Dabble I Must

The hardest thing about cooking a holiday dinner isn’t getting up early in the morning to begin roasting the turkey or baking three kinds of pies for one meal or even making sure you have china and silver for 20. The hardest thing about cooking a holiday dinner is restraining yourself.

The sad truth is that people don’t gather around the holiday table to appreciate your adventurous culinary vision. Holidays are for tradition, not for experimentation.

But if you’re like me, it’s tough to get in the kitchen and do the same old thing.

In the first place, I usually can’t remember what the same old thing is. My wife will say, “Why don’t you make that thing you did last year with the sweet potatoes,” and I’ll look at her as if she’s suddenly begun a past-life regression or something.

What thing with sweet potatoes? I’m sure I did something with sweet potatoes last year--I do something with sweet potatoes every year--but other than guaranteeing it didn’t involve marshmallows, I honestly haven’t got a clue about what it was.

Hmm, but speaking of sweet potatoes. . . . What if I roasted them and peeled them, then sliced them and poured over some reduced cream and bourbon? Baked, that would make a great gratin, wouldn’t it? And maybe some finely chopped toasted pecans on top. . . .

Or I could bake and peel the sweet potatoes and puree them with a lot of butter, then stir in a thread of reduced balsamic vinegar to cut the fat and sweetness. I did something like that with butternut squash, and it was delicious. . . .

Come to think about it, I’ve never tried sticking sweet potatoes in the roasting pan with the meat for the last hour the way you do with regular potatoes. That might be interesting, too, if I could get the right combination of crust and caramel.

You see how it goes.

I tell myself that it’s OK to play a little bit around the edges with the side dishes. After all, there’s not that much I can do to the centerpiece anyway, be it turkey, goose, beef or pork. Season, roast, carve. Sigh.

And I promise myself I’ll dabble just a bit. Make some adjustments. Let’s call it refining rather than reinventing. We’ll leave the basic bones pretty much the same; we’ll just hang some slightly different clothes on them.

So while we covered the fundamental cranberries, sweet potatoes, dressing and creamed onions this year, there were a couple of twists. The dressing was Southern-inflected, made by cooking smoked sausage with lots of celery and onions and mixing that with a couple of bunches of mustard greens. (I did stay with white bread for the stuffing. Despite having lived in the South for years, I still think corn bread dressing is too dry.)

The most successful dish, I think, was the onions. Though I make some kind of creamed onions every year, every year it’s a little different. Sometimes I use a bechamel sauce. Sometimes there’s some Sherry. Sometimes I braise them in chicken stock and then finish them with cream. I really like them with bits of good smoky bacon added--the combination of onion, bacon and cream is one of the truly holy flavors in cooking.

This time I amped the onion bite a little bit by starting with a minced shallot sweated in a little butter. Then I picked up the smoke by cooking diced shiitake mushrooms with that combination. I reduced some cream with that a little beyond coating consistency (there is some liquid released when you add the onions). Finally I cooked the onions just long enough to barely soften them--they’re more interesting with a little crunch at the center.

The result isn’t radically different from the creamed onions you might have grown up with. Think of it as restrained innovation. In fact, other than asking, “What are those little black things?” (bits of chopped mushroom), the only thing my guests said was, “Can I have the recipe?”

CREAMED ONIONS WITH SHIITAKE MUSHROOMS

Though I tend to be a little obsessive about fresh vegetables, pearl onions are one place I’m happy to compromise. Having spent countless holiday hours trimming, scoring and squeezing onions, I now have come to the conclusion that the small diminishment in flavor from freezing (onions actually freeze quite well) more than makes up for the tedium of cleaning them. If you disagree, there are instructions included here on how to take care of fresh ones.

2 tablespoons butter

1 shallot, minced

1 1/2 to 2 ounces fresh shiitake mushrooms

1 1/2 cups whipping cream

2 (10-ounce) bags frozen pearl onions or 2 pints fresh

Salt

2 tablespoons minced herbs (mainly chives, can also include parsley, rosemary and thyme)

Combine butter and shallot in medium-heavy saucepan and melt over medium heat. When butter is completely melted, cook until shallot becomes soft and translucent, about 2 minutes (do not let shallot scorch or color).

Remove stems from shiitake mushrooms, rinse caps briefly under running water and pat dry. Chop fine. When shallot is soft, add mushrooms and cook until mushrooms are dry, about 3 minutes. Add cream and raise heat to medium-high. Cook, stirring, until cream reduces by half, about 5 minutes.

Place frozen onions in colander and run under warm water to defrost. Thoroughly pat dry.

If using fresh onions, barely trim both ends (some of root and stem must remain to keep onion from falling apart. Cut deep ‘X’ in root end, to 1/4 length of onion. Place onions in large bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand until room temperature and squeeze onions between thumb and forefinger to pop from skins. Thoroughly pat dry.

Add onions to reduced cream. Cook briefly, enough to heat through and reduce cream, which may have become thinner from onion juice. Season to taste with salt. Just before serving, reheat, add minced herbs and stir to combine.

6 to 8 servings. Each of 8 servings:

210 calories; 91 mg sodium; 69 mg cholesterol; 20 grams fat; 8 grams carbohydrates; 2 grams protein; 0.61 gram fiber.