X-mas in Bayside
This past Wednesday was the first white Christmas in the Northeast in many years. A noreaster blowing through the region dumped a bit more snow than expected: northeastern Queens picked up about half a foot, and the Bronx got ten inches; the forecasts has called for two to four inches.
We actually were snowed in for the night, at my mother’s insistence. I think the Civic, with its front-wheel drive, could have made it slowly back to Manhattan. An early trip by my brother and Grace in my parents’ Volvo to pick up my cousin ended disasterously, as the rear-wheel drive car fishtailed all over the place. They had to abandon it in an empty Auto-Zone parking lot on Northern Boulevard and wait for rescue. (Doesn’t Sweden get a lot of snow? Wouldn’t the design of the Volvo reflect this?) My brother had wanted to take his Toyota Corolla, also a front-wheel drive car, which shouldn’t have had that problem. He also has a lot of snow-driving experience, having worked for a number of years upstate.
Here’s a shot from the day after, with my brother and me clearing snow from the Civic the day after.
We actually don’t celebrate Christmas — it’s primarily a day when no one has to work, and we can get together to have dinner. My brother wanted to cook a turkey, which he did, very well. His trick was to use some of the technologically advanced plastic oven bags. You put the seasoned bird in, slit the bag in a few places, and let it cook. The bag retains sufficient moisture so that the bird cooks quickly and retains moisture. There isn’t so much moisture that you steam the bird, so the skin comes out crispy. Also, the bag retains all the juice, so, after you take out the bird, you snip the bag in the corner and pour out the juice into a saucepan to make gravy. Few drawbacks; the only obvious one is that the juice may not be quite as tasty with carmelized bits, since you don’t deglaze the pan. But as a labor saving device, the bag works wonderfully.
We also made wasabi mashed potatoes. I made wasabi paste to mix with the potatoes during the mashing, but I think it would have been better to have a more liquid wasabe paste by mixing the powder with, say, the cream being used for the potatoes. The wasabi should be better distributed. Mixing the typically clumpy paste into the potatoes, I was afraid I was leaving a wasabi land mine deep in the mashed potatoes, ready to blow out the sinuses of an unlucky diner. Perhaps a warning label about breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth was necessary.