Well, it was party time at our house. My wife just turned 35, and allowed how she wanted to have a real birthday party, because she hadn’t had one since she was 18. A friend volunteered to help me with the cooking (I’m the cook at our place), and another friend volunteered to host it for us (her house is lots bigger than ours).
The night before, I started at about 8:00 with a whole brisket (a twelve-pound cry-o-vac, not a butcher trim) and rubbed it all over with a dry rub of equal parts of hickory salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder. Put it in the oven at 175° F., and let it cook overnight (this is our favorite way to cook brisket when you can’t get a smoker).
Next day, I got out a picnic shoulder, brushed it with a glaze of apricot jam and brown sugar, and baked it for a couple of hours. Then I made a pastry crust and wrapped the glazed ham in it, brushed it with an egg wash and baked the whole thing for another hour. This is a killer way to present baked ham, particularly if you have a little dough left over and are feeling artistic—you can cut out grape leaves from the scraps and apply them as decoration, then take the leftover scraps from that and roll them into little balls to make the grapes. It’s really easy, and looks as though you’ve spent hours on it.
By this time my swamper had arrived with her food processor, so I had her throw together a batch of hummus and a baba ghanouj. I’d bought a couple of round sourdough loaves, so she hollowed them out into bowls while I made a spinach dip to go in one and a dill dip to go in the other. The scooped-out and sliced-up bread made good dippers for both.
I baked a Brie en croûte, although that turned out as kind of a flop—it cooled off, and I made the mistake of trying to reheat it in the nuker. All that did was to make the filo crust tough as an old boot, so I just peeled the filo back and stuck a cheese knife in the Brie, and let people spread it on whatever else they had a mind to. And to finish I made a huge batch of cheese biscuits, à la Red Lobster.
We took all this feast over and served it up, along with a batch of homebrew—one of my best batches ever. And the only reason I had leftovers was that I’d made food for about 40, but only 15 showed up. Oh well; it was a really good party anyway.
Tugboat Annie promotes a motorcycle up Bing Crosby on The Road to Mandalay. Fnord.
