Martha's homemade holidays: The Holiday Collection (Sous-titres français) [DVD]

Features

• Type: DVD
• Studio: New Line Home Video
• Language(s): english
• Subtitle(s): french, spanish
• Actor(s): Martha Stewart

The Martha Stewart Holiday Coll The Martha Stewart Holiday Collection: Homemade Holidays is all about the art of making food and decorating for the Christmas or Hanukkah season. Woe be to anyone who views the four very diverse and remarkable Christmas dinner dishes here on an empty stomach: nothing will taste nearly as exciting. British chef Anne Willan drops by Stewart's kitchen to make a hearty, standing rib roast with accompanying Yorkshire pudding?foods she grew up eating in the farm country north of York. Chef Mario Batali, an expert on foods of Southern Italy, does two segments, one resulting in a fantastic seafood salad (with lobster, calamari, mussels, peppers, and more) and the other an impossibly beautiful baccala ravioli, using fresh-made pasta pillows filled with a mix of baccala and riced potatoes, tossed in Batali's red sauce with a hint of mint. Finally, chef Dan Silverman demonstrates how to remove pomegranate seeds from the fruit without too much hassle, and then add those seeds to an astonishing duck dish. Playful and dazzling desserts include meringue mushrooms, which look just like the real thing, and a Birch de Noel made of chocolate and cream, laid out like a Yuletide log. Household decorating hints are both clever and simple, including the strategic placing of colorful bowls of fruits and candies on shelves, and the embellishing of homemade wreaths with colorful balls (small, pink ones from Japan are oddly magical), candy, and popcorn. A section on Hanukkah gifts and foods includes a nice idea for filling embossed bags with candies, and a variation on traditional potato pancakes that includes adding strips of carrots and parsnips. Suggestions for making gifts and wrapping round out this very pleasant disc. --Tom Keogh