The centerpiece of dinner is a standing rib roast
- Scott Daniels: We Ate Well and Cheaply
- December 21, 2018
- 1365
Whose idea was it to hold Christmas on a Tuesday?
Last year the Monday Christmas cheated us out of the usual sneak home from work early Christmas Eve shenanigans.
This year we’ll get to have the weekend, then a nuisance day of work when no one is there mentally or paying attention, followed by the single day off to play and feast, then back at it, belching and bleary-eyed Wednesday morning. It really is poor planning by the schedulers.
Cheer up, though. We may get our schedules royally messed up for Christmas, but at least we get to repeat it all a week later for New Year’s.
My family Christmas Day gathering is quite small, and that’s a major plus, in part because we are a group who gathers regularly anyway and there won’t be any seldom-seen folk who just make trouble sticking their gravy-smeared fingers in everyone else’s eye with baseless opinions or silly advice.
Those of you who must have Christmas dinner with an opinionated, noisy uncle visiting from Arizona have my sympathy, doubly so if his annual glass of wine winds him tighter.
The other big advantage is we don’t have to feed an army of people, so we can splurge on the dinner.
The centerpiece of that dinner every year is a standing rib roast of beef. We surround it with Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes, creamed onions, Brussels sprouts, peas, a rich gravy and every kind of pickle we can think of.
Doing this for a dozen or more people would mean dropping back to a ham or another turkey, so for a few moments each Christmas, we can be grateful most family is scattered and elsewhere because we eat well as a result.
In the interest of creating a charming, Victorian-Dickensian Christmas, we’ve tried roasting a goose a few times. The whole thing works out better in your imagination and is best left there.
Geese are very, very fatty; are all dark meat; and taste a little gamey, and by the time they’re done, all that fat has run out of them and they are greasy rather than juicy. I’m obviously doing a poor job of cooking them, but goose doesn’t taste good enough to want to fix it and get it right.
Cooking a rib roast — which is essentially a collection of unseparated ribeye steaks — is pretty straightforward, and minimal fussing seems best. We use a thick crust of salt and pepper and high heat to sear it, followed by lowered heat to let it roast through.
The trick is getting the gravy right. If you use a canned gravy with such a beautiful roast, there won’t be enough possible trips to confession in 2019 to get such a sin forgiven.
As soon as you reach the words “canned gravy,” the priest will interrupt with “Wow, can’t help you there, Margaret. I can charge off the dalliance with your brother in law, but canned gravy is a no-go.”
Making gravy requires your full attention, so assign someone else to mash the potatoes.
Start with a roux of butter, fat from the roasting pan and flour and give it time to reach a nice peanut butter color, being careful not to let it scorch. Add beef stock; a good, dry red wine; and a light touch of herbs. Keep whisking and taste it constantly, and when it’s just right, get it to the table while it’s hot. With gravy, timing is everything, and you don’t want a skin to form while it waits to cover the mashed and the pudding.
Merry Christmas to you and yours!