Another great Christmas time dessert is the Biscotti Christmas Tree. It's a little time consuming to make, but well worth the effort.

The tricky part is making the biscotti in various lengths, so that when stacked {longest at the bottom} a tree shape is formed. There are 3 biscotti in a layer arranged in the form of a triangle. Each layer is rotated 90 degrees... fun!

Chocolate, sugar glaze and nuts are drizzled over the biscotti, and a powdered sugar "snow" dusting finishes the tree.

Standing Rib Roast

We have prepared Standing Rib Roast for Christmas dinner the past two years. It is a special holiday treat and always a big hit...

Standing Rib Roast, Prime Rib, and Rib Roast as all the same cut, so it's easy to be confused at the Market... Our local Safeway was well stocked with Standing Rib Roasts as it's a standard for Christmas dinners. They had a special price of @$5.00/lb.

For our dinner party of 9 people, I purchased a 9 3/4 lb -5 bone Standing Rib Roast...Rib Roasts are typically cut by the number of Ribs, e.g. a 3-rib roast, 4, or 5-rib roast. I ended up with lots of Roast left over, so I could have ordered a smaller roast, perhaps 7 lbs.

The Butcher asked if I wanted it "bone cut and tied?" What they do, is cut along the ribs, almost 3/4 though the roast and then tie the ribs back secure to the roast...This makes it easier for carving the roast later on... e.g. you just finish cutting though the roast to remove the ribs, and then slice off pieces of roast without the rib bones getting in the way. Caution: I think cutting the roast this way reduces the cooking time slightly, say from 20-25 min/lb, to 15-20 min/lb.

I used a recipe that had a herb rub to marriate the roast for a day prior to cooking.

• garlic


• rosemary


• olive oil


• pepper


• Kosher salt

Cooking:

Let the Roast stand at room temp for at least 2 hrs

Preheat oven to 450

Place meat in a shallow roasting pan fat side up.

Roast 15 mins.

Reduce the temp to 350 and roast for @ 20-23 min per lb until the thermometer inserted in the middle of the roast registers 125 for medium rare.

Let the roast rest for 15-20 minutes before carving.

My roast was in the over at 1:00 and it was done at 4:00... so 180min for 9-3/4 lbs or about 18 minutes per lb. As I said I think the reduced time was due to cutting the rib bones away from the roast.

The roast was very tender and had great flavor. A big hit!

Menu for Christmas Dinner 2009

Other members of the family host Thanksgiving dinner, so we get to do Christmas!

It's fun, but turned out to be a lot of work.

We decided to do the same menu as last year, since it was so good, and also to allow us to work out some of the parts that did not go quite as planned.

Menu:

Appetizers of cold Shrimp with cocktail sauce
Standing Rib Roast with Tomato Confeit, mushroom pudding and Broccoli.
Cheese Course
Chocolate Yule Log cake with Meringue Mushrooms

Wines:

Christmas is a time to open up and try those wines that we have been saving for some special occasion..

1975 Tulocay Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
1978 Chateau Haut Brion
1980 Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtesse De LaLande

I was very surprised at how well the wines aged. They all were still very much alive, not showing much browning at all... I wish I could have tasted them more critically, but cooking, serving and taking care of our guests kept me too distracted to do much more than just enjoy them.

Recipes and comments for the menu courses will get their own blog entry.