Friends Christmas Dinner - 2008

Every Christmas season, Chessa and I like to have one big dinner party. We normally don't go any higher than 14 total people because that's all the pot de creme pots that I have and all of our dinners finish with pot de creme (a favorite dessert of ours). This year, we got a bit aggressive and had 20 people for dinner. We had to sit everyone in three rooms and we hired Finley to stand at the sink and wash dishes all night so that we could quickly turn out each course. It was fun. We really enjoyed trying to painfully stuff everyone.

I normally like to try to get people to try something that they haven't had before. One year, we did truffle infused custards with shaved black truffles and chive chips. Another year, we had sauted baby octopus... But we kept it fairly calm this time around. The menu went as follows:

Black sesame cornets filled with smoked salmon tartare and whipped dill cream cheese or tomato tartare with shallots, basil and creme fraiche

Yukon gold blinis with eggplant caviar and sweet roasted red and yellow peppers

Spicy Artichoke Soup with handmade artichoke ravioli and Croatian cold pressed olive oil (I bought this oil from an old lady selling it from her cart in the heart of Dubrovnik. She pressed the oil herself at her family's mill). It was dang good.

Kalmata Olive and Rosemary Bread

Roasted Kabocha (Japanese Pumpkin) Ravioli with butter glazed brussels sprouts with brown butter, sage and amaretti crumbs.

Cara Cara Orange Rolls (Chessa made these dessert-like rolls... They are awesome!)

Tilapia cakes (supposed to be cod cakes... but no one can tell) with sauteed tilapia, clam chowder vegetables and parsely oil

Pomegranate Sorbet with a Kiwi Jus (Brittney Gharring made this... went great with the sorbet)

Beef Tenderloin with Caramelized French Shallots on Crimini Mushrooms and Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Fresh Micro Greens (my new favorite find at Trader Joes)

Triple-Cream French Cows Milk Cheese "Le Delice de Bourgogne" with fresh Orange Blossom Honeycomb, Turkish Figs, Blackberries and Red D'Anjou Pears

Passion Fruit Pot de Creme

Petite Meyer Lemon Chesse Cakes with Fresh Blueberries

It was fun plating up all these dishes. Chessa and Brittney Gharring were a big help in the kitchen (We acutally like to involve everyone platting these courses up). Brittney took these amazing pictures. It was fun, we only wish we could have invited more people. Our house isn't big enough and I need to buy more dishes....

I'll post the recipes as soon as I figure out how to post them on a different page.

Here are some of the pictutres. The rest of the images can be viewed here.

Chelsea Gharring preparing the sesame cornets with salmon tartare and tomatoe tartare

The "cones" ready to go in a jalapeno roaster (I bought this piece just for these cornets)....

Weighing out the potato puree for the blinis

Blini batter (these are the smoothest potato pancakes that you've ever tasted)

Yukon Gold Blini with Eggplant Caviar and Sweet Roasted Peppers

Spicy Artichoke Soup with Artichoke Ravioli

Finley and Maddyn helping make the pasta dough

Maddyn "painting" the pasta dough with water to seal the ravioli


Brussels Sprouts poaching in water and butter

My daughter Maddyn loves helping me make these Pumpkin Ravioli. The sweetness of the pumpkin goes perfectly with the slightly bitter taste of the brussels sprouts

Cara Cara Orange Glaze

Chessa's Cara Cara Orange Rolls. (our favorite orange)

Parsley Oil filtering through cheese cloth
Jon Billings being a bit "creative" with the parsely oil...

It's tough with only four burners... We need a bigger stove.

Sauteed Tilapia with Tilapia Cakes, Chowder Vegetables and Parsley Oil

Pomegranate Sorbet with Kiwi Jus


Sauteing the Shallots

Beef Tenderloin with caramelized shallots and roasted garlic mashed potatoes

The "fromage" course... I was excited to find the honey comb from the farmers market. The figs were cool too.

Passion Fruit Pot de Creme. We need to find more of these lidded pots.

Chessa's petite Meyer Lemon Cheese Cake. Perfect bite size dessert.

My cheat sheet... I love getting to the end of the menu!

Look at all of the beautiful women that I got to cook for....

Eggnog French Toast with Vanilla Bean Pastry Cream, and Fresh Blueberries

Chessa and I are doing a cooking class for some friends down in San Diego in a couple of weeks and we wanted to try some Christmas brunch type items. I thought that eggnog french toast would be fun but then wanted to plate it up as a napolean with vanilla bean pastry cream and berries. We used blueberries and blueberry syrup. With a brunch there are normally several different menu options, so I wanted to keep this dish small. I used a round pastry cutter and kept the toast slices to about 2.5" wide.... I used three toast slices and piped a ring of pastry cream and filled the center with blueberries for each slice. I topped the napolean with more blueberries, blueberry syprup and then dusted with powdered sugar. All of my kids loved this one.

Eggnog French Toast
1 egg
1 cup eggnog
1/4 teaspoon cinnamin
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Beat egg and add eggnog, cinnamin and nutmeg. Place batter in a shallow dish and soak bread for about 10 seconds each side. Cook on a non-stick griddle until golden.

Pastry Cream
1.5 cups half and half
2 eggs
1 egg yolk
1/2 vanilla bean
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tablespoons Flour

Split vanilla bean and scrape seeds into half and half. Bring half and half to simmer in heavy medium saucepan. Whisk sugar, eggs, egg yolk and flour in medium bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in hot half and half. Transfer to saucepan. Whisk over medium heat until mixture thickens and comes to boil, about 5 minutes. Boil 1 minute. Pour into medium bowl. Stir in vanilla. Press plastic onto surface of pastry cream. Cover; chill until cold, about 4 hours. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Keep chilled.)

Fin liked it and thought that we should have french toast like this every day for breakfast

Pasta Shells with Broccoli and Anchovies

A quick pasta dish that is really easy to put together. You can knock this one out in about 15 minutes and if you don't tell anyone that it has anchovies, they won't even notice it.... The sauce is just olive oil and a little butter...

2 large heads of broccoli
2 cloves of garlic (chopped)
4 anchovy fillets
1 jalapeno (seeded) finely diced
2-3 ozs of butter
1 lb of dried pasta shells
handful of grated parmesan

Trim the broccoli into florets and chop the stems into match sticks. In a saute pan, add a little olive oil and the butter. When the oil is shimmering saute the garlic, japapeno and broccoli stems. Cover with a lid and cook slowly for 8-10 minutes while you cook the pasta in salted boiling water. Add the broccoli florets to the water when the pasta is about 4-5 minutes from being done. This will leave the broccoli soft enough to eat and will maintain the color and texture.

Drain the pasta reserving some of the pasta liquid. Add pasta back to the pan that it was cooked in, season with salt and fresh ground pepper to taste and add the rest of the butter and a handful of the paremsan cheese. Add the sauted stems, garlic, anchovies and chilis and then finish with some good olive oil and you're done. Quick and easy....

Rosemary and Olive Oil Cake

(w/meyer lemon jus)

It's tough not to love rosemary. We have three big rosemary bushes on our side yard that we are trying to turn into a hedge. The kids love being sent out with a pair of scissors to go cut off 3-4 tender rosemary sprigs for dinner. We love rosemary with pork, chicken, fish.... just about anything. I saw a picture of a rosemary and olive oil cake and had to try it. Chessa thought that a lemon sauce would go well with it and she was dead on. We had a couple of meyer lemons laying around and she whipped up this great little sugary jus. The sour/sweet was perfect with the cake. The kids actually thought that this was a tasty little dessert. Who would have known?

Ingredients
4 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
2/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh rosemary leaves
1 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Spray a 10-inch loaf pan with non-stick cooking spray and set aside.

Using the whip attachment, beat the eggs in a mixer for 30 seconds. Add the sugar and continue to beat until the mixture is very foamy and pale in color. With the mixer running, slowly drizzle in the olive oil. Using a spatula, gently fold the rosemary into the batter.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the dry ingredients to the egg mixture. Pour the batter into the prepared pan. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes.

The cake is done when it is golden brown, springs back when touched, and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow the cake to cool briefly in the pan, then tip out onto a cake rack to continue cooling.

Smoked Salmon with Shallots, Capers and Fresh Chives

One of the FEW good things about having church at 12:30 pm on Sundays (I would prefer a 6:30 am start on Sunday to be done by 9:30.... but I can't get anyone else to agree with me on that) is that we have time in the morning to make a good breakfast. The kids were up way too early and ended up making their own breakfast. Chessa doesn't like smoked salmon or capers so I had to eat this one by myself.

A couple ounces of smoked salmon, a tablespoon of capers, one hard boiled egg (white and yolks finely chopped separately), a couple of tablespoons of shallots, some chopped fresh chives and a little freshly ground black pepper and you're done. Went nicely with a toasted bagel. My boys were wishing they had not eaten breakfast so early.... (they all got a couple of bites, so I think that I need to make more of this next time.

Heirloom Tomatoes with Baby Field Greens, Shaved Parmesan and Balsamic Glaze

The Temecula Farmers Market always has great produce. The boys and I went last Saturday after a morning swim workout to get flowers for Chessa. I couldn't resist getting these two huge heirloom tomatoes. One was a rainbow heirloom and the other was a persimmon heirloom. Nothing beats a really fresh ripe tomato right off the vine.

We had the missionaries and Chessa's parents over for dinner last Sunday and started with this simple salad. Just slice the tomatoes into 1/3" slices, drizzle with a little good olive oil, a sprinkling of sea salt, top with a slice of mozzarella and a small handful of field greens. Shave some parmesan, drizzle with a little more olive oil and sea salt and you're done... We added a few dots of balsamic glaze that added a little more sweetness to the salad.

It's all about the fresh tomatoes.

Tomato Aspic with Buffalo Mozzarela Basil and Toasted Coriander Seeds

A different take on the caprese salad. Juice is extracted from very ripe tomatoes and is seasoned with vegetable stock, chilies, basil and a little sea salt. The juice is then mixed with powdered gelatin and allowed to sit overnight to set. When ready to serve, cut the Aspic (tomato gelatin) into 2"x2" squares, place on top of a fresh basil leaf and top with a equally sized piece of the freshest buffalo mozzarella that you can find. Toast some coriander seeds, lightly crush in a mortar and pestle and sprinkle over the top. Drizzle with some peppery olive oil, a nice sprinkling of sea salt and you're done. The kids will probably NOT like this one, but I thought that the textures were interesting. They did kind of look cool on a plate, but don't let sit too long or the aspic will start to melt on you.