And to all a Good Night

how to host an elegant, intimate christmas eve dinner for two

Somewhere there exists that image of the perfect Christmas Eve: starry, snowy, seductive. And unlike lots of perfect images, this one even seems possible. But is it? As the season of mirth and merriment approaches once again, we're faced with the very practical question of what to actually do on Christmas Eve. Invite the lady of your life out for a classy dinner? Throw in your lot with family? Give a cocktail party for two and 20 close friends? Play it perverse and order a feast of take-out Chinese?

If any of these thoughts have occurred to you, dismiss them. Christmas Eve is not the kind of ritual to be messed with. No matter how nonconformist or renegade you are in the normal scheme of things, you must put attitude aside just this once and do Christmas Eve right. Wrap her in old-fashioned rapture. Pull out the stops. Make Christmas Eve dinner for her, and make it an unforgettable one.

No, it should not be you buying the champagne and a caterer doing the real work. Trust me, a catered Christmas Eve dinner has all the charm of a carburetor. And, I know, you aren't Martha Stewart, nor do you want to crash-course your way through Julia Child. It doesn't matter. There's cooking and there's craziness. I'm not suggesting that you reinvent gastronomy in a kitchen that's used to a six-pack and a couple of grapefruits.

On the other hand, don't open a can of cream-of-mushroom soup, pour it over a thawed bird and mix up a few distraction martinis. Remember, this is Christmas. And there's another thing to think about: Feeding someone is intrinsically primal and, depending on how you do it, a powerful aphrodisiac. So here, dear worldly, sophisticated gentlemen, is your Christmas Eve menu:

Caviar and Crème Fraîche on Toasted Brioche Iced Vodka

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Chestnut Soup with Roasted Chestnuts Rosé Champagne

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Cranberry-Orange Relish on Endive Wild Rice with Toasted Pine Nuts Double-cut Veal Chops with Shiitake Mushrooms in Cognac Cream Sauce Assorted Wines

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BÛche de Noël Tawny Port

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Christmas Cookies Coffee Cognac

You could use a drink right now? Reserve judgment. I promise it will be painless to create this meal. Back to strategy. A key decision must be made. You can play the evening straight and chic or keep her wired with small surprises. Take, for example, her arrival. You could, of course, simply suggest an arrival time, so she has to get into her cold car and drive over. Still, the scenario doesn't get high marks for mood enhancement. A Dr. Zhivago--style sleigh would have the right spin; too bad it's 100 years too late as a possibility. A limo? That depends on her. She'll either love it or gag.

Less ostentatious but uptown: Send a black sedan. Make sure there's something wrapped and waiting on the back seat for her. Something funny, perhaps referring to a shared joke, is best. Resist the corny and the obvious: no candy-cane panties, please.

By the time she arrives, you want to be not only ready but relaxed. An old catering rule has it that great dinner parties are so well organized the host can take an hour's nap before the guests arrive. The plan, then, is to pin down as many things as possible weeks ahead.

Lighting, for example, doesn't get much better than the subtle dance between shimmering Christmas-tree lights and the ever-evocative fire. Make sure you have good logs, lots of kindling and plenty of pine cones to throw on the blaze for snap, razzle and that mountain-cabin smell. Turn off all the track lights and use candles everywhere.

Choose a progression of music, keeping her in mind: soft jazz, oldies, blues and maybe, just for nostalgia, a few Forties ballroom tunes. She may, after all, ask you to dance. You may, after all, just feel like holding her.

The single man's home may be his chrome-and-leather castle, but the feel--on this night, anyway--needs to be very different. Every room must suggest richness and comfort. On the side table, lay out a wheel of Stilton cheese. On the mantel, put your favorite silver bowl brimming with roasted chestnuts. Set out tempting chocolates by the tree. These are the subtleties that suggest homeyness. And they require nothing more than a little grocery shopping.

The last pre-Eve, create-the-ambience task is table setting. This is the time to drag out, buy or borrow a beautiful tablecloth: brocade, lace or linen. And, of course, good linen napkins and your best china and silver, polished to a gleam. The more Ralph Laurenish, the better. An elegant, simple table is what you're after, so no buxom bouquets or phallic pepper mills. A sprig of mistletoe peeking out of her napkin would be nice, however.

On to the dinner, devised with one thing in mind: to keep you from wanting to strangle yourself with your apron strings. Almost everything, in fact, is bought ready-made. Your job is "dressing things up" to make them your own, plus cooking the chops. First, the caviar. This meal gets patriotic later on; for right now, though, buy as much of the best Russian caviar you can afford. (Leftovers make for a tasty Christmas breakfast in bed.) Delicious Osetra is the type you want.

Caviar tastes best when it's spooned onto thin slices of toasted brioche. Soft and slightly sweet, brioche can be bought in almost any good French bakery or gourmet store. Don't worry about other potential caviar accompaniments such as chopped egg or onion. Instead, put out a small dish of crème fraîche (bought in a gourmet store) for dabbing on top.

Glacially cold vodka served in iced glasses is caviar's soul mate. If you're serious about this, you can ice the bottle down as the czars did so that it's wrapped in a strait jacket of ice. If your lady is not the vodka type, move straightaway to the champagne.

As the caviar must be the real McCoy, so, too, must the champagne. You may have happily consumed countless bottles of sparkling wine all year long, but tonight you must drink bubbles that come only from that treasured region northeast of Paris called Champagne.

Although, truthfully, any French champagne would be luscious, Krug's Grand Cuvée is legendary. To maximize the impact, make it Krug's Rosé. Far from being frivolous, rosé champagnes are richer, deeper, more rare and often more costly than golden champagnes.

Champagne must be served in a tall, sleek flute--a gorgeous piece of glass, if ever there were one. Just holding it can make a woman feel sexy.

Speaking of which, we have neglected the not-so-small matter of a Christmas gift. If you have bought her something big, on the magnitude, say, of a microwave oven--or something brainy, such as the unabridged version of the Oxford English Dictionary--save it for Christmas Day. Tonight you must give her something small, surprising and personal. Tie a gold bracelet to the champagne bottle with a bit of ribbon and ask her to pour. That sort of present.

Let the Krug's Rosé carry you through the first course, chestnut soup with roasted chestnuts. The soup is easily bought in a gourmet take-out shop and will need only a quick warming over low heat. (Oyster soup is the substitute of choice.)

Just before serving the soup in shallow, wide soup bowls set on dinner plates, sprinkle roasted chestnuts on top. To wit: Buy chestnuts in a supermarket. While heating your oven to 350° Fahrenheit, with a sharp knife carve an X into the flat side of each chestnut shell. (Try not to penetrate the meat.) Put all the nuts on a baking sheet and roast for 30 minutes. Cool just enough to handle, but peel the chestnuts when they're still warm.

That first course should be a breeze. But now you really step up to bat. The main course is composed of three dishes: cranberry-orange relish on endive, wild rice with toasted pine nuts and double-cut veal chops with shiitake mushrooms in a cognac cream sauce. Buy both the cranberry relish and the cooked wild rice at the gourmet store. What you want is a chunky homemade cranberry sauce. At home, mince about a teaspoon of thin slivers of orange peel and toss them into the cranberry sauce. Mound this next to crisp endive for a chic, Christmasy salad.

For the wild rice, all that's needed is a few tablespoons of pine nuts that you toast two to three minutes until golden, then sprinkle over the warmed rice.

Ask the butcher for two double-cut one-and-a-half-inch-to-two-inch-thick veal chops. Take them out of the fridge a half hour before preparing. Warm two dinner plates in a very low-heat oven. In a nonstick skillet, melt two tablespoons of butter. Brown the chops on medium-high heat, about three minutes on each side. (concluded on page 227)A Good Night(continued from page 142) Then add a big shallot that has been minced, about a half pound of fresh shiitake-mushroom caps sliced in half, some salt and a grind of cracked pepper. Cover the pan, lower the heat and cook ten minutes. Turn the chops over in the pan. Add a half cup of white wine and continue cooking about eight minutes. Remove the chops, one to each of the warmed dinner plates. To the skillet, add one fourth cup of whipping cream and a teaspoon of cognac. Stirring, bring almost to a boil. Pour the sauce over the chops and serve.

Not too tough, huh? And it's something you made for her. (While you're cooking, your date can be doing some last-minute trimming of the Christmas tree.)

Wine for this course? A red Bordeaux such as Château Âusone would be lovely, as would the less expensive Château d'Angludet. But an American red rings truer here. You should look for something that rolls around your mouth in velvet waves. Something the French call charpeau, or "fleshy." My recommendations include:

• 1985 Opus One (Robert Mondavi and Mouton-Rothschild joint venture)

• 1986 Stag's Leap Wine Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon

• 1986 Caymus Cabernet Sauvignon Napa Cuvée

• 1984 Beaulieu Vineyards Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon

A Christmas Eve dessert can only be bÛche de Noël, a traditional, sinfully rich chocolate Christmas cake that's rolled like a log. It would take days to make, so you should buy one at your neighborhood bakery. Serve it with an aged tawny port such as the Taylor Fladgate 20-year-old tawny.

After the bÛche, after the port, it's time to sit in front of the fire, shoes off, and talk. If the conversation moves along with the lengthening shadows of the mellowing fire, it may eventually (if she's the Christmas-cookie type) be time for cognac and traditional holiday cookies from an Italian, German or Viennese bakery. Make sure it's a cognac that's supersmooth or you'll have a sleeping beauty on your hands.

And so to bed.

Postscript: Waking up on Christmas morning together is inevitably a high. And breakfast belongs in bed. Version one: toasted brioche (because you intentionally bought more than you needed for the caviar), cherry preserves and coffee or, if it's snowing, hot chocolate.

Version two includes toasted brioche, leftover caviar and a Christmas-morning cocktail, Eggnog Alize. Simply pour eggnog into goblets and add a dash of Alize, a French passion-fruit-and-cognac-based liqueur, then top with a sprinkle of nutmeg. This approach requires you to stay in bed awhile. Santa Claus has arrived. The presents under the Christmas tree can wait.