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Classic Christmas Dishes For Academics

Reduction (2014), acrylic on canvas by Dayton Castleman

Roasted Chestnut Carrot Soup

In recent years, an increasingly large number of cooks have turned their attention to the interchangeability of carrots and other root vegetables as they relate to their confinement within bowl structures vis-à-vis virtually any category of soup, barring those soups that remain elusive to bowls. Serves four. 

Haricots Verts with Bacon Vinaigrette

The first segment of this recipe concerns the combination of various "everyday" ingredients in order to ensure that those ingredients become virtually interrelated; thereafter, a substance generally described by the term bacon is heated to a point of contention, after which the mixture is introduced to the heat-enhanced skillet environment—which, by all accounts, serves as a funereally saturated mise-en-scène for what had once been understood to be bacon. Following this, all ingredients should be placed inside a hegemony. It has been suggested by others that readers consume or radically bifurcate the resultant "cooked" object. Garnish with a term of art.

Miniature Quiches

The quiche as a foodstuff-qua-foodstuff is virtually pornographic. Serve warm. 

Fluffy Cheese Biscuits

The mobilization from a structuralist account in which sharp cheddar is understood to construct dairy relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of control in which dairy relations are subject to heat, coagulation, and theorization brought the question of paprika into the thinking of dairy, and marked a shift from a form of "biscuit-ness" that evanesces the essential qualities of the bread-object to one in which the flour alteriorates into the contingent possibility of "conjugal" demonstrations of situational unity between both dairy and bread as bound up with the conception that a cheese biscuit is neither cheese nor a biscuit and thus demands new strategies for the rearticulation of appetizers. Sprinkle with almond slivers. 

Candied Sweet Potato Soufflé

This recipe engenders a radical new discourse among yams of various traditions, although the exact nature of alternate new discourses is not predicated by the precise mode of the current proposed project, as indicated by the author's openness to interpretive dialogues that involve large marshmallows, pecans, sugar, cinnamon, and bourbon (optional).

Classic Cranberry Sauce

More work needs to be done in this area.

Beef Tenderloin Medallions with Curried Jus

It has been argued that beef cannot be adequately expressed within conventional linguistic structures.

Coq Au Vin

Can chickens even be said to "exist"? One might soak the "so-called" chicken fragmentations in a mixture, although scholars are in disagreement about the precise meaning of the term mixture in this context. Recently, it has been argued that any "mixtures" should include at least one large garlic clove "flattened and pounded" and submersed in a bottle of French Burgundy, although the authors here do not recommend flattening and pounding as the preferred method of handling authentically "known" objects unless they can be demonstrated to hold a materialist position.

Roast Turkey

The issues surrounding large birds are generally very complex.

Rabbit Ragu with Bitter Greens

Quarter a healthy rabbit. After cutting the rabbit into small pieces, take steps to ensure it is, to a certain degree, dead. If rabbit remains physically dynamic, "bludgeon" it with other nearby rabbits until all rabbits are essentially exhausted. Over the rabbit, pour 1 C. red wine and 1 C. water and season to taste, then criticize any remaining rabbit until it is tender. Brown on all sides with butter in heavy skillet, add marinade, and simmer for an hour. Serves none.

Banana Pudding Trifle with Crème Fraiche 

Appropriate medium bowl from capitalist structures of power for the blending of milk and JELL-O vanilla pudding product by administering the volatility of certain mixers typically recognized as being electrified. Let stand 5 min., although older puddings may prefer to sit. It has already been argued that readers should consider obtaining phallic fruits of the berry family of the genus Musa largely referred to by botanists as banana, although additional investigation is needed on the point of the sublimation of this herbaceous plant to the psychoanalytic concerns of some scholars, who consider it both sexualized and stripped of all sexualization by the hierarchies of fruit-based power structures. Involve vanilla wafers to some extent.

Dark Chocolate Divinity

It is not appropriate at this time to consider the influence of theological positions on food, nor is it the author's intent to suggest that "darkness" is a quality that can be subjected to scrutiny beyond surface concerns regarding race, color, and trade inequities with cocoa-producing nations, although at some point these concerns may in fact be made null by disturbances to global climate systems. Allow to cool until further inquiries are made.

Eggnog

Attempts in the public sphere to manufacture authentic versions of this creamy treat need to be examined in light of certain ideologies enmeshed within collectively imagined egalitarian principles that both do and do not consider dairy a morally specious commodity. Makes one gallon.

Mulled Wine

In this recipe, we will interrogate the discourse of wine steeped in cloves and vileness. Heat until thoroughly confused.





Harrison Scott Key

Harrison Scott Key is a contributing editor at the Oxford American. His writing has been featured in The Best American Travel Writing, the New York Times, and Outside. Key is the author of How to Stay Married, Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, and The World's Largest Man, winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor.