The Feast

I am not a cook. I can grill a mean salmon filet. I can rotisserie the spit out of a chicken. If it's nuke-able, I can nuke it. But when it comes to the skill to actually blend flavors and make sauces and do French things like sauteé and flambé...WITHOUT destroying the kitchen in a violent fireball, that ain't me.

So, when I said to my wife as this holiday season approached that I wished to honor the invitation to my sister's home on Christmas day, she said she wanted to be able to see her family this holiday season, too. It was agreed that we would gather with her family on Christmas Eve. At our house. Since her brother was making ham for his family on The Day, we had to come up with something other than ham, and since we all had Thanksgiving leftovers that lasted until a week ago, nobody wanted turkey. A thought swam up into my head and I suggested Cornish hens.

"Hey! Great idea!" she said. "Haven't had that in a long time," she said. "You cook," she said.

The local grocery mega-chain, to my good fortune, had them on sale. Using my fingers I determined how many mouths we had to feed, so I bought ten birds, which, if every person ate one, would leave one for sandwi... ehrm, for a sandwich ...later.

I consulted our copy of The Joy of Cooking for some idea as to how I was going to do this. My wife has the knack, has the experience to grab a handful of spices, fling them into the pan, and ZOOT! whatever was in the pan with the spices comes out tasting like the grand prize winner at a cooking contest! Me, I have to read the ingredients list intently and measure to the letter. Or number, I guess, in this case.

On top of choosing an entree I had never tried to cook before, I had decided I wanted a basic bread stuffing with it. Again, the wife said, "Good idea...you do it."

So, on Christmas Eve morning I began preparations for creating this meal I call havoc. Of course the first event was the scavenger hunt for the spices. My wife squirrels them away in three different places. Parsely, sage, thyme. No, no rosemary, but you're humming that tune, now, aren't you? So was I. Cut up the loaf of Italian bread. Throw the chunks into the oven to toast. Chop up the onion and the celery. I couldn't find any ground black pepper, so when she came down from her sprucing, my wife told me she usually grinds pepper fresh with our dinner table pepper mill. She ground up the 1/4 teaspoon I needed and afforded me the opportunity to sample how much fresher it smelled freshly ground.

Imagine this. You've just finished chopping up a whole onion, your eyes are burning and watering like crazy, and your beloved spouse sticks a teaspoon of pepper under your nose and says, "Smell how fresh?"

Cook up the onion and celery in butter. Mix cooked savories into the toasted bread in a bowl. Add chicken stock. Okay, we had broth. My wife has explained the difference to me on several occasions. It's like learning a language with no verbs. Apparently the difference makes no difference, at least in this recipe. According to my wife.

Prepare a rub for the birds. Salt and pepper thyme. Salt, pepper and thyme, that is. Scoop the stuffing into the birds. Tie their little legs over the hole. I had never done this, and, after a few unsuccessful tries at getting the string to hold, I developed a neat method that works pretty easily. Of course, after I proudly showed my wife how clever I am, she showed me the section in The Joy of Cooking that explains how to properly truss a bird. Well, their legs stayed shut all the same. Baste the birds with melted butter. I am still amazed at how quickly butter melts in a microwave!

Then came the dilemma. Well, two. Two dilemmas. Dilemmae? Ten birds. One oven. Three baking pans, one of three-bird capacity, the others of two each. My wife boldly announced to her family that we would be eating in shifts.

We had put in the first two without stuffing - we didn't think we had enough - while we worked on stuffing and trussing the rest. They came out with the proper temperature and clear fluids, but one of them still had some pink when it was cut open. This went on for most of the afternoon, these damn birds lying to us with their selectively clear fluids running from where we pierced them, but then trying to inflict serious gastric difficulties on my in-laws at table. I began to fear they thought it was my intent!

Otherwise all went well. The kitchen had no blast traces. Wife and I ate in the last shift, which, it turns out, was actually a relaxing way to do it. The pressure to get everything on the table, cooked and ready, all at once, was off of us. The responsibility to leave our plates to retrieve forgotten items or guests' drink requests was gone. We were first servants who then were allowed to dine with the guests. And we had the added treat of extra stuffing left over, enough to have filled two of the little birds!

When it was over, when our guests had gone home, I could not believe how tired I was. At the same time, there was this great, relaxing sense of accomplishment. Of course, I don't know if it was because of a dinner well served, or because of the diamond earrings with which I surprised my wife and the knowledge that, no matter what time we turned in for the night, we wouldn't be going to sleep any time soon!!

And I think I have the distinct pleasure today of knowing that I am the only of my currently small circle of blogging friends to have blogged on christmas day. What does that mean? Everybody else has better things to do today!


dassall!