Christmas Morning Drenched in Maple Syrup

Christmas morning is for decadence!

So although I have no pretty pictures of the final product, it did taste pretty darn good. Again, thank you Bon Appetit for the idea...although my yeast was a little past its prime so the dough was a little dense...but oh well it still tasted delicious.

I made their Babkallah French Toast, which is essentially chocolate cinnamon bread rolls, braided, baked, sliced, dipped in scrambled egg mix, and seared on the stove top. Yup.

I've attached the link for the recipe HERE.

I served this with maple syrup and a dash of powdered sugar on top :)

Just wanted to throw this short little post in to share the yummm. Definitely a heavier dish though, I would always prefer this as a brunch-time brekkie when I've had a little time in the morning to prepare myself! 

Until next time, indulge :)

Christmas Day and All That Came With It

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.

Viking Christmas Eve 2014

So I subjected the four pack (what I call it when all my family is together at once) to a 48 hour Christmas bonanza. Don't worry...I've split it into a few posts to make sure that no one post is too...just...much. Because that's what Christmas was. It was WONDERFUL, GLORIOUS amounts of "too much" 

:)

So let's call this one the "Christmas Eve" post. Let me start with I prepped for DAYS up to this point. Dough making....mix prepping....pickling jars....there was a lot. The plus side of this was the fact that when it actually came down to the day of, the whole process was absolutely stressless. Only a luxury of the unemployed (I'd like to call it "inbetween projects").

In the morning, we started with a Swedish tradition (I think...remember the theme was Scandinavian) of porridge and almonds for luck. The way that this works (again..I think) is that you make a big pot of porridge (oatmeal for all you Americans who don't have old English grannies) and mix one almond in so that you don't know where it is. You dish out the porridge to the family and whoever finds the almond in their bowl has good luck for the coming year! Hiding the almond was harder than I thought, but we mixed up the bowls a bunch of times and was grand. Best thing was...I got the almond! Woop!!!!

For Irish style porridge, like I made, you simmer two cups milk for every one cup oats in a sauce pan. Stir constantly over medium heat until the mixture thickens. I usually add just a pinch of brown sugar and garnish with salt OR honey...depending on whether you would like savory or sweet. It was Christmas so, of course, I went with the sweet option. This does take a while, much longer than sticking milk and oats in the microwave for a minute. For me, it is totally worth it to take the extra time. Rather than grainy oats, the mixture is thick, creamy and smooth. I think most Americans are used to the instant microwave style oatmeal...I learned how to make it the real way while I lived in Ireland.

So the idea behind the evening meal was that it would be delicious (DUH), fit the theme, but be a "one pot" kind of dish.

So for the main, I made a beer braised pork belly. I got this recipe out of the Bon Appetit Holiday Issue (mentioned in previous posts). Just for the sake of space, I've attached the recipe from the website HERE. It turned out perfectly, and I did follow the recipe pretty closely. Because it cooked for almost six hours, the pork was so tender and rich (pork belly is very fatty). I would highly recommend this for any cold night, but again, as a one dish kind of dinner.

Since we didn't really have a big lunch, I did prepare a pickled herring spread for cocktail hour. This was a total experiment, but I love pickled herring and have been trying to do a dish where it acts as a centerpiece for a while. I also robbed this recipe from the Bon Appetit holiday issue. The mixture involved the herring, fresh chives, one finely chopped shallot, lemon juice and zest, sour cream, and dijon mustard (whole grain). I then jarred it and put it in the fridge for four days. The resting period is critical because it allows for all the flavors to blend and....essentially..."funks" it up a bit. Which, when you're eating pickled herring, is totally the point. All that wonderful funky flavor. It turned out splendidly, and was actually the highlight of the night. I served it on whole grain baguette and hearty sour dough. Any earthy, crusty bread would do. The zesty, bright quality to the spread was also a great contrast to the heavier pork roast.

As my Christmas gift, my brilliant mini-me of a brother went to his local Paso Robles wineries and paired wines with my Christmas menu. Two of the wines he bought were for the herring and the pork (consecutively). The pairing with the spread was a WONDERFUL Grenache Blanc blend (with Roussaine, Viognier, and Picpoul) and the pork was paired with a Syrah, both from Halter Ranch. They were both absolutely delightful, and totally revved me up for my trip out there in a few days!

I'll leave this one at that...it already is probably a little too long!

Until Part Deux....

Christmas Cookies from the Garden...

So, as I mentioned in my last post, the Holiday issue of Bon Appetit is the bomb. Go buy one now. And I WISH they paid me to say that. *Hint Hint*

Another tidbit I got from this bangarang issue was for Christmas cookies! They had an entire section devoted to atypical Christmas sweets that, frankly, looked unreal. So of course I HAD to give 'em a try.

We started with their lavender shortbread wreaths, which became lavender shortbread holly sprigs since I didn't have a wreath cookie cutter. The recipe is attached to the link HERE. I followed the recipe closely and they turned out FABULOUSLY. So yummy, easy to decorate, and a lot of room to be creative. I decorated with edible flowers (from Whole Foods), candied rosemary from my garden, dried cranberries, crushed pistachios and crushed candy canes.

I also tried their White Chocolate Matcha Cookie...replacing the matcha with peppermint (see link above). Matcha is a super grassy green tea, and although I think the balance with the sugar could have turned out nicely...I really didn't want to waste all that butter for something that reminded me of the rash I used to get when I rolled around in dewy grass. I just removed the matcha from the cookie recipe and rather than mixing the tea in with the sugar to coat the outside of the cookies, I mixed regular granulated sugar with crushed candy canes. Funnest part? Crushing the candy canes using a hammer, saw, and the bottom of my boot.

These are SO delicious and such a great way to change it up during the holiday season. Festive without being kitchy.....though I do love me some good Christmas kitch.

Until next time, deck the halls!!!!