A Jack Daniels Christmas Dinner 2008

This is my second Christmas dinner I’ve cooked and after cooking so many meals for friends, I’ve come to the realization that my flat can only accommodate comfortable 5-6 people at the table. Which is fine because I really like small intimate dinners.

For those who were complaining or hinting at not being invited, it’s not personal, just lack of real estate.

This year, Maritza lugged an organic ham back from Australia and so I decided to do a glazed ham. This is something I’ve never done before but I was game to try. I intended to do an English Mustard and brown sugar glaze but a brief conversation with Florence indicated that Tony didn’t like sugar in his food.

This sparked off an enthusiastic discussion about glazed hams of Christmas past, unfortunately, all of which involved some form of sugar. In the end I decided on a Jack Daniels, Mustard and Honey glaze for the ham.

Then there’s the starter, side dishes and dessert…

After much wringing of hands, I’ve realized that while I have a very good oven, it’s only one oven, so I can’t really do as much grilling and roasting as I’d like to. So I did a Stockez les pâtes achetées avec la sauce tomate faite maison, which is basically Store-bought pasta with homemade Tomato Sauce. I couldn’t find the sweeter and more robust beefsteak tomatoes, so I had to settle for Pomodoros which were more tart. Anyway, I did the usual roasted garlic and tomato sauce

Doing the glaze for the ham proved problematic as it was too liquid. My original intended glaze of Mustard and brown sugar would have produced a thick sludgy mixture that I could just plaster on with an icing knife. The JD-Mustard-Honey glaze, while odorously heavenly, was hell to slather on.

To cut the sweetness of the ham, I made a creamy Parsley sauce which I adapted from a Mint sauce recipe by using Parsley and finally I enriched the sauce with some natural Yogurt. This was done a day in advance to let the ingredients integrate properly. I was glad that they liked the grassy tang with the ham.

And what is ham without pineapple? This was the first time I peeled a pineapple and made rings. I used Malaysian pineapples. Do you know that it’s incredibly hard to find a simple circular cookie cutter these days? In the end, I had to chop out the tough core (they make a very nice snack as you are coring them pineapples) with a small paring knife. With some pineapple and orange juice, honey and, yes, Jack Daniels, I made a syrup to coat the pineapples with. The result was great, I think the fresh pineapples did the trick.

All this while, I was decanting and aerating the Chateau Musar using a beer jug. I’ve yet to find a better decanter than the beer jug.

Speaking of wines, after hearing the story of how Baron Rothschild would freeze a bottle of Chateau Y’quem to serve to his guests as a slushy sorbet, I decided that it would be a treat to do that too. You can’t make a sorbet by simply freezing a bottle of wine, so I combined some light sugar syrup and a leftover bottle of Tokaji (6 puttonyos from a vintage year, because we’re such good friends). I also added some chopped dried muscat grapes for fun.

Jeremy, in the spirit of things, baked a Jack Daniel’s Pecan Pie. With some fresh whipped cream, it rocked.

It was a great dinner because it was small and the conversation flowed like the wines. We ended the evening watching Kill Bill because Florence missed parts of it.

Now, about Chinese New Year’s…

Posted on 29th Dec 2008 in Dinner Book

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There Are 2 Comments

Michael Yip commented on December 29, 2008 at 10:53 pm

wow… it sounds good… but no photos of the meal?

Ivan commented on January 13, 2009 at 10:41 am

@Michael Yip: Sorry, I had my hands full cooking 2 items at a time.

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