Sometimes you just want to have some fun with life.  A few months ago Ellen and I were sitting around discussing ways we could use our off-center humor for our next Christmas party. There is something about the holidays that makes us a little twisted. I remember the time when my kids were little and expecting Santa to come down the chimney while they were sleeping to fill their stockings.  We decided to expand their little minds a bit.  Ellen had some boots for ducks (yes, that is a real thing) and we used them to make a set of duck footprints leading from the fireplace over to the Christmas tree and to the stockings.  When the kids woke up Christmas morning, the living room was covered with all these duck footprints.  When the kids asked what was going on, we calmly explained that Santa had been indisposed due to a case of black lung he had contracted from all the soot in the fireplaces he had gone down. Santa had asked his good friend, the Christmas Goose, to cover for him this year.  We explained that Santa would be fine and back on the job next year as he was under excellent care.  Since the stockings were all properly filled, the kids accepted the story and life went on.

On another occasion, we hosted a holiday dinner party for my family in which one of the appetizers we appeared to present was escargot.  Actually I had made some very realistic imitation escargot out of portabella mushroom slices cooked in garlic butter and stuffed them into snail shells.  Although everyone was a little timid about eating snails, they all did so and actually liked them.  In truth, escargot doesn't taste like anything but the garlic butter they are cooked in, so it was an easy sell.  They were quite proud of themselves for years over trying the exotic dish since I didn't let them in on the switch for several years.

Our sense of humor is about offering people a chance to experience life from a different perspective.  It is about generating a sense of wonder by stepping out of the expected and into the unknown.  It is very similar to what a magician does with his magic.  It is about being willing to suspend one's belief and to see life differently.  I blame far too many years of reading science fiction and fantasy novels for teaching me to enjoy alternate realities.

This years storyline began after a trip to Costco at which I bought a big glass container of mango slices.  Upon trying them at home I was struck at how much the mango slices looked like and had the texture of slices of liver.  They were just the wrong color.  I suggested to Ellen that we could serve them at Christmas as reindeer livers if I could change the color.  Ellen thought that was hilarious and that started the creative process of other things we could have for dinner that would be made out of Christmas fantasy creatures.  Before long an entire menu evolved.  The appetizer would be the “livers”, followed by elf chops made from lamb chops ( with little elf stockings on the bones), Santa brain made from a whole cauliflower, creamed Grinch made from spinach, reindeer droppings made from fingerling potatoes, finished off by reindeer hooves on snow made from a chocolate lava cake on top of whipped cream.  Of course, the entire meal would be a healthy paleo meal.

At the time this was just a bit of creative fun.  But as the holidays crept closer we found ourselves as hosts for Christmas dinner.  The ideas of a fantasy feast suddenly became a target goal to be accomplished.  Ellen began working on the initial presentation of the menu while I started trying out recipes.  

The first step was buying another jar of mango slices.  I had tried several natural dyes on the last batch such as beet juice and purple cabbage juice, but ultimately the best choice was soaking the slices in pureed blackberries.  These stayed in the back of the fridge for a month taking in the color.

Next came the dessert recipe.  I tried several paleo lava cake recipes, but they were all very fragile and just not the effect I was looking for.  I had put some of the extra cakes in the fridge to see if they could be reheated properly, and by accident discovered that I liked the recipe cold much better than hot.  It resulted in a very fudgy cross between cake and candy.  When I actually looked up pictures of reindeer hooves on the internet, I discovered that reindeer don't have hooves.  Their feet look more like giant hairy chicken feet.  Slicing the cold lava cakes into a couple talons made for a much more realistic presentation.

I spent over a week trying ways to make the fingerling potatoes dark brown in color.  Nothing I tried worked.  The skins just refused to take any color.  Finally I decided to simply drown the fingerlings in a sea of brown mush, which ultimately I made from shredded bacon and purple cabbage.  The Santa brain I felt pretty confident about as a year ago Ellen and I went to a Season's 52 restaurant and ordered their cauliflower appetizer.  It was a full head of cauliflower that had been flame-broiled and served with a side of cheese sauce.  It was a little too tough this way so I steamed the head until it was half cooked, coated it in olive oil and smoked paprika, then baked in in the oven for an hour.  The creamed Grinch was simply a paleo creamed spinach recipe I found online.  Everything had to be tried ahead of time and approved of as tasting wonderful while also looking like what the menu said they were.

Getting down to the last week I spent a couple hours at the sewing machine making tiny stockings and elf boots out of fabric to put on the elf chops.  We were ready for the last review before printing the menu up on fancy silver paper.  I decided the livers needed a little garnish, so I added a holly wreath around them made of arugula and dried cherries and topped with a slice of candied bacon.  The candied bacon idea I stole from Claim Jumpers where we took the office for our office Christmas party.

One last-minute idea came to me which fit the fantasy theme: a bouquet of flowers with blooms made from cotton candy.  I ordered a dozen fake tulips online and some bags of cotton candy.  I cut the tulips open and stuffed various colors of cotton candy into the open space.  I did not pretest this idea, and much to my dismay I discovered on the day of the party that cotton candy does not sit out well.  I first set up the flowers Christmas morning, and by the time of the party they had to be all redone as the moisture in the air had shriveled the flowers into lumps of colored sugar.

So 9:30 Christmas morning I fill my big sous-vide pot with water, cut my two racks of lamb into chops, cover them with fresh rosemary, and put them into baggies in the sous-vide to cook at 132 degrees for 3 hours.  I had made the lava cakes the night before and had baked the fingerling potatoes in garlic butter at the same time then tossed them with the bacon/cabbage mixture.  In the morning all I needed to do was put out the cakes to bring them to room temperature and pop the potatoes in the oven.  I quickly rechecked the recipe from the internet and my spinach was cooking while I also steamed the cauliflower.  The spinach was quickly finished and put aside to keep warm for dinner.  The cauliflower made into the oven for baking next to the potatoes.  Fortunately, I had also made the candied bacon a couple of days in advance so that was ready after a little warming in a frying pan.  My last little creation chore was to invent a dressing for the arugula.  I mixed the reserved mango juice with a little plum vinegar and some tart cherry juice then added a couple of drops of stevia and fish sauce and a little mayo for body and the dressing was invented.  Tossing the arugula with the dressing and some dried cherries finished the last inventive portion of the dinner.  Time to plate.

The appetizer was easy.  I formed little wreaths of the arugula and placed a slice of the now almost black mango in the middle and topped it with a slice of bacon.  While I did this Ellen tackled whipping the cream for the dessert.  About this time the timer went off for the lamb/elf chops.  The last step here was to brown the chops for a few seconds at a time in a hot pan of melted butter and then slip their little stockings on.  Family arrived while I was doing this so the timing was perfect.  Everyone said hello and migrated to sitting at the table as I pulled the Santa brains and reindeer droppings out of the oven and put them on the table.  The chops and creamed Grinch soon followed, along with the plated reindeer livers in a holly wreath.  The fantasy feast was a reality!

There were a few dubious looks when they each looked at the menu and some much more serious looks as I set the “livers” in front of each of them.  I had to dispel the obvious concern about eating raw liver from a couple of the guests by asking them to guess what the liver was really made from, thus letting them know that it was not really liver staring at them from the center of that holly wreath.  Once they established that the menu was a fantasy and they were actually going to be eating real food, the mood became quite jolly and a good time was had by all.  Were the last three months of preparation for a couple hours of whimsy worth it?  Absolutely!  Why do we do anything we do?  We do it for the feeling it gives us.  For Ellen and I eccentric creativity is its own reward.

Happy Holidays to you all...

David   

   
Ellen update:    

As you might have guessed from the article, Ellen was knee deep in the preparation for the Fantasy Feast for my family.