Cooking the 12 gifts of Christmas
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree.
So naturally I made a pan-roasted partridge — pan-roasted, so I could baste it in butter while it cooked — with a light salad of sliced pears (from the pear tree) with endive and a simple lemon vinaigrette.
I’ve never actually eaten partridge, but the Google Machine tells me it is a tender and mildly flavored game bird, less gamy than some, with a wild flavor that diminishes as the season progresses.
They taste, I am told, not unlike chicken.
On the second day of Christmas, my true love gave to me two turtle doves.
I fired up my grill, rubbed the doves in olive oil and seasoned them with salt and pepper. I grilled them over a couple of rosemary sprigs and topped them with a thin brushing of my homemade barbecue sauce.
I’ve never actually eaten doves — actually, to save time I should just go ahead and admit that I’ve only eaten two or three of the things I’m writing about in this column — but I hear they are kind of like chicken.
On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me three French hens.
Now we’re talking. French hens are like regular hens, only they’re French. They wear saucy little berets and shirts with blue and white Breton stripes.
Best of all, they definitely taste like chicken.
I spatchcocked and roasted them with herbed butter tucked under the skin, and croutons that absorbed the chicken’s juices and the melted butter as it all cooked together. And it was a French recipe, too.
On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me four calling birds. And then she explained to me that “calling” is actually a corruption of the original term, “colly,” which is itself based on the Old English word for coal. So she gave me black birds.
Basically, she gave me four crows, and then she told me I should be used to them because I eat crow all the time. I’m beginning to wonder about the nature of my relationship with my true love.
My Lithuanian forebears apparently did eat crow, which is abundant and tastes, according to some, like chicken. I deep-fried mine (the meat is tough and takes about twice as long to cook as chicken) and served it with another Lithuanian specialty, boiled potatoes with dill and butter.
On the fifth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me five golden rings. Which is to say, five ringneck pheasants. Scholars agree that the first seven gifts of the song are all birds. Also, actual gold rings are a big leap in value from partridges and hens, so it would make sense that the original writer of the song would be talking about pheasants.
Pheasant, I’ve had. Pheasant, I like. I decided to keep it simple and make pheasant Marsala, with a sauce made from equal parts Marsala wine and chicken stock, cooked with mushrooms and reduced until thickened and then emulsified with butter and fresh rosemary.
On the sixth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me six geese a-laying.
I thought about using the goose eggs to make a creme brulée, but at the last moment I decided that was a little weird. So I made a plain omelet cooked in herbed butter.
It’s Christmas, so I made the traditional European dish of roast goose, only I gave it a Gordon Ramsay spin by first rubbing the skin with a mixture of citrus zest and Chinese five-spice powder. Of course, I saved the rendered fat to use to cook with potatoes in the future.
On the seventh day of Christmas, my true love gave to me seven swans a-swimming. She hunted them in one of the eight states where it is legal, of course (Alaska, Nevada, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Virginia and North Carolina).
Swan meat is a little tough and needs to be cooked for a fairly long time at a relatively low temperature. I braised the legs in a sauce of tomatoes and red wine, with garlic, shallots and thyme.
On the eighth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me eight maids a-milking.
That’s a lot of milk. Some of it I drank. Some I turned into hot chocolate ice cream.
Most of the rest I gave to all of those dancing ladies, leaping lords, piping pipers and drumming drummers that she also gave to me. They especially liked the ice cream.
But some of the milk I saved for myself, to make baked eggnog french toast.
It was heavenly. I didn’t give any of it to my true love. I ate it all myself.
