Christmas Day - 5 stars

i'd like to start this post out by saying that i can't believe i didn't take pictures of our christmas dinner! what on earth?? i think the lemon drops that tony made must have been too strong. :-)

tony and i stayed home for christmas, and my parents came over to spend christmas day with us. we opened presents, and then proceeded to eat and drink. a lot. it was a blast. we also played a game called ticket to ride, the card game. it's fairly easy to pick up, but requires you to grasp a decent amount of strategy in order to win. my dad, who had never played before and grumbled about how poorly he was doing throughout the game, won. of course. he always wins. :)

my parents gave tony & i a new dish set for christmas. you may have noticed that the foul pastel-toned striped plates are no longer in the photographs, and we're using more rustic, ceramic square plates instead. we LOVE them. anyway, i did take pictures of the table setting, below. this was the first christmas dinner that i've hosted.





i made an antipasto platter for the appetizer. tony and i went to delaurenti's (at the pike place market) on christmas eve and basically ordered one of everything from their deli. it was FANTASTIC (and easy). tony made us lemon drop martinis to have with our antipasto platter. YUM!



for dinner, i made a large caesar salad (with bacon!) to start. for the main course, i made pancetta and gruyere stuffed potatoes (soy cheese in mine) and lobster stuffed beef tenderloin. i purchased this gigantic 8 lb tenderloin from costco for it - i have never purchased that much meat (or spent that amount of money on one cut of meat!) before. we only used 3 lbs of it - the other five went in the freezer. i did have intentions to serve roasted asparagus with it, but we decided that there would be more than enough food without it. i also was supposed to make a bearnaise sauce to go with the tenderloin, but in the interest of time (it was close to nine o'clock, i believe, before we ate christmas dinner!), i ended up skipping it.

everything was wonderful. the food, the company, the drinks... thank goodness my mom was there when i butterflied (for the first time) the tenderloin, stuffed it and tied it with twine. she did the majority of it for me, so now when i attempt it again, i'll know how to do it. i would have just sliced the tenderloin in half lengthwise (not cutting all the way through to other side though), but to butterfly it, she cut it into thirds (sort of) lengthwise. i won't bore you with too many details of this - mostly because i can't regurgitate them well yet. :-)

for dessert, my mom brought a chocolate torte with a blackberry coulis. mmmmmm, it was wonderful, rich, decadent, everything a chocolate torte is supposed to be.

what a wonderful, special christmas. :-)

(p.s. - if you would like the stuffed tenderloin recipe, please email me. it's really long, so i decided to leave it out. i'm posting the caesar dressing recipe in a later post, and i didn't have a recipe for the stuffed potatoes.)

Christmas Gingerbread Cookies

my friend blu is a professional cake decorator. she creates these beautiful, fancy cakes - and it's far beyond my comprehension how she does it. granted, baking isn't something i get very excited about, so i'd rather just admire her work than try to emulate it. :)

anyway, i bake christmas cookies with my mom every year, which we did this year, but blu suggested we have another cookie decorating evening. i was excited about this because mom and i tend to make the same recipes every year - they're really good, and they're our traditional christmas cookies, so it's hard to give any of them up in order to try new ones. so, this was my opportunity to try something new! i've seen (and enjoyed!) blu's christmas cookies from past years, and they are something special. they look super fancy, and taste fantastic.

this year, blu and her friend rebel made gingerbread cookies in a variety of shapes, and brought them down to decorate. she brought royal icing (which i've never worked with) and food coloring. she also brought glitter, which was my favorite part of it all. that sounds odd, i know - but it's food glitter! you use little paint brushes to apply it to the gingerbread - it's easy to apply whatever design you like, and it's totally edible. it doesn't actually have any taste.

i was quite challenged by the application of the royal icing. to ice the cookies, blu made two separate batches of royal icing base - one thick, and one thin. she then separated the batches and created a couple different colors out of each. to apply the icing, you create a thin border around the outside edge of the cookie using the thick icing. you then fill inside the border with the thin icing. after you do that, you can create designs in the icing (which was WAY beyond my capability!).

we started the project by applying the icing, and then blu brought out the glitter. i found myself feeling rather stressed out by the icing application. a steady hand and a lot of patience is required - neither of which i had much of. i think i could enjoy it more outside of the chaos of the holiday season.

i loved the glitter application though. it was really easy to create fun designs, and, well, i love glitter. i'm not ashamed. :-)

these pictures are blurry! in the one below, blu and rebel are mixing the icing, and i'm just watching from the sidelines. with my shot o' vodka.




here blu is showing us how to apply the icing.



below, on the right, are some completed gingerbread cookies. (on the left are date pinwheels, which i made with my mom.)

the gingerbread cookies in this photograph don't have icing, just glitter. the one underneath is a purple present box with polka dots. the one on top is my gingerbread version of tony. :-) yup, that's correct, gingerbread tony is wearing a gold tank top and striped shorts with a green belt. how stylish.



all in all, i had a good time visiting with rebel & blu, and using glitter to decorate the cookies. the icing application, however, was just a bit too ... what's the right word? meticulous or nitpicky are close enough, i guess ... i'd have to be in a very particular mood to try it again. :)

thanksgiving!

the holiday season made me quite absent from blogging! but, i'm ready to do some catch up now. i am hoping that the time lag won't dull my memories of the meals.

i find the normal thanksgiving fare to be dull. perhaps it's the repetition of it, year after year after year after year of small variations on the same menu, perhaps it's the unappetizing way the hodge podge of food looks on my plate, or perhaps it's something else entirely. to avoid this, i planned a latino-themed menu for 2008. it seemed so far from a traditional thanksgiving that i thought i would actually enjoy the meal. ultimately, i had a fantastic time preparing it, but did not enjoy the actual consumption of it very much. ah well. i'll try again another year! the menu was very good though.

appetizers:
5 star - chipotle meatballs
5 star - mango pomegranate guacamole

main course:
3 star - coconut sweet potato puree
4 star - roasted chayotes with garlic
2 star - chorizo cornbread stuffing
3 star - cranberry salsa with roasted pineapple
2 star - aromatic spiced ham with red currant glaze

dessert:
1 star - pomegranate pear pie
3 star - chocolate hazelnut tart

Chipotle Meatballs (5 star):














these were amazing! a bit greasy, and the combo of meats (ground veal, ground pork & bacon) and spices used made them out of this world. there were four of us eating a quantity that was supposed to be enough for eight, and we gobbled them up extremely fast! Yum!! i hope to find an opportunity to make them again soon.

Mango Pomegranate Guacamole (5 star):












this was also phenomenal. i served them with plain old tortilla chips (the recipe suggested making fried plantain chips - too much work for this particular occasion). when i first found the recipe, i was not sure that the mango + the pomegranate would both go well with the avocado. but they did! the crunch of the pomegranate, with the creaminess of the avocado, combined with the sweet smooth mango, the onions, garlic, etc., was superb. the next time i make guacamole, i want to make this recipe again!

Coconut Sweet Potato Puree (3 star):



(Roasted Chayotes are on the left, Sweet Potato is on the right)

the flavor of this surprised me - it was really, really good. i accidentally used yams instead of sweet potatoes, and i'm not sure what difference that made with it. i haven't differentiated yet between the tastes of sweet potatoes and yams - i've only used yams in my cooking lately. guess it's time for an experiment! :)

i really enjoyed how this tasted, but not how it looked. yams have a strong flavor, which i love, and i also love coconut. the two went together extremely well. i pureed the dish in a food processor though, so of course, it reminded me of baby poo. the texture of it is what gave this dish 3 stars. i'd like to think of a way to capture the flavors of it, without having to puree it. perhaps i will get some real sweet potatoes and make mashed, instead of pureed, potatoes.

Roasted Chayotes with Garlic (4 star):

chayotes are a small, mild green gourd with a sweet taste to them. i realized a couple weeks ago that i actually didn't purchase chayotes when i made this, i purchased some other small, yellowish gourd. oooops! it still tasted phenomenal though. to prepare it, i peeled the skin off the outside of the gourds, sliced them in half lengthwise, scooped the seeds out of the middle and cut them into wedges. there was very little flesh left after peeling and scooping, which made me nervous that they would just disintegrate and burn up in the oven. perhaps if i had used real chayotes, there would have been more flesh left. :)

i spread them out on two baking sheets, tossed them with thin sliced garlic cloves, sea salt and vegetable oil, and roasted them for just under an hour, turning them once. they were crispy and small, but very, very tasty.

Chorizo Cornbread Stuffing (2 star):



i had such high hopes for this dish. it was supposed to be greasy, salty and decadent, as most chorizo dishes are. what a disappointment it was to me! to make it, you bake cornbread, break it into small chunks after it's baked, bake those small chunks some more to dry them out, toss them in a baking dish with the cooked chorizo & other vegetables, and pour chicken broth and whisked egg over it all. it was dry, and didn't have nearly the spicy chorizo flavor i wanted it to have. the cornbread was too crumbly as well. i doubled the amount of chorizo the recipe called for, and it still was not enough. also, i can't use buttermilk in my cornbread, because i don't eat dairy. the non-dairy cornbread recipe that i have really needs to be made a day or two in advance in order to stick together (which i did not do). oops!

this recipe was part of menu that included an adobo turkey with red chile gravy, and i imagine if i had made the gravy, this stuffing would have been much better. i'll make some major modifications to the recipe and try it again!

Cranberry Salsa with Roasted Pineapple (3 star):



(Cranberry on left, Ham on right)

this had good flavor, but it was mushy, hence the three stars. the roasted pineapple sweetened the cranberry enough to make it not tart, and the fresh fruit flavors went together very well. i also roasted chopped onion with the pineapple, and added fresh cilantro to the salsa. it was good, but just didn't do a lot for me.

Aromatic Spiced Ham with Red Currant Glaze (2 star):

i definitely picked the wrong cut of ham for the recipe, or the wrong recipe for the cut of ham. the recipe called for simmering the ham in water and spices and wine with fresh fennel and onion for a few hours. i had a smoked ham, which i really should have just roasted in the oven for an hour or so to heat it up and carmelize the outside. simmering it caused it to get quite dried out. it was not good. after i simmered it, i spread my red currant glaze on it and roasted it at 425f for ~ 10 minutes. this did not help to bring moisture back into the meat. i think the recipe has potential, if i purchased the right cut of ham. and i think the cut of ham had potential, if i had used a different recipe. i'll make a ham again soon - i was really craving it, and that craving did not get satisfied with this meal.

Canned Cranberry (1 star, served at Brian's request)



one of our guests on Thanksgiving requested cranberry from a can. the idea repulsed me, but we all have different tastes, so i kindly obliged. it looks just as disgusting as it tasted to me.

Pomegranate Pear Pie (1 star):

i didn't take any pictures of my pies! how sad, because they both looked beautiful, even though they weren't the best pies in the world.

this pie was such a disappointment! it was utterly flavorless. the pie crust was SO good, but the rest was not. i made my pie dough from scratch this year, and it came out really, really well. very flaky and flavorful. to make the inside of this pie, i made a pomegranate glaze using simmered down brown sugar and pomegranate juice, and tossed it with thin sliced d'anjou pears. sounds great, right? nope - no flavor! i will not make this one again.

Chocolate Hazelnut Tart (3 stars):

this was good. solid! it was a bit too hard though - hard as in, once the chocolate cooled, it became hard to bite through. the flavor was good though - rich dark chocolate combined with hazelnuts. i think it could have used some liqueur to take it to a 4 or 5 star tart though.

all in all, it was a tasty thanksgiving. this is what the final plate looked like:



i'm sure i would have enjoyed it much more if i didn't get a horrific cold that blocked my taste buds. i had a blast cooking for many, many hours though - i'd happily repeat that experience.