Bread pudding and poached pears

For a family holiday dinner I decided to branch out of my comfort zone for desserts. This is not generally a good idea for say, Thanksgiving dinner or _the_ Christmas dinner for your family, but since we had about 5 "Christmas Dinners" throughout the season I figured risking an utter disaster wouldn't "ruin Christmas." For this particular dinner the main course was take-out pizza, so I could spend my full culinary creative juices on these desserts.

The bread pudding sounded appropriate because I was also making homemade egg nog and the two share cream, eggs, nutmeg and bourbon for ingredients. So, basically, bread pudding is eggnog soaked bread. I found the recipe from a new cookbook I got for Christmas by the makers of Cooks Illustrated Magazine (which is fantastic, btw). The book does a great job of explaining why they chose to do things the way they do instead of just telling you what to do. I didn't want to go completely plain with the pudding, and they suggested you could add raisins, but I went with craisins, thinking the red color was slightly more festive looking and I just like them better.
To make bread pudding you make a custard mixture of eggs, cream and flavorings and then soak chunks of bread in this mixture and bake it.
The two tricky parts to the equation are the ratio of bread to custard and when to put it from the oven. I think the recipe did well on both accounts, although I went with their suggestion of weight for the bread, not volume. They said only 6 cups of bread cubed and when I measured that out it was clearly not enough, but the 12 oz of bread seemed right- it just came out to almost 12 cups in volume. That could be accounted for in a difference in size for the cubes and type of bread, which is why I think weight was a better way to know how much bread to use. It will look like you have way more liquid than you need, but the bread will soak it up and you want that, otherwise it won't be a custard in the end, it will be bread chunks that are moistened- more like french toast (although if you do french toast _really_ well, it should be more like bread pudding in the center of the toast).
Next came deciding when to pull it out of the oven. Too soon, and you have uncooked eggs. Too long, and you have a dried out dessert that isn't really a custard anymore. The book explained that you want it to "jiggle like a jello mold" when you pull it out. You want that wiggle room (ha!) when you take it out to account for carry-over cooking that continues to happen after it's on your counter. (Same thing if you take scrambled eggs out of the pan when they are done to your liking, they will be overdone by the time you take your first bite). This explanation of the finished product worked very well for me and the pudding was super moist and a serving of custardy goodness. I will definitely be making this again!

The poached pears came from a greeting card recipe that my mom sent me. I thought it would be a nice balance with the heaviness of the bread pudding (there's a lot of cream and eggs in that recipe). I have never poached fruit before, but have seen how elegant whole poached pears look in magazines for holiday tables. This recipe called for either red wine or cranberry juice to poach in and since the bread pudding had bourbon in it, I decided to go for the alcohol-free option for this dessert. I think it made for a sweeter result and the cranberry juice was a beautiful colored syrup on the finished product. I used a melon baller to take out the cores of the pears from underneath, peeled them, and put them in a pot just big enough to hold them all standing up. Pull the pears out of the cooking liquid when a knife goes easily through, but before they are mushy, then reduce the liquid to make a syrup for serving and voila! I had planned on keeping them whole because they look so nice standing up in a circle on the platter, but didn't think most guests would want a whole one (and there weren't quite enough to go around anyway), so I sliced them in half and served laying down. It still looked beautiful with the peels scattered about and the red syrup. This is a very simple, not too heavy (as long as you didn't put too much of my homemade whipped cream on it, that is) and very classy addition to dessert.

Christmas Dinner

Every family that celebrates this holiday has traditions and expectations for Christmas Dinner. My young family is just starting to make our own. This year was the first that we stayed home for the entire day and I had free reign for dinner. The diners would be my family plus Mema and Papa. When pondering the plethora of options for this task, I decided to bring some traditions from my childhood holidays and then craft the menu with practical sense in mind. Having a toddler and infant can mean for an unpredictable day, especially when excitement and presents are involved. Therefore, I did not want anything labor intensive (unless it could be done ahead of time) or temperature sensitive (so that timing could be fudged around). Here is what I came up with:

Appetizers
Crudite platter
Cheese and crackers

Main meal
Baked Ham
Orzo salad
Dinner rolls
Cottage cheese salad

Dessert
Chocolate mousse with fresh whipped cream

The apps don't need much introduction. Some store-bought (but fancy and fresh, not some ranch in a tub) dip and veggies are a no-brainer and add something healthy to boot. Cheese and crackers are easy, yummy, and always a big hit with my toddler.

For the main meal, I thought of ham for two reasons. 1) Erik went crazy for it when Papa made it for a family holiday party a couple weeks ago so I wanted to give him an encore 2) Ham is fully cooked when bought and takes no fuss to be table-ready PLUS it doesn't need to be piping hot to enjoy- in fact it may be better room temp.
I bought a butt-end portion that was NOT spiral sliced- all those cuts lead to drying if you heat the ham slowly in the oven. And really, how hard is it to slice some ham? Then I pondered options for boosting the flavor of my ham. I read some recipes for glazes, rubs, and even one involving Dr. Pepper by Alton Brown (which Erik REALLY wants me to try some day, but I can't stand that soda). In the end, I went on my own and made a glaze with some maple syrup and molasses. I scored the ham in a criss cross pattern and after rubbing that all over the ham, I added some brown sugar and put whole cloves in each intersection of my scoring. I put it in a 275 degree oven for an hour, then boosted it to 325 for another hour or so. Again, the meat is fully cooked, so really you just want to heat it through and get your additional elements doing what you want from them. (And if you use cloves- make sure to take them out before serving!)

The orzo salad idea came from my summer time discovery of a tomato/spinach/feta orzo salad that was a big hit. Sadly, Mema does not like feta, so I needed to change that out for something else. Then I thought of a tomato/basil/mozzarella salad and how great that would be with orzo- even includes Christmas colors as the other one did. I bought small balls of fresh mozzarella and sliced them. I used some tomatoes on the vine from my nice produce store that smelled nearly as good as Summer tomatoes and seeded and chopped them. Add some basil, olive oil, salt, pepper and a little fresh squeezed lemon juice and it was a delicious salad that was good at room temperature.

Cottage Cheese Salad
How is it I've written so many entries and haven't yet done cottage cheese salad? What the heck is cottage cheese salad? You're asking. Well. Let me tell you. This is a creation from Papa's mother (I believe- correct me if I'm wrong, Papa) and it is very simple. It's a tub of cottage cheese (I use lowfat because whole fat just scares me since you end up adding more fat to it, but please, not nonfat- the texture just isn't the same) with a couple tablespoons of mayonnaise, a handful of finely chopped celery, salt, pepper and a maybe a teaspoon of dried minced onion (the kind in the spice jar). It may sound strange, but it is GOOD! One of my favorite sides of all time, and ever present at all our family holidays.

Chocolate Mousse
Papa is the King of chocolate mousse. Seriously, ask anyone who has had his. I thought it was about time that I learn this craft. My friend Liza gave me these espresso dark chocolate chunks for baking when she visited and immediately I thought they would make a terrific mousse. I looked in my cookbooks and online for recipes until I found one by Tyler Florence that sounded good. If you search foodnetwork.com for his name and mousse it will come up. It was then that I realized chocolate mousse involves eating raw eggs. I'm pretty ok with raw egg whites because I make meringes and foams with them all the time, but raw egg yolk? This was a stretch for me. But really, there is no way to heat the yolk to the 160 degrees it needs to be considered cooked. Chocolate melts a little over 100, and much beyond that, will cease. The ickiness factor that had me worried was long forgotten when I tasted my creation :) It was nearly perfect. It was nearly, as good as Papa's. Although slightly hard to compare directly, simply because mine was espresso flavored with some Kahlua whereas he usually does some Grand Marnier if I'm not mistaken (again correct me!) so the flavor profiles are different- but I think I got the texture nearly dead on. A good mousse is perfectly smooth and light, but rich. It's heavenly. Especially topped with some fresh whipped cream (of course!).

Merry Christmas to all! I hope your tables were filled with joy.