Cherry-Persimmon Pie (+ Bonus Holiday Party Food Porn)

Now. Normally I pride myself on making absolutely everything from scratch when I entertain. But there are exceptions.

Look, gentle readers, the holiday party I had on Sunday turned out to be quite the freaking production, let me tell you. I made like 6 trips to the Key Foods, formed and froze dozens of meatballs and phyllo triangles, shoehorned some compound butter into a star-shaped cookie cutter … and on and on and on. No rest for the wicked—you might say I was trying to stave off the prospect of getting coal in my stocking.

The menu, which yielded shockingly few leftovers, was as follows:

An 8-pound ham glazed with molasses and studded with pineapples, with sriracha mayo and horseradish sour cream accoutrements.

Two roast chickens, stuffed with orange wedges and leeks for flavor and (dubious) presentation.

An embarrassment of quiches (mushroom-leek, tomato-arugula, and bacon-arugula, all with Swiss cheese).

A tricolor penne salad with goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, and olives.

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

'Nuff said.

Bread!

I have always believed bread to be a fundamental component of human existence, kind of like gravity…and beer. Some years ago, in the course of my foodie-geek reading, I discovered that anthropology bears out this concept: Early human culture developed along with yeast cultures, as our formerly nomad-hunter-gatherer ancestors transitioned toward settling in one spot long enough for those spores to ferment, in order to produce bread…and beer.*

Baking bread is also a wonderfully mellow, good-for-the-soul experience. Although it does take time to let the dough rise, not much of that time is spent working. And what work you do feels therapeutic, or possibly even spiritual: The hippie in me believes that all that kneading transmits positive prana into the dough through your hands, so that the eater receives the good energy you put into it.

There are a lot of complicated bread recipes out there, but there are plenty of simple ones out there as well, and I suggest starting with those and working your way up to more ambitious projects.

Chicken Potpie

Chicken potpie occupies a unique place in the ’Merickan culinary pantheon, in that it is a classic retro-Americana "leftovers dish" yet does not evoke any of the shudders or gag reflexes such dishes are wont to elicit. Compare, for example, tuna casserole—just the name has served as a punch line for decades of family sitcoms, the premise of the joke being that hidden under those canned dried "onions" is everything that was about to go bad in the fridge. Even meatloaf, which has recently acquired new panache in this recessionary era of "upscale comfort food" (more on this at a later date, in my upcoming post about meatloaf) inspires a wide range of visceral reactions in people, many of which are extremely negative.

But chicken potpie grosses out nobody (except perhaps carb-phobic Atkins devotees, but we all know they lead miserable and bitter lives anyway). It is hearty, it is buttery, and it makes efficient and cheap use of leftovers, supplemented by staples you probably already have in your kitchen. Often, I roast a chicken for just myself and The Rob, with an eye toward making potpie out of the leftovers. With the plump roaster I got on sale recently for 99 cents a pound, I was not only able to do that, but make a couple sandwiches' worth of curried chicken salad—oh, and of course, I made stock from the chicken carcass.

Usually, when I make chicken potpie, I put the filling in a gratin pan and lay a crust over just the top of the dish (as opposed to having a bottom crust lining the pan). It's not like this is exactly a "light" dish any way you prepare it, but I find that you don’t really need all that extra crust.

Grilled Flatbread

Despite dire hurricane predictions, I went to Provincetown, on the very farthest tip of Cape Cod, with my cousin over Labor Day. The whole weekend turned out gorgeously sunny and cloudless, with the exception of a rainy Friday night…which we made the most of by grilling out on the deck.

Now, since I have no outdoor cooking options at home in Brooklyn, when I am near a grill, I want to use it as many ways as I can. This dinner involved grilled pork loin with marmalade glaze, grilled asparagus, grilled corn on the cob, mashed potatoes with shallots and sour cream (not on the grill—not everything can be on the grill), and grilled flatbread.

I’ve loved making bread on the grill for years, but always consulted a recipe. In the “rainy day” spirit that ultimately anticlimactic Hurricane Earl begat, I decided to wing it by making up my own, all seat-of-pants-like. Gentle reader, it turned out awesome. The process does take a couple hours, although 75% of that time is spent waiting for the dough to rise. (It has to rise twice; I strongly suggest reading through this whole recipe before you start so you can time-manage.)