12 Days of Holiday Memories: Kerry Diamond Digs Pigs in a Blanket
Photo credit: Stock Food. Lettering: Brian Kaspr.
What do you call a woman who wears Dries van Noten and plunges a pair of chopsticks, a spoon, and maybe even a finger into a bowl of beef pho without batting a (curled) eyelash? Kerry Diamond. The editorial director of “Cherry Bombe,” a magazine about women and food, Diamond also co-owns Brooklyn restaurants Seersucker, Nightingale 9, and Smith Canteen with her boyfriend, chef Rob Newton. She was part of the fashion world for a long time before making the switch to the food world a few years ago, and she’s not looking back—except at her fondest Christmas memory, which is of pigs in blankets. And yes, she still eats (and loves) them.
I don’t come from a foodie family. We’re late-in-life foodies, you could say. My mom always did a fun hors d’oeuvres spread on Christmas Eve. She made these things that we called cheese balls, and I was obsessed with grating the cheese. It was really just grated cheese with a little egg to keep it all together and cayenne pepper, we’d roll them in bread crumbs and then fry them. And pigs in blankets were a HUGE thing on Christmas Eve. Still to this day, it’s not Christmas Eve without pigs in blankets.
My poor boyfriend, Rob, had to do way too many pigs in blankets back in his private chef days. Now he can’t even look at them. So he doesn’t partake in this holiday glee like we do.
Plus, it’s Pillsbury crescent dough and whatever little hot dog you can get at the supermarket. Maybe if we upped it, he’d take a bite. But my family is very much into the ketchup-on-hot-dogs thing. I remember the year I introduced mustard, they couldn’t fathom the idea.
Kids are simple in terms of the food they like. These days, kids have way more advanced palates, but the simple joy of a pig in blanket? It’s hard to beat that when you’re six years old.
It was always fun being in the kitchen on Christmas Eve and opening the roll of crescent dough and rolling up the hot dogs. You were always in the doghouse if you were the one who burned them. Then setting them up on a tray, putting ketchup in the little crystal bowl—it’s quite an assembly line in the kitchen. Of course, my brothers still stand right by stove. There’s lots of whacking of crescent rolls against the counter—with about 25 people, we make at least twelve dozen.
Anyway, the snack smorgasbord is a big deal. If we ever tried to do away with it, there would be a mutiny.
