Holiday Party 2007 Food Pictures

Just like last year, I've taken pix of the dishes we cooked up for friends last weekend.

This was a three-week-long process: we poured over cookbooks for almost two weeks, did shopping at least four times, and did a lot of pre-cooking and freezing of meat fillings a week ahead of time.

In the end, we didn't plan as smart as we thought: we still had a dish-and-a-half to complete when guests showed up. We needed more 'reheatable' items. Some comments on that below.

(Note: links created at a site called Linkr, for creating links on phpBB to Flickr images). It has some bugs (spaces strewn in the text), but still lots faster than copying and editing Flickr's own link code. Click on pix for full size.

Le Menu:


Bleu Cheese Cheescakes with Spiced Pecans:

This was from the Autumn 2005 Baking Sheet, and I wasn't entirely happy. The spiced nut was too salty, and little Bleu flavor came through (they tasted more like cheddar!).

Hot Wings:

This is a Wolfgang Puck recipe from the Trib. The blue cheese vinaigrette in the steel spider back there is somewhat green, but very tasty with a nice hit of dijon mustard. Very popular. Huge meaty wings from Garden Fresh.

Polenta with Two Ragus:

The polenta and mushroom ragu come from "Essential Mediterranean", the beef ragu is a bastard child of Mario Batali's boar ragu recipe with Alton Brown's shortrib stew prep. Both were awesome!

Mini Chiles en Nogada:

After dining at Xni-Pec, I had to try this for party fare. The typical poblanos were replaced with mini bells from Garden Fresh -- not as flavorful a pepper, but made this almost finger food. The recipe is from an old mexican cookbook I have lying around, but the sauce is a couple of orders of magnitude lower on the awesome scale from Xni-Pec.

Tea-Smoked Chicken Salad with Papaya:

This started out as an internet-based recipe, with the tea-smoking process changed (they steamed halfway, which seemed silly), kicked up in flavors on the dressing with hosin sauce and more ginger and szechuan peppercorns. Disappeared quickly, even as soggy as the oak-leaf lettuce got (should have gone iceberg)

Chicken Makhani Cones:

From Julie Sahni's "Classic Indian Cooking", but cut up small after broiling the tandoori chicken. The cones are tortillas rolled and fried.
Less successful than we'd hoped: the cones tended to flatten in frying, and there was no way to keep this stuff hot. Reheating caused the cones to soften too much. Tasty, but didn't work as finger food in the way I wanted.

Thai Egg Rolls:

The hit of the evening, and my one real improv. It started as Nicole Routhier's recipe in "Cooking Under Wraps" which is a book I always go to for party fare, but it looked bland: she went for a French-like filling with carrot, celery and onion. I dropped the celery, subbed chopped shrimp for part of the crab because I had it in the freezer, added galangal, shredded a jalapeno, basil and keffir lime leaves plus lime juice, and it burst with flavor. The rolls are flag-folded from 1/3 of an egg roll sheet. We used her original sauce, though. I could have used three times as many of these (to have leftovers if no other reason).

Truffled Deviled Eggs:

From an internet recipe, disappeared quickly. Filling has truffle oil, dijon, and equal parts mayo and sour cream. Sour cream rocks in deviled eggs!

Lamb-Stuffed Artichoke Hearts:

From "The Arab Table" by May Bsisu. One of the ones we weren't done with when guests arrived. Not very popular, but very tasty.

Salmon Canapes:

A basic Martha Stewart's Appetizer item with a dill butter-cream cheese mix. Unlike her, I'm not willing to sacrifice 20% of the good stuff by making cookie-cutter flowers.

Hot Dogs in Crescent Rolls:

Gotta have 'em. The only thing we don't scratch-make. Pillsbury crescent rolls are dairy free, and the dogs were Hebrew National, but the kosher-keeping fiancee of Thing1 decided to stick with dairy dishes.

(missing)Brooklyn Cheese Puffs:
These are little biscuits made with cheddar, from "America's Best Lost Recipes" by Cook's Country magazine. They disappeared too fast for me to get a pic. (edit: they're in the background of the Thai Rolls pic)

(missing)11 Kinds of Cookies and Bars
MrsF is disappointed that I forgot to take pictures of the cookies before the ravenous hordes descended.

Lovely!! How many people did you end up with this year?

Suzy

Hi,

I was thinking about you recently. I am used to your asking for ideas for various food items around this time of year.

Look's good. I am glad the year is ending on a high note for you and your family1

Regards,

sdritz wrote:Lovely!! How many people did you end up with this year?

Suzy

I honestly don't know for certain, but let me think... somewhere around 25-30 I think, but the teens wandered in and out.

Cathy2 wrote: I am used to your asking for ideas for various food items around this time of year.

Except for the truffles, I had few ingredient problems this year. I probably overspent on them at Whole Foods, but I did manage to get a couple. I was more challenged by trying to come up with finger food versions of things like the Chicken Makhani, and how to "tee them up".

JoelF wrote:Hot Dogs in Crescent Rolls:
Gotta have 'em. The only thing we don't scratch-make. Pillsbury crescent rolls are dairy free, and the dogs were Hebrew National, but the kosher-keeping fiancee of Thing1 decided to stick with dairy dishes.

Hebrew National is kosher, but not glatt kosher.

Mazel tov on your upcoming naches. I am sure you are looking forward to a frum daughter-in-law who won't eat your food.