I had a lot of fun preparing for this Christmas dinner! I had a Scandinavian theme, so I coined the dinner Viking Christmas 2014.
The first day of the 48 hour bonanza was covered in the last post. I figured I would cover the actual day of in a seperate, and probably (haven't thought that far yet) multiple post (s).
One of my favorite parts of prepping for a dinner is setting a nice table. I took a raised cheese board and decorated it with pieces of pine and other evergreen bits that I dissembled from a wreath. I surrounded it with candles and baby's breath flowers and stuffed a couple of big candles in old wine bottles. It looked lovely with the Christmas china on larger white marking plates. I put leftover baby's breath and rosemary with the rolled linen napkins and placed a menu next to each plate (with a cheeky little nutcracker as place settings!). And Guinness water glasses...for strength.
I'll put the days activities and breakfast in a seperate post...I think it's too much for one! So I'll get straight to the cocktail hour. Every year I love to incorporate some sort of Russian vodka toast to start off the feast. My uncle is from Siberia and always has given great toasts with vodka and caviar to start off previous Christmas dinners. This year, I decided to infuse vodka with a charred rosemary sprig (another Bon Appetit idea...it was a GREAT issue) and pair it with caviar themed hors d'oeuvres.
For the vodka cocktail, I mixed four parts of the rosemary infused vodka with one part dry vermouth in a shaker, splitting it into four glasses and topping with a lemon twist. The hors d'oeuvres included real caviar on home made blinis, "fake" caviar of La Tur and chutney on blinis, and olive oil drizzled Proscuitto San Daniele. The pairing was great, and the home made blinis really made it. I mean....the caviar was delicious, but the blinis were definitely the icing on the cake. I used a plastic squeeze bottle full of the batter (egg whites folded into the batter really make the difference between these and standard pancakes) to form the blinis in a sautee pan. They cooked quickly and a copious amount of butter made them brown beautifully!
For the first "sit down" course, I made a Swedish (or maybe it was Finnish...who knows) blueberry soup. This was so easy, and reminded me of everything I loved about mulled wine, minus the alcohol! You cook three pints of blueberries down with a few cups water, until all the blueberries have burst. After straining all the skins and seeds, you add some cloves and cinnamon (whole cloves, and sticks so that you can later strain) and quite a bit of sugar. You let the mixture reduce until thick, and serve with creme fraiche (or sour cream if you're in a pinch.
I served the soups in my mother's china tea cups, each one is different and she has collected them for the last 10-15 years. Each one is absolutely stunning, providing for beautiful and unique presentation, and is a fabulous conversation starter (if you're worried about silence around the dinner table). I served the soup with a Sparkling Pointe Seduction Reserve Brut that I picked up on my trip to North Fork Long Island last week. Was that wonderful leathery, bready, toasty style that feels so decadent. Although a great pairing, next time I would go with a Brut Rose Champagne instead....as the berry notes would pair even better!
For the second course I grilled wild red prawns (marinated in lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper, and cayenne) and served in an essence of tomato. For the essence of tomato, I cooked a bushel (can you call it a bushel?) of fresh tomatoes chopped roughly with garlic and spices until slightly soft and warm. I took the whole thing and put in a cheese cloth sack and let the water drain out overnight. What was left was a crystal clear liquid, with mild coloration, with a powerful flavor of spiced tomatoes. With the spicy prawns, it was a perfect cooling flavor agent that still let the fishiness shine through.
I paired this with Sancerre, which with its high acidity and grassy, clean citrus notes paired outstandingly. Sancerre is such a great fish pairing, with shellfish especially. Head on prawns like this can tend to be a little funkier, so good acid in white wine is a great quality to help balance it out.
For the third course I made a salt baked salmon. Of the whole meal, this was certainly the piece de resistance. I spent an entire week trying to find the right salmon for the meal, which I did when I finally trekked to this dingy little market in the Garment District of New York. I'll talk all about it in another post....
This was another Bon Appetit recipe (seriously.....their BEST issue to date!). Props to their writers who not only made this easy to understand but also for their video which outlined the process in such a replicable manner. The greatest quality in a chef who writes cookbooks or makes televisions shows (or writes for magazines) is the ability to write recipes that are replicable...or write them in a way that makes them easy to replicate. I'll forever be in love with dear Jamie (Oliver, that is) for this....everything he's ever done I have been able to reproduce without fail. But that's between he and I ;)
In effort to save words, I will attach a link to Bon Appetit's detailed recipe HERE. As a short summary of the process though, you stuff the salmon with citrus (grapefruit and lemon), herbs (tarragon and dill), and season with salt, pepper and olive oil (oil only on the inside). You then try to fit the whole bugger on a baking dish where you envelope the entire body in wet salt (it's just like burying your little brother in wet sand at the beach. Yes. That easy). You bake the hell out of it and filet it post-roasting. Top it off with a buerre blanc sauce and voila! I served the fish over a bed of blood orange wheels which was a nice addition to the citrusy, buttery salmon.
My brother's surprise California wine pairing with this was the Tablas Creek 'Cote de Tablas Blanc'. A Rhone style white blend that was a great pair and excellent representation of Paso. I love Tablas Creek, run by the Perrin and Haas families. Reasonable and high quality, they do Rhone style California wines like the best of them.
For the final course involving savory things, I made a roast pheasant. This was actually a leftover from the Thanksgiving extravaganza of excess as some guests had cancelled last minute (silly weather). Rather than the lemon and herb butter pheasant I did for that meal, where I stuffed the bird with a zesty mushroom blend, I did a dijon mustard herb butter and just sealed off the cavities with lemon halves. I roasted it 30 minutes on each side and 10 minutes breast up at 375 F. I served the pheasant over Jamie Oliver's creamy mushrooms. It turned out, as before, splendidly. I need to remember to use lemon juice in the whatever butter rub I make, because it does keep the pheasant more moist.
My brother's surprise wine pairing with the pheasant was a Grenache from Tablas Creek. That definitely rivaled the Sancerre as the best pairing of the night. I love the super jammy Rhone style grenache wines, and like I said above, Tablas Creek does them very well. I included a picture of all of the wines my brother paired below:
For dessert I made a berry meringue tart, composed of crust from scratch (which I made well in advance), whipped cream mixed with crushed meringues, and topped with mixed berries and a little bit of powdered sugar. I paired it with a dry rose from my North Fork trip, their Bridge Lane from Lieb Vineyards.
This was the ultimate "make in advance" dish. I chopped the fruit that morning, whipped the cream a few hours ahead, and pre-crushed the meringues and kept in a ziploc. With the tart dough already made, all I had to do was mix the meringue with the cream, pour it into the tart, and top with the berries. Probably took me a grand total of two and a half minutes. ALRIGHT MAYBE THREE. Maaaaayyybeee.
This was such a fun meal and all my work really paid off. Apart from the pheasant, I hadn't made any of these dishes before and they all turned out so well. The favorite was definitely the salmon, but that was definitely a hard decision to make.
Leftovers will be left for another post...there weren't too many but we definitely got creative.
Of course I couldn't resist playing with my food....
So until next time, I want to let you all know that I speak whale.
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