To celebrate Rick’s being in the Bay Area for Christmas, i cooked dinner for him and Kurt and Nancy last night, a wonderful opportunity for old friends to catch up. Besides, i’d never fed ’em.
Chile con Carne, using only mild Hatch chile powder, so i threw in lots.
Cranberry Beans i’d bought fresh, shelled, and blanched last September. With Chantenay carrot and red onion.
Cornbread, made with the teaspoons of rendered fat i’d painstakingly collected for months from individual pieces of bacon i’d chopped and fried to flavor omelettes.
Gai lon stir-fried in a bit of sesame oil. And OK, there couldn’t be anything less traditional than gai lon, but i was gonna do Brussels Sprouts Piccata except my sprouts boy didn’t show up at the market yesterday afternoon and i had to wing it. And yeah, sprouts aren’t traditional either, but i never was real wild about turnip greens.
And of course The Pie for dessert, made from Texas pecans my cousin sent me last winter that i shelled and froze.
There were ten leftover pecans after i made the pie, and this morning i cut a big piece of a sourdough baguette into halves, lay some Rogue Blue cheese on them, arranged the pecans on top, and threw this creation onto the bottom rack of the oven for ten minutes to crisp the crusts and melt the cheese. Good combination.
For lunch, damn me, i ate the rest of the Pie.
And since it’s Christmastime, take a look at what the Crocker Galleria did for decorations: