Celebrate, big or small.

The kitchen is closed for the holidays. We’ll be back next week with a new recipe, something new on the boombox and more. In the meantime, a quick word about big and little celebrations of the season.

The house in the picture above is an example of big. It’s in our Logan Square neighborhood in Chicago. The people living here have done this for years now, and every year it gets more involved. It now includes sound and a small working ferris wheel. People come from all over to see it; in fact, I was only able to photograph it sans a steady stream of cars because I went late at night when it was about zero degrees out, with winds gusting to 50 miles an hour.

We call the place Harry Potter’s House. When it’s not festooned with more lights than a small town, you can see the two huge bronze dragons flanking the front door and the giant fountain out front covered with little birds and perhaps more dragons. Obviously the residents favor flamboyance and celebrating in a big way.

At the opposite end of the celebration spectrum is the small, beautiful poem below by American poet e.e. cummings. I remember first hearing it when I was a child. One of the many teachers who touch our lives more than we know at the time read it to our second or third grade class. Poems were of course supposed to rhyme, so I thought she was reading us a story.

I rediscovered it in college when I stumbled on cummings’ amazing poetry, thanks to another teacher. Only this person wasn’t really a teacher—he ran a small bookstore near school. He sold my girlfriend and me only a handful of books over our many visits, but he spent countless hours sitting and reading poetry to us.

I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember either of these wonderful teachers’ names. But I will always remember the wonderful gifts they gave me. One of them was this poem.

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower
who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly
i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don’t be afraid
look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,
put up your little arms
and i’ll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won’t be a single place dark or unhappy
then when you’re quite dressed
you’ll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they’ll stare!
oh but you’ll be very proud
and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we’ll dance and sing
“Noel Noel”

—e.e. cummings

Whatever holiday you celebrate and whether you celebrate it big or small, I hope it’s filled with wonderful moments and memorable gifts. I’ll see you next week. Or as we used to say in grade school and think ourselves the kings and queens of wit, “See you next year!”

A cool, surprising first course for Thanksgiving

Freshly returned from an amazing road trip along California’s Pacific Coast Highway, I had planned to regale you with tales of fabulous food and hairpin turns. That will have to wait ’til next week. I suddenly remembered I’d promised you Marion’s Sweet Potato Vichyssoise, a Thanksgiving tradition at our house, in time for that most food-centric of holidays. Marion will actually give you two recipes today—the Vichyssoise and the homemade chicken stock that makes it so good. For a little taste of California, check out my WTF post after the soup course. Oh. And if you’re looking for another non-traditional [except in our household] side dish for Thanksgiving, be sure to check out Marion’s delicious take on kasha from last year.

A bowl of this soup looks like a beautiful harvest moon glowing on your table. The original of this recipe appeared in The Four Seasons Cookbook, still one of my most beloved cookbooks of all time. Elegant in design, full of inspiring, demanding recipes and gorgeous photos, it foreshadowed our current era of high-concept coffee table cookbooks. I usually figure that if a cookbook gives us one recipe that lasts, then that cookbook is worth my while. The Four Seasons Cookbook gave me several that remain in our rotation even now, and I still turn to it from time to time to admire its lovely photos and, honestly, to gape at the now-vanished world of daffy culinary aspiration that it represents—especially the panoply of things crammed inside other things: Stuffed Legs of Baby Lamb en Brioche! Whole Trout in Souffle! Mousse of Ham in Whole Peaches! [I cannot think of another cookbook that comments, with a straight face, of a very busy dish that includes lobster and lobster sauce, “It will make a pleasantly spectacular addition to your repertoire of chafing-dish cookery.”] But even if time has not been kind to this book, I still love it, and still remember that once I, too, longed to make a Croquembouche Bruno.

That book’s version of Sweet Potato Vichyssoise was based on beef stock and also called for celery, onion, and loads of butter. This one is lighter in approach. If anything, this recipe is so simple that I’m almost embarrassed by it. The central thing about to know, though, is that you have to make it with homemade stock. With so few ingredients, each one has to stand up for itself, and that’s all there is to it. Store-bought canned “broth” or the liquid delivery system for salt and fat that comes in a box just won’t do. Below you’ll find my recipe for homemade chicken stock. But first, the Sweet Potato Vichyssoise, an elegant, delicious first course for your Thanksgiving dinner.

Sweet Potato Vichyssoise
6 to 8 first course servings

6 cups of homemade chicken stock [see recipe below]
2 pounds of sweet potatoes
1 cup cream or half and half
Fresh chives, cut fine, or green scallion tops, cut very fine

Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into small pieces.

Heat the chicken stock. When it is simmering, add the sweet potatoes, return the liquid to a simmer, and cook until the sweet potatoes are very soft. At this point, salt the soup carefully to taste. [See Kitchen Notes.]

Cool the soup. You may decant it in a bowl if you wish, or move the pot into the refrigerator, but it is essential to cool the soup thoroughly at this point. Once it is well cooled [see Kitchen Notes], process it in a blender or food processor until it is uniformly smooth and rather thick. Work in batches if you need to.

Once the soup is entirely puréed, pour it into a large container, cover and refrigerate until you are ready to serve it. You can make it up to a day ahead. At the point when you are about to serve the soup, stir in the cream.

Ladle the cold soup into individual bowls. Choose a bowl that will show off the pretty pale-coral color of the soup. As you see from the photo, we use pink Manhattan glass bowls. Simple white ones or clear glass bowls would be beautiful too. Garnish with the chives or scallions, and serve.

Now here’s the homemade chicken stock, the key to the success of the vichyssoise.

Note to self: Get organized

I keep promising myself to put together an editorial calendar for Blue Kitchen, mapping out topics I want to cover, especially around the holidays. If I’d done that, last week you would have read about some romantic Valentine dinner or a sinfully rich dessert in time to perhaps actually plan for it tonight. But I didn’t. And if I’d gone ahead and written about something like that for today’s post, you’d just be pissed that there was no time to get things together. So instead, I wrote about egg foo yung.

Just so you know I’m not a total doofus, Marion and I won’t be eating egg foo yung tonight, assuming the winter weather cooperates. I made dinner reservations at one of our favorite little Chicago bistros, Red Rooster Wine Bar and Cafe. Sharing the kitchen with the [only slightly] more formal Cafe Bernard, the tiny Red Rooster offers exquisitely prepared simple French cuisine in a relaxed country atmosphere. If you ever find yourself in Chicago for dinner, you could do far worse than this cozy, friendly place.

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone. Be sure to check out the special Valentine’s Day editions of Kitchen Boombox and WTF.

“…Christmas gifts. Hahahaha!”

Like Thanksgiving, Christmas is another tradition-laden holiday. For seven or eight years now, one of our traditions has been to go to Chinatown for dinner on Christmas Eve. It started when Marion’s sister Lena told us in an offhanded, “isn’t that interesting” kind of way that two of her coworkers did this every year. We are HUGE fans of Chinese food—and of Chicago’s Chinatown—so any excuse to go there is fine by us. Thus, a tradition was born.