.”

Ben shrugs and helps himself to another cookie. “I enjoy my pork products.”

I chuckle. “Who wants more nog?” Nog fixes everything.

Course Two: Caesar Salad with Homemade Everything. I already prepped the dressing ingredients, so it takes only about thirty seconds to whip together a quick emulsion and toss it with the leaves of romaine lettuce. I separate this onto small plates, drop some croutons on top, and serve with chilled forks.

Chris turns his fork over in his hand. “The chilled forks are a nice touch.”

“Wow, man,” Allan says. “These are fancy.”

“We are not barbarians!” I proclaim with a flourish.

Ben examines his plate. “Did you chill the plates, too?”

“Maybe.”

Summer laughs, hiding her face in her hands. “Nice one, Stone.”

I only smile, enduring their jests. We shall not skimp on details. Not today.

I cut short my own salad experience to pull the roast to rest and transfer meat drippings to muffin tins and then add the batter for the Yorkshire puddings. Into the oven.

Course Three: Palate Cleanser of Grapefruit–Star Anise Granita. The simple syrup and grapefruit juice mixture I made earlier is now frozen solid. I scrape it with a fork, making instant peach-colored shaved ice. I plan to serve this in some champagne flutes we haven't used since our wedding. However, some of them are inexplicably absent. They may or may not have shattered in an ill-advised juggling attempt. Instead, I think I can serve this concoction in brandy snifters. Except several of those are currently being used as eggnog receptacles. I have Burgundy glasses. Fine. Those will work. I serve the granita with chilled spoons because one cannot have enough chilled utensils at a meal.
Obviously
.

Course Four: Standing Rib Roast with Yorkshire Pudding. The main event. The roast is rested, and the internal temperature has risen to 132, solidly in the optimal medium-rare territory. I disassemble it into half-inch slabs and pair it with the popover Yorkshire pudding and a nice glass of Zin.

The meat looks fantastic—a deep rose in color, juicy, and lush, with a hard brown sear at the edge. It tastes like pure joy, kissed by angels and carried aloft by ecstatic butterflies. It's dead simple, but the trick with beef this good and a cut this luxurious isn't figuring out how to make it fantastic, it's figuring out how not to mess it up. One just has to get out of the way. The Yorkshire pudding also is lovely, though it doesn't taste the way I expected it to. It's soft and pillowy and only slightly beef-flavored. Like a luxurious dinner roll.

Course Five: Cherries Jubilee, which is vanilla ice cream topped with thickened cherry preserves and flambéed with brandy. I'm excited about this one. In one of the first film projects Ben, Allan, and I worked on together in college, we blew up a car for a climactic shot. My dinner companions today have a healthy love of and respect for well-executed pyrotechnics.

Brandy needs to be hot to burn. In room-temperature brandy, the alcohol is held in solution, mixed with other liquids—mostly water. This water keeps the alcohol from igniting. Since alcohol boils at a lower temperature than water, heating the brandy causes the alcohol to vaporize, leaving the water behind in the pan. This now gaseous alcohol mixes with oxygen in the air and becomes flammable.

I heat the brandy, kill my burner, and touch it with a long match.

Nothing.

I slip the skillet back onto the heat and try again. Still nothing. A third time. Zilch. The ice cream is melting. In a tactical maneuver to minimize meal disruption, I mix the unflamed brandy with the preserves and top the ice cream. Declan gets only ice cream—the “jubilee” portion of the meal just got literal. This dessert is eighty proof.

I serve my guests, then join them at the table.

“Jesus, man,” Ben says. “That was delicious.”

“Glad you liked it,” I reply. I'm beat, but thrilled that everything worked out. Well, mostly everything. The cookies were unnecessarily porcine, and I can smell the liquor in my dessert from several feet away. But it was close enough for jazz.

“Yeah, really nice, man.” Chris nods. “Thanks for having us over.”

Allan squints. “Dude, these forks aren't even chilled. What are you, some kind of animal?”

“I know.” I laugh. “I'm not sure how you put up with me.”

Allan grins and takes a bite of his dessert. The rest of my guests follow suit.

A moment of silence.

“So…” Chris begins. “There's liquor in this, huh?”

Laughter around the table. I take a bite of my own boozy cherries jubilee. It's quite alcoholic. It'd probably be more accurate to describe it as a semisolid cocktail. Like Ben and Jerry and Rémy Martin had a baby.

Summer rubs my back and smiles. I smile back. I've been on my feet for twelve hours, cooking what I hope will be a meal to remember. Our first foray, perhaps, into making California our home, way out here in the West, instead of being permanently “away from home” for the holidays and every other day of the year. We live here, in California. We have a family here, in the only home Declan has ever known. Traditions are lovely, but it's high time to make new ones. I'm happy to start that process today, surrounded by dear friends and fine food, lovingly prepared.

Tired as I am, this meal was definitely worth it.

 

Christmafestikwanzikkuh Feast

Time: Clear your schedule. This could take all day.

Serves 4 to 6

Suitable for holidays, special occasions, and impressing the in-laws. This feast is adapted largely from a menu by Linda Stradley, of whatscookingamerica.net. (Note: I didn't include the bacon–chocolate chip cookies I made earlier in the chapter because, as a first course, they're just weird.)

GRANITA

½ cup sugar

2 whole star anise

½ cup pink grapefruit juice

ROAST

Standing rib roast in the 5- to 6-pound range (you may have to visit a butcher for this cut, since supermarkets frequently don't carry it)

Butcher's twine (if your roast isn't already tied)

CROUTONS

1 loaf good, but slightly stale, French bread

About ¼ cup olive oil

Kosher salt

YORKSHIRE PUDDING

¾ cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon kosher salt

3 large eggs

¾ cup milk

½ cup pan drippings from standing rib roast

HORSERADISH SAUCE

½ (6-ounce) bottle of prepared horseradish

2 cups sour cream

Juice of ½ lemon (use the other half for the Caesar salad)

1 teaspoon kosher salt

CAESAR SALAD

1 large egg

2 teaspoons minced garlic

2 anchovy fillets

Kosher salt

Juice of ½ lemon

¹
/
₈
teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

4 tablespoons freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Freshly ground black pepper

3 heads romaine lettuce

CHERRIES JUBILEE

1 pound frozen pitted cherries

½ cup sugar

½ cup brandy

Vanilla ice cream

  
1.
Make the granita first, since you need time to freeze it: Combine the sugar, star anise, and
¹
/
₃
cup water in a small saucepan over medium heat and bring to a boil.

  
2.
Remove from the heat, discard the star anise, and let the syrup cool. Add the grapefruit juice and whisk to combine.

  
3.
Pour into a 9-inch square casserole dish (or similar wide container; surface area is the important factor) and stash in the freezer until frozen solid, about 4 hours.

  
4.
About 2 hours before cooking, take the roast out of the refrigerator and allow the meat to come to room temperature.

  
5.
Make the croutons: Preheat the oven to 375°F.

  
6.
Cut the bread into 1-inch cubes and toss them with just enough oil to lightly coat. Lay the cubes out on a baking sheet, sprinkle with salt, and bake for 15 minutes. Now you have croutons. Set aside.

  
7.
Start the Yorkshire pudding by sifting the flour and salt together into a large mixing bowl.

  
8.
In another bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk. Stir in the flour mixture until just combined. (Lumps are okay; make sure you don't overstir.) This is your Yorkshire pudding batter; cover with plastic wrap and stash it in the fridge until you're ready to use it.

  
9.
Preheat the oven to 450°F.

10.
To make the horseradish sauce, combine the horseradish, sour cream, lemon juice, and a little salt in a small bowl. This is your horseradish sauce, the perfect complement to your roast. Stash it in the fridge.

11.
When the oven is ready, place the tied roast in a roasting pan, bone side down.

Many standing rib roasts are already tied by the butcher before purchase. If yours hasn't been, simply tie a string around the roast between the bones, pull snug, and tie a simple knot. This will help keep the roast from losing its shape as it cooks.