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CHIPOTLE DRY RUB SHRIMP WITH A CILANTRO DIPPING SAUCE

(Serves 12)

The herbs and spices do all the hard work, leaving you with plenty of energy to fend off the party crashers who are drawn in by the wafting aromas.

Ingredients
2 pounds 12-15 count shrimp (translation: 12-15 shrimp per pound)

1 tablespoon oregano

1 tablespoon thyme

1 teaspoon lemon pepper

1/3 – 2/3 teaspoon ground chipotle pepper (can be replaced with cayenne pepper)

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

2 cups fresh cilantro, leaves and stems discarded before measuring

1/4 cup sour cream

2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice

1. Shell, clean and devein shrimp. (Tails may be left on for aesthetic reasons.) Pat dry.

2. Toss shrimp with oregano, thyme, lemon pepper, chipotle pepper, 1/2 teaspoon salt and pepper. Ideally, let them sit in the refrigerator for an hour for the spices to meld with the shrimp.

3. Blend cilantro in a food processor until liquefied. Stir in sour cream, lime juice and 1/4 teaspoon salt.

4. Heat a dry, well-seasoned iron skillet or other heavy pan over high heat. When pan is hot, place shrimp in pan so that each one is side down (i.e., not too overcrowded). Cook for approximately 1 minute and turn over for another minute, or until shrimp is no longer translucent. Repeat as necessary to cook all shrimp.

5. Serve warm, or at room temperature, with cilantro dipping sauce.

Le Secret: The chipotle pepper adds a unique smoky flavor to the shrimp.

Advance Prep:

• Cilantro sauce will keep well in the refrigerator for 2-3 days.
• Shrimp can be cooked a day in advance, or better yet, mixed with spices in advance, then pan-cooked just before serving.

Warning: Be sure to cover up your smoke alarm before cooking the shrimp. Trust me on this.

CITRUS-OLIVE TAPENADE

(Serves 12)

This twist on the classic French tapenade is rich, fruity and aromatic.

Ingredients
3 cups black Kalamata olives, pitted

Zest of 2 medium-sized oranges

Zest of 1 lemon

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 teaspoon anise seeds

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 1/2 cups fresh Italian parsley, stems removed and discarded before measuring

1/4 cup fresh rosemary, stems removed and discarded before measuring

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 thin sourdough baguette or rustic crackers or bagel chips

1. Purée all ingredients (except the bread) in a food processor to make tapenade.

2. Cut baguette into thin slices and toast in a toaster or in the oven.

3. Spread tapenade on crisps just before serving or let guests assemble themselves.

Le Secret: Use good fresh kalamata olives and err on the generous side of the herb portions.

The Adventure Club: Use leftover olive paste on bruschetta, pizzas or pastas.

Alternatives: Other types of black olives may be used, but at great sacrifice to the overall flavor.

Advance Prep: Tapenade will keep well in the refrigerator for several days.

Notes:

• Although no salt is added, the natural composition of kalamata olives makes this appetizer quite salty.
• If you are using a blender to purée, you may need to add some extra oil to facilitate blending. After blending, place in a bowl. Excess oil will rise to the edges of the bowl. Drain off.
• Keep refrigerated.

Christmas Cocktails: Click here for three cocktail recipes from my column last year.

Music To Pit By: Various Artists “Invocation” (sacred music from around the globe), 6 Degrees Records/Polygram

Kalamata olives are difficult to find in grocery stores and overpriced in most delis. For the best olives at the lowest prices, go to any Greek or Middle Eastern market.

Each morning at 8 sharp we met for breakfast in the hotel’s posh restaurant on the second floor, where slender waitresses in thigh-slit cheongsams pushed carts full of chickens’ feet and spareribs, litchi nuts and sheep intestine oatmeal among the grand, grease-spotted tables. After breakfast we would take a cab to the train station and spend the rest of the morning arguing with hostile ticket bureaucrats who were determined we should never reach Hunan. Then we would walk out for a snack at a streetside noodle stall, do some sightseeing, buy some fruit, break for lunch, do a little more sightseeing, stop for a snack, run some errands, eat an overwhelming dinner at a fancy restaurant, buy some mooncakes for the upcoming mooncake festival, have tea, then part company in the hotel lobby. Of course, we bought plenty of walking-around food during the day to tide us through those between times.

On Yom Kippur morning, though, when Miss Liu arrived at the hotel dining room at 8:05, I told her I wouldn’t be eating anything that day.

“Are you ill?” she cried. “Do you need to see a doctor?”

No, I answered calmly, it’s just a religious observance. I tried to explain Yom Kippur briefly. She furrowed her brow. “You don’t like the food?” she asked after I had finished explaining the meaning of the word “atonement.” “We can go to another restaurant; I’m sure we can find one that serves Western food.”

No, I explained, it was a holiday, a Jewish holiday — I wanted to eat, but I was not allowed to.

Miss Liu spoke excellent English, but this concept was utterly beyond her. The Chinese are the only people on earth more obsessed with food than the Jews. There is no such thing as a fast day in Chinese culture; a holiday means eating more. A fasting holiday is about as comprehensible to the Chinese as a St. Patrick’s Day parade in London.

Miss Liu became frantic — she had been charged with bringing the foreign teacher safely back to the college; if any trouble should befall me, she would be in terrible trouble. “Please tell me the problem,” she begged. “You must eat something.”

I mumbled a vague speech about God, sin and repentance, but finally I realized I couldn’t make her understand. There are Jews in the United States who don’t understand the purpose of the Yom Kippur fast. To be honest, I wasn’t even sure I understood the full purpose of the fast.

Miss Liu’s eyes teared up, and I considered my options: I could make her cry, or I could eat. “Moderation,” Judaism advises. “Flexibility,” China admonishes. “Never make a woman cry,” my father avers. I went downstairs and broke the fast early for the first time since my Bar Mitzvah. “Chinese food is very delicious,” Miss Liu remarked knowingly as I picked uncomfortably at tiny dishes of dumplings and sesame chicken.

What else could I do?

“Can I speak to you a moment in my office?” Mr. Li, a college
administrator, asked me one day after class. Things had seemed to be
going well at the school, though I’d been teaching for only a week; what
could I have done wrong already?

I nervously followed Mr. Li into his office and sat down in the
provided seat. He offered me a cup of tea and began by graciously
thanking
me for coming to his poor country to teach English to their students. He
praised the students’ diligence, and asked me if I had any problems in
the
classroom or at home that he could help with, then went on to extol
mutually beneficial Sino-American relations. After 15 minutes he
finally got down to business in his stilted English.

“Mr. Cohen, please we must ask you to not talk about religion in
class.”

Though I didn’t know it at the time, Americans had a well-deserved bad reputation in China, even among the other foreigners.
Whenever I met a group of Yanks — whether on board a train or in a hostel
lounge — it would take no longer than 10 minutes before the well-used
guitar made its appearance and the interminable Christian folk songs
began. Many Americans come to China expressly for the purpose of
proselytizing. This is illegal, as the Chinese see Christianity as a
threat to
their national sovereignty, so the missionaries must work covertly. Many
work under the pretense of being English teachers. Shortly before I
arrived
in Changsha, an American family had been expelled for baptizing their
students in the local river.

I informed Mr. Li that I was Jewish and did not care to discuss it
with my students.

“I see,” Mr. Li nodded. “But you must not try to teach students
about Christianity. This is not permitted.”

“Don’t worry,” I repeated, “I’m Jewish.”

He nodded again. “But you must not discuss Christ, or Jesus, with
your students.”

I’m Jewish, I repeated patiently; we do not believe in Jesus, and in
any case we do not proselytize.

Mr. Li nodded politely and continued: “Also you cannot talk
about Jesus to students even in your own room, even if they ask you.
That
is also not permitted.”

I repeated that I was Jewish, and went on to
explain
at length the difference between Christians and Jews. It would be
impossible for me to “convert” students to Judaism because it is
forbidden,
I said. He smiled patiently.

“It is against the law to do these things,” he continued. “If you
discuss Jesus the police will ask you to leave China. Do you
understand?”

I sighed. Yes, I understood. Yes, I promised not to convert my
students. No, I would not discuss Jesus. Mr. Li smiled, satisfied at
last.

“Thank you. I know you understand.”

Jewish communities existed in the past in China. There was a
Jewish community in Shanghai for nearly 200 years prior to the
Second World War, and as far back as the 13th century an
influential
Jewish population existed in the eastern city of Kaifeng, though it had
disappeared by the end of the 19th century. At present there is no
permanent Jewish community in China, though a handful of Chinese claim
ancestry to these old communities — a largely academic claim, as none can
prove maternal lineage or even practice the religion. Until recently all
religions were outlawed in communist China, and in any case the Western
concept of “religion” has never taken root. To the Chinese, “Western
religion” is merely a synonym for “Christianity,” which is basically a
club
with a lot of members that meets every Sunday.

As far as I knew, the only other Jew in Hunan, a province nearly
twice the size of New York state, was Mark Stone, an English teacher at
the Yale University-sponsored elementary school in downtown Changsha.
Mark was a short, loud, balding guy in his early 20s, always quick
to
voice an opinion — the type Annie Hall’s grandmother would refer to as “a
real New York Jew,” except that he was from Seattle and was going to law
school to become a public advocate for California’s migrant farm workers,
whom he felt were being screwed by the big farm conglomerates.

One night at a dance club, while we watched listless dancers
shuffle to a Cantonese waltz, we discussed how it felt to live in a
vacuum
of Jewish culture. Both of us had grown up in places with marked Jewish
influence — he in a Jewish section of Seattle, I in a New Jersey suburb. I
had not mentioned my religion to anyone since I arrived — not because of
Mr. Li’s warning, or because I was embarrassed, but out of the common
Jewish desire to blend in, as well as my American belief that my religion
was my own damn business. Though I did not deny being Jewish, I did not
volunteer it.

Mark, though, told me he went out of his way to tell people he
was Jewish. He considered it his duty to dispel bizarre myths about Jews
that often were spread through ignorance. Most Chinese had never met a Jew, he said, and many had crazy ideas about us.

I understood his point. An
intelligent, college-educated Australian teacher I worked with had been
astonished when I told her I was Jewish. She had never met a Jew before.
“But you don’t have dark skin or curly hair,” she had said dubiously. “And
your nose is the wrong shape — not curly.” I explained that I was of
Eastern European ancestry. “But Jews come from the Middle East,” she
said. “How can you be European?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

The day after I spoke with Mark, I decided to come out of the
closet with my students. Near the end of class I announced pointblank
that I was Jewish, and asked them what they knew about Jews. “Very
clever,” one girl said. “Don’t eat pork,” said another. “Red hair,”
added a
boy. There was a long pause. I asked if anyone had any questions they
wanted to ask me. After another long pause, a boy in the back of the
room
raised his hand: “Is this going to be on the exam?”

As Christmas approached, my two foreign coworkers suggested
we have a Christmas concert for the students. The college didn’t object,
probably because they believed, as did my students, that Christmas is an
American, not a Christian, holiday. I didn’t feel offended, or want
equal
time, as long as there wasn’t any blatant mention of God or Jesus. I
enjoy a
party, and besides, I absolutely refused to teach a classroom full of
Chinese
students to sing “Dreidel, dreidel, dreidel.”

The three of us spent several evenings laboriously recalling and
transcribing Christmas carols. I handed out mimeographed lyric sheets to
my students around Thanksgiving, and practiced for half an hour at the
end of each class. The students were thrilled and began exchanging
Christmas cards and telling their classmates. Soon all talk centered on
the upcoming concert.

During a free discussion session in class, one of the students asked
me how Americans celebrated Christmas. I explained about Christmas
lights and the tree, Santa Claus (“Old Man Christmas” in Chinese), gifts
and caroling. Another student asked me how my family celebrated
Christmas. I reminded the class that I was Jewish, so we didn’t
celebrate Christmas. She nodded gravely.

Another student raised his hand. “Do you miss your family on
Christmas?” he asked, blushing at his bold question. I explained again
that we didn’t celebrate Christmas, so it didn’t mean much to me.

“Oh,” he said, obviously disappointed.

“Do you have a tree?” a girl asked excitedly.

No, I explained, only Christians have trees. My family was Jewish. We didn’t have a tree.

She nodded, perplexed. I could sense they were beginning to doubt that I
was American.

A boy in the back row raised his hand hopefully: “Do you
exchange gifts?”

I sighed. Yes, I said, we exchange gifts, we have a tree and I
miss my family very much on Christmas.

“Ahhh,” the students sighed,
satisfied at last.

The next Yom Kippur, I prepared in advance. I told my students I
wouldn’t be teaching that day, and explained the holiday thoroughly.
Though a bit perplexed, they accepted my explanation. I asked Miss Liu
for the day off; she wanted to know why.

“Yom Kippur is a holiday,” I reminded her. “A fast day.”

She did not understand. “You know Qing Ming?” I asked,
referring to the spring holiday when Chinese honor their ancestors. She
nodded. “On Qing Ming you sweep your family’s graves clean and offer
fruit and flowers to honor your ancestors’ memory, right?” She nodded.
“Yom Kippur is at the beginning of the Jewish New Year. We think about
the past. We recall our dead loved ones and honor them, and we also
think
about the things we have done wrong to other people in the past year, and
we fast and ask for forgiveness from God.”

She thought about it for a while. “You don’t eat?” she asked.

“Not for one day,” I said.

She thought about it. “Only one day?” she asked.

I nodded.

“Certainly you may take the day off,” she said. “Please be careful
not to
get sick; you are very important to us. I hope you have a good holiday.”

“Thank you,” I said.

She stood up to go. “Can you can make up the teaching day?” she
asked just before she left. Sure, I nodded.
“Good. How about this Saturday?”

A better way to buck the system altogether is to make your own gifts. If you have a lot of foodies on your Christmas shopping list, let your fingers do the shopping by crafting a gift that will spice up their day and save you a bundle of cash to blow on post-season sales. Herbed olive oils are very popular these days, and for good reason: They are an instant 911. A splash will instantly resuscitate pastas, pizzas and vegetables, and magically convert a plain piece of toast into a sophisticated slice of bruschetta before your very eyes. With a little creativity, you can customize labels and make your offering totally unique. Contrary to anything the folks at Williams-Sonoma might like you to believe, there’s no secret recipe. Just connect the following dots.

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BOTTLES

• Use clear wine bottles, Orangina bottles or any other decorative bottle you can get your hands on. Bottles that previously contained fancy oils (preferably that someone else overpaid for) are also ideal. Be sure to wash thoroughly before filling.

OIL

• Purchase your olive oil in one-gallon cans from a Middle Eastern market or your local bulk food store. Ask for a robust oil, but don’t splurge on anything too virginal, since the delicate flavoring will be overwhelmed by the herbs.

SPICES

• Fresh rosemary sprigs
• Fresh thyme sprigs
• Dried Italian herbs or herbes de provence
• Dried chili peppers
• Peeled garlic cloves (if you choose to add these, the cloves must be removed within four days to avoid scary health problems that could ruin Christmas dinner)
• Olives
• Whole black or multicolored peppercorns

FANCY EXTRAS

• Labels and hand tags: Just improvise. Use fancy paper, or make a prototype and then color copy it. If you’ve got kids, steal their crayons, or better still, let them do the designing. If you go the label route, pick up a spray can of 3M super 77 Spray Adhesive at your local art store or Staples outlet.
• Spouts: Liquor pouring spouts can be found in most grocery stores, as well as all restaurant supply stores and Williams-Sonoma. For the initial presentation, cork the bottle and hang the spout around its neck.
• After corking the bottle, dip the top in melted paraffin wax or sealing wax.

TECHNIQUE (OR LACK THEREOF)

• Simply stuff a selection of the flavoring ingredients into the bottle and add oil. As a general rule, the more the merrier. Make sure the contents are totally submerged in the oil to prevent mold from forming. It generally takes four days for flavors to impregnate the oil.

Le Secret: Stick a chopstick or fondue fork in the bottle to create an appealing arrangement.

The Adventure Club: Save up the Sunday comics and use them as wrapping paper.

Liability Disclaimer: The International Olive Oil Council’s manual states that flavored oils should be refrigerated and consumed in two days. Let this fact be your guide. Although I am not encouraging you to follow my irreverent ways (in this particular instance), I keep my flavored oil for months and display it on my kitchen counter.

Music to Flavor By: Jane Siberry, “Child” (Sheeba Records): This is an atypical collection of seasonally inspired songs — without the sugar coating.

If arts and crafts are not your thing, here are a few gifts that most foodies would love to find under their tree.

10 great gifts for foodies

1. 10-inch non-stick sauti pan — Silverstone makes a fine pan for $25. All-Clad makes the Cadillac version for $100.

2 8-inch chef’s chopping knife, $60 & up

3. Large solid colored Fiestaware dinner plates, $20 each — Can’t choose a color? Mix and match.

4. Seeds and soil for an herb garden, $20

5. Wooden Caesar salad bowl, $40 & up

6. Small braid of garlic, $15

7. A coffee plunger, $20, and a grinder, $20

8. A year’s subscription to a food magazine, $18 to $30 — Saveur gets my vote.

9. The new Joy of Cooking, $30, an excellent crash-course cookbook for new cooks and seasoned foodies alike

10. “The Surreal Gourmet,” $15, or “The Surreal Gourmet Entertains,” $17 — Hey, my mother likes them! (Call 1-800-FAUX-PAS.)

Three cool stocking stuffers

1. A honey bear

2. An IOU for breakfast in bed

3. A chunk of imported Italian parmesan Regiano

… and four gifts not to buy

1. An apron that says “chefs make better lovers,” or anything similar

2. Potholders in the shape of fish or lobster claws

3. The latest “better mousetrap” corkscrew

4. An electric pepper grinder, or one made out of acrylic plastic

Next week: Appetizers for your Christmas party: Citrus-olive tapenade and Chipotle dry rub shrimp with a cilantro dipping sauce

But I can dream, can’t I? Every year around daylight-saving weekend I start conjuring up my plan for a children’s cookie decorating party, which I imagine would commence on a cold Saturday afternoon in mid-December, when all the friends and cousins would come over in their pressed corduroy pants and plaid dresses and slather frosting on my grandmother’s-recipe sugar cookies, and the grown-ups would listen to Irish carols in the living room while eating lasagna and getting quietly smashed on eggnog, the Christmas lights on the tree atwinkle all the while.

I have another holiday hostess dream: to throw the kind of loud, sloppy cocktail party you remember from movies like “The Apartment” or “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” or “Auntie Mame” or “All About Eve” — you know, the lampshade-on-the-head, secretaries-doing-the-Watusi type of party. In my version, “James Brown’s Funky Christmas” album is blaring from the stereo and drunken couples are frugging in the hallway, the rugs are rolled up and stuffed into closets and decimated platters of finger foods, collapsed like defeated soldiers, line the buffet and the kitchen countertops. Somebody genially dumps the contents of a rum-filled flask into the already potent punch bowl of eggnog and I, in a sleeveless velvet dress and stocking feet, am inching my way through the lurching, leering crowd picking up dirty napkins and abandoned plastic cups when I find myself momentarily pinned between the refrigerator and the water heater by some ignoble friend of my husband’s, who won’t remember the next day what he did.

Maybe the fantasy I like best is the Christmas Eve one, during which the whole extended family comes to our house (which is, as I said, an apartment) around sunset for a supper of crusty bread and mussels stewed in garlic and white wine (which nobody likes but me). The rooms would be glowing by candlelight and there would be garlands of pine boughs and holly festooning the bookshelves, and after dinner we’d sip eggnog by the crackling fire (which in our apartment is bricked up) and listen to Bing while watching the kiddies pick gingerbread ornaments off the tree and squash their faces against the steamy windows, scanning the darkening skies for the fat man (who is known to be a fraud by every child in the family except my own).

But alas. I spend every December distractedly working and feverishly shopping and wrapping and wistfully attending the parties of people with parking on their streets, and the crowd of glowing affectionate faces I imagine milling around happily at my own house is limited to the little one I see there every day — a dear, beloved, appreciative crowd, but only one of its members can drink my boozy eggnog, which has become the liquid totem of my dashed hostess dreams.

Lord, how I have tried to get an audience for my eggnog. A couple of times I’ve offered to bring a big vat of it to my mother-in-law’s annual family party. “But you’re a young working mother with lots of responsibilities,” my mother-in-law said one time, or something like that. “You’re already bringing a dessert. Don’t worry yourself about making eggnog.” Another time my father-in-law put the kibosh on my eggnog offer. “But if it’s got alcohol in it, Kate,” he said, sounding alarmed, “the kids can’t drink it! Not to mention the raw eggs. You better let us take care of the eggnog.” Meaning, of course, the store-bought, unctuous eggnog in cartons — safe for all and perfect for children, moderately drinkable by adults with a good stiff fortification of hard liquor and a sprinkle of nutmeg, but not in the same league as my homemade eggnog. Which I defiantly make every other year or so despite social rejection, maybe cutting the recipe by three quarters if I’m in a realistic frame of mind. I’ll have a cup late at night while I sit on the living room rug by myself trying to disentangle ornament hooks after everyone else in the house has lost interest in decorating the tree and gone to bed.

My eggnog, I must confess, isn’t really my own recipe but is instead a modified, personalized version of the esteemed Irma Rombauer’s. It goes by the truthful if unromantic title “Eggnog in Quantity” and what it lacks in lyricism it makes up in sheer quantity of alcoholic ingredients. In fact, what I like second best about this recipe is Irma’s introductory note to the cook (this is the 1964 edition — who knows what if anything is said about eggnog in the new “Joy”): “Some people like to add a little more spirit to the following recipe, remembering Mark Twain’s observation that ‘too much of anything is bad, but too much whiskey is just enough.’”

What I like best about this eggnog is that it is absurdly, extravagantly rich and delicious and it takes a whole year to recover enough to want it again. You can feel your arteries seizing up as you drink it — which you can’t do exactly, because it’s too thick. You have to sort of eat it, swirling your cup around a bit to loosen it up, and after you take a sip you have to discreetly wipe the foamy mustache off your face. Even the most rabid eggnog fiend will only be able to down two cups of this without falling into a slurring cholesterol stupor, so you have to make it with a large group in mind, and one that isn’t eating an obscene, sit-down feast at the same time. Eggnog to accompany the unwrapping of presents would be nice, or to warm up a caroling party, or as one of the desserts (served in a cut glass punch bowl, of course) at a buffet. That’s what I’d do if I could. And it would be glorious, a triumph. I just know it.

Eggnog in Quantity

Adapted from “The Joy of Cooking”

serves approximately 20

12 eggs, separated

1 pound confectioner’s sugar

4-6 cups bourbon (or rum)

2 quarts whipping cream

pinch of salt

freshly grated nutmeg

1. Strain the egg yolks through a sieve and beat until light in color. Gradually add the sugar. While continuing to beat, slowly add 2 cups of the bourbon. Cover the mixture and let stand for 1 hour to dispel the “eggy” taste.

2. Add 2-4 more cups of liquor and the cream, beating well. Cover and refrigerate the mixture for 3 hours.

3. Beat the egg whites until stiff but not dry. Fold them into the other ingredients. Grate nutmeg to taste into the eggnog and fold it in. Serve with an additional sprinkling of nutmeg over each serving.