Dinner with Friends

Love Affair with New York

It was an incredibly beautiful day yesterday and I desperately wanted to avoid that raucous parade so I chose the edge of nowhere.  The upper west side.  Way out of my comfort zone and a food wasteland! 

I went to see the beautifully done Stephen Jones hat exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center, 4 floors of everything from antique hats (as old as the 1500's!) to wacky modern ones each in cases separated by style, or by inspiration.  There was a case devoted to floral inspirations, animal inspirations, tri-cornered 18th century men's hats, 19th century top hats...In each case was the main inspiration piece and the modern adaptations.  I was drawn more to the old hats, I thought some of the modern ones were a bit silly and therefore making fun of women-which I never approve of.  I began to play a game with myself, could I pick out the antiques in each case??  In most cases I was right!  I enjoyed myself immensely. 

Again, in a bid avoid the tumultuous St. Patrick's Day Parade, because I hate being squashed in large groups but large groups of drunken suburban teenagers is hardly appealing.  I needed lunch and wandered down Columbus Avenue.  I ate in a very nice Thai restaurant, Tale, having papaya salad and chicken/shrimp dumplings (yes, both were mushed up inside).  I was so happy they didn't have dessert as I found a Pinkberry a few blocks down! Pinkberry is my favorite!  I wandered down Columbus Avenue and memory lane as my husband and I used to go there to wander pretty often... I remembered our favorite restaurants and shops... which are no longer there though have been replaced by other restaurants and shops...When I got to The Time Warner Center I wandered inside and talked to a friend for a bit...we decided together that there was nothing very interesting on 6 or 7th Avenues between 59th St and 14th St and I COULD NOT go onto 5th or Madison!!!  So I took the train to 14th St and wandered around meat pakcing and into the west village.  I stopped into the Apple Store to buy a case for my brand new iPhone.  It's very chic and urban, all black runner with a shiny band of black plastic across the bottom.

I stopped into Charles Nolan, which has beautiful things-modern and vintage, some lovely jewelry, clothes and tabletop...The candelsticks I really loved, had their design roots in the 19th Century but had been stripped of their baroque decorativeness and were just glass silhouettes-very graceful and elegant but exciting-and much too heavy to carry around.  I'll have to go back one day with a car.  Wandering down Hudson St I came across a magnificent shop full of glasses of every size, color, shape, and century-though, I coveted much, tragically I could buy NOTHING!  Nothing was less than $28 a glass and when I buy these things at flea markets they are under $10 a glass. Even though spending money is my hobby I just could not justify such an outrageous purchase and who can buy one glass? As often as I entertain I need at least 4 as I can always mix and match with other pieces but 6 or 8 is better...

I found a shop that had gorgeous opague glass glasses/vases/votive holders-you could use them for any of those things... I really didn't want to buy one but had spent charming time chatting with the sales people and really do like them (trust me, if I TRULY didn't want to buy one nothing could guilt me into doing that), but since I always err on the side of black, that's the one I chose. And, I have many things at home it will go with. A block or two furthur I found an antique pottery shop, Leo Designs.  I had a hard time choosing what to buy there as there were many exquisite pieces.  I fell in love with a McCoy (late 19th and early 20th Century pottery) vase for my mother for Mother's Day but knew I could never part with it so I bought a second piece to give her!  What fun!  I'll take pictures tonight and put them up in the next few days...

I also wandered into Hudson River Flowers which is a shop that opened just before Sept 11.  In August of 2011, in that shop was the first time I had ever seen cranberry calla lillies and I was determined to go back for them for a Thanksgiving arrangement in November of 2001, which I did (requiring a great deal of effort as in those days as not all the trains were back to running yet) and it was spectacular.  I wandered in with nostaliga, but there are differnet owners now and I didn't love the flowers as much.

I walked down to Spring St, then across to the 6 train to stop at Grand Central for fish from Wild Edibles (the best!!) then walked up Lexington Ave towards my husband.  I had effectively avoided the parade until this moment but there were bands of tourist families, and drunken teenagers all over the street.  I saw that Jean Louis David had a sale-blowouts for $25 so I sought and found refuge.  When I left it was only about 10 minutes before I had to meet my husband...

I had a lovely day and then cooked dinner for us-a date in the dining room with cocktails is always a perfect way to finish a day and begin an evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Annual Passover Dinner Party

My dinner party on Saturday night was an absolute blast! Lots of laughing and happy screaming.

Now I can tell you about the near catastrophes that only my husband, my glam best friend, one other good friend, and my mother know about before. The menu: sauteed duck breast over roasted baby vegetables, then roasted turkey breast (disks that alternated with parsley mashed potatoes), a broccoli/grape tomato salad garnished with toasted matzo crumbs and fresh horseradish, matzo farfel (matzo broken into a 1/4 inch dice) with wild mushrooms (it comes out a bit like a wild mushroom risotto and the techniques is the same), and sliced Persian cucumbers with sea salt.  With a carrot cake and a chocolate almond torte for dessert.

Passover baking is not so easy as one cannot use flour.  Flourless chocolate tortes are always good options but usually I make my signature dessert-chocolate fondue with fruit or pound cake to dip. However, since I had so many days off I was willing to give baking a try this year. Have I ever mentioned just how much I dislike baking?  Too much exact sicence in it.  I chose a chocolate walnut torte and a carrot cake, also based on nut flour.    Every Passover cake recipe starts out with separate 1000 eggs (!). I separated the 5 eggs and added the 2 whole eggs to the yolks, I put the bowl near the outlet, which is not on the counter I am most comfortable working on, then looked at the recipe, measured the next ingredients and promptly dumped them into the bowl in front of me.  Continued reading the directions only to realize I just dumped all the extra ingredients into the whites but I was supposed to mix them into the yolks. OY. I had to run to the deli to buy more eggs. I started again and it was all fine, the batter for the carrot cake was pretty good so I stuck the pans in the oven. I washed all my equipment and started on the chocolate. I separated 6 eggs but very carefully put each ingredient where it was supposed to go. I also beat these eggs with the mixer my mom gave me the day before as she somehow had an extra. All was going well. Until, I was about to beat the egg whites. No whirring beaters. I checked the outlet, the plug, that the beaters were in the machine correctly. Nothing. I called my husband downstairs to see if he could get it to work. Nothing.  I grabbed a fork and started mixing. My husband thought I was crazy that should run out and buy a new mixer. But I'd have to drive clear across town, to Macy's or Bed Bath and Beyond spend time finding one then drive all the way home again-by the time I did all that I could be finished beating. Yes, my arm and wrist hurt and I would have been happier had I a whisk.   I called my Mom who agreed with my H. I called friends so I could chatter while beating to lessen the pain in my wrist and arm.  I'm left handed and tried giving my left arm a rest by using my right, but I couldn't get the motions right. I know there were meringues and cakes with beaten eggs long before there was electricity so I just kept beating. And eventually I was done.  When I finally served both the carrot cake was underdone and the chocolate cake was a bit overdone. See why I really really HATE to bake!?!???!!

I set the table and that gave me much joy, as it always does. See below for lots of pictures.
 







On Sat morning (and please know that by now, all the kosher for Passover stores were closed as it was Sabbath) I defrosted the turkey breast and went about my cooking and cleaning. I ran to the supermarket for some last minute vegetables and lo and behold saw a mixer for $6.74!!!!

I made all the hors d'ouevres to use then get the food processor out of the way early in the day. I enjoyed making all the side dishes too. About 5 on Sat I put the turkey in the oven, when I took it out and let it cool to start slicing it is the first time I realized I wasn't going to have enough. This has NEVER happened to me before. I always have way too much food and frankly I prefer it that way. I panicked for a minute and cut some slices in 1/2 getting 10 but I had a 11 people. How horrible would it look if everyone took 1 piece and then there was nothing left???  I remembered I had a few pieces of roast chicken left over so I planned to heat that up and tell my husband not to eat turkey. I'm a quasi vegetarian so no problem with me not eating it. I had to leave to pick up my glam BF and while I was waiting him to emerge I called a good friend and told her the story. She panicked with me for a second but had a fabulous idea-trim the left over, raw duck breasts into circles and add them to the turkey, telling my husband and GBF to take the duck pieces. On the way back with my BF in the car I revealed all to him and he was happy to help as he much prefers duck to turkey. I'm quite relieved to say, I had enough turkey on the platter to serve everyone with 2 tiny pieces left over. My husband ate chicken, which he prefers but my glam BF got to eat turkey which he says he liked a lot. Whew!  2 adorable friends at the last 2 pieces! (I'm so releived there were seconds! And, as my cousin said at the end of her Seder last week, "it's wonderful to have one thing not to have to find a place for in the refrigerator"). 

Eventually, everything worked out, everyone had much fun and I enjoyed myself immensly.

Passover Cocktails

I think I've mentioned before that I really prefer cocktails to wine. I knew that one of the guests at my dinner party liked wine and was bringing it, so I put wine glasses out for everyone. I don't get to do that very often since I never really serve wine, but I sometimes fall in love with vintage wine glasses the same way I do other vintage glass pieces, so I buy them and was glad to be able to use them. I think, I'll have to use them as water glasses from now on...

Back to the cocktails... What goes into creating a Passover dinner party cocktail is more complicated than other dinner parties because Jews are not really drinkers so the ingredients I need to make them aren't always easy to find and sometimes aren't available at all.  I can get the base spirits kosher for Passover but I can't always get the secondary ones-like campari or vermouth... But I can get fruit juices and sodas easily enough.  Vodka is easy enough but I had to do alot of research to find a gin that is kosher for P-there are only 3 brands that are and one of them is so new it was only available on the Dean & Deluca wesbite-or so I thought...It turns out that one of them, Dean or Deluca created it specifically for Passover in his vineyeards.  Gin is made from ingredients that aren't kosher for P so he distilled it from sugarcane.  But it wasn't overly sweet, it got a good review in the NY Times and my friends all liked it a lot.  It was quite smooth, I must say.

I want my cocktails to be fashionable and delcious and for an April holiday-springy, something other people will like as well... And something I can make ahead in a pitcher. Cocktail recipes are so  often given in 1 drink measurement and making one drink at a time for 11 people is ridiculous, plus it would be a real hardship for my glam BF, my cocktail host (by the time guest 11 gets a drink guest 1 is ready for another, my friend would spend his whole night in the kitchen mixing drinks.  And the kitchen gets so sticky, plus with cooking for 11 people there's no room on the counter for cocktailing). What I've done in years previous is to puree strawberries with lemon juice, mix in a little simple syrup  then shake that with vodka and strain it into vintage glasses. It's delicious but I was bored of it and this year's weather didn't really suggest spring. So I decided on Tom Collins and because most people prefer vodka to gin I planned on vodka collins too.

My glam BF came to dinner on Thursday evening so we could have our weekly evening together (I can't go to restaurants on Passover because of the kosher issues but I can cook like in a restaurant for us, appetizer was slmon 3 ways (smoked, sushi, tinned in olive oil with lemon curl garnish followed by baby lamb chops in rosemary olive oil garnished with a green olive and orange tapendae). But also because I wanted him to perfect the cocktails with me. We had much fun with them!  We got our measurements settled. The next day I took said measurements over to my Mother's house and she, the 5th and 8th grade math teacher, along with my brother, the CPA figured out how to increase the one drink measures into a pitcher.

The drinks went over really really well and we had to make 3 rounds of pitchers that evening!!!  I beleive that classics develop into classics for a reason.

The View from Above and Below

I had vague cocktail plans with my British friend Monday night and I was also invited to a cocktail party at the new Trump Soho Hotel in their latest space to open, SoHi, so asked him if he wanted to go with me. It's a glass room with marble floors (more on that in a moment) on the 46th floor with some of the most spectacular views I have ever seen. Really. We had the opportunity to get there while it was still daylight but for the hour we were there it changed from daylight to dusk to night and it was all quite exquisite. The floor bothered me as standing in heels for a cocktail party on marble is uncomfortable and if you were having a meeting anyone who needed to get up and walk out, then back would make so much noise as to be disruptive-the pushing back of a chair, the click or clump of a heel. The cocktails seemed a bit watery to me but the food was rather good. My favorite was the tiny toast piece holding buratta mousse and 1/2 an heirloom grape tomato (the play of textures and flavors was almost perfect, I would have preferred toast instead of a cracker). There was a tiny taste of crab salad in a spoon, an espresso cup of sweet potato bisque, there was tiny puff pastry circle piled high with a tiny dice of short ribs, there was a duck thing I forget the details of, I'm sorry. There was also a ceviche bar with a shrimp and a scallop version each in a large martini glass. I don't happen to like the texture of the fish that ceviche's citrus bath gives it but it's fun to taste anyway. There was also an autumnal bar I guess one could call it-marinate mushrooms, olives, pumpkin risotto with blue cheese, perfectly seasoned orzo with feta chunks, and a cheese platter of brie, fontina, blue cheese, and a yellow blue cheese that I had never seen before (the chef warned us it was very potent so we took minuscule pieces but it was so unpotent I can now barely recall it's taste). But it looked cool. We laughed and chatted and marvelled at the view. 

From there...we decided to go into Williamsburg to a dive bar where his friend was performing (with really fabulous silver and black eye liner that I want to learn to copy!) and many of our mutual friends would be joining us, including my glam BF who has been away, hanging with his parent's in the South for 10 whole days!! We were thrilled to see him. So let's just say dive bars are so incredibly not my scene and point out that my Lanvin shoes were sticking to the floor. However, I had a very fun time event hoping.

 

 

 

 
 

Sukkot Menus and Other Stories

For weeks I knew I was inviting people to my Sukkah but no menu was coming into my head, I had no main course inspiration. I looked through all of the recipes I collected over 20 years and somehow nothing inspired me. I called my mother to complain and somehow she turned into inspiration-almost all my meals popped into my head when I was talking to her.

Friday night I am making risotto cakes (a circle on the plate) with a mushroom parsley ragout piled on top. Roast chicken simply stuffed with apples and herbs along with parsley roasted baby red potatoes and roasted Brussels sprouts. For dessert I'll make a recipe my cousin made last year for Rosh Hashanna-chocolate chip cookie cups filled with chocolate (batter put into a muffin tin cut  a well into the center then filled).

 

 
  

We had much fun on Friday night with a few good friends and 2 new ones-I adored them all! The food came out wonderfully and most of my group, being English brought Pimm's and all the ingredients to make a Pimm's Cup-YUM!! Cut up lemons and limes into wedges, slice cucumbers into chunks, add halved strawberries and throw this lovely garden into a pitcher with ice, add the Pimm's and then top of sparkling lemonade or Sprite etc. Delicious!

Saturday night is an appetizer I may have mentioned once before as its been on my mind to make for several years. My husband and I were invited to a lovely dinner party a few years ago and our friend/host/chef made an appetizer of a roasted orange with roasted cauliflower on top of it with a sauteed scallop on top and an orange juice honey sauce drizzled on top. I can't use scallops as they aren't kosher but I thought duck would be a perfect topper and I realized somewhere along the line that this is a de constructed duck a l'orange!!! I haven't been able to find kosher duck breast for lo these many years but this April I finally did! Pomegranate, my favorite store (it's similar to Whole Foods but all kosher!!) had duck breasts right before Passover. I bought them to taste them, gave some to my father who loved them as much as my husband and I did. Spring going into summer was not the season for this appetizer but I knew fall would come! I called the butcher at Pomegranate in August who said yes, I could and should order them, he doesn't always butcher the ducks. I picked them up on Sunday and they are GORGEOUS!! So roasted orange, cauliflower, duck and I think a less sweet sauce, a stock with a little orange juice and herbs as a gravy, I think instead. The main course will be roasted turkey breast stuffed with sweet potatoes or butternut squash. And a chicken stock, roasted garlic, squash gravy. Some roasted broccoli next to it, with chili flecked mayonnaise along side. Same dessert as Friday night. I tried roasting an orange a few days before and it didn't work, it was bitter.  I have to focus more on how my friend of old did this and figure it out, or maybe I saute them, but I know I have to make this appetizer again!!  As it turns out I couldn't make the main dish as all my guests but 2 canceled (my glam BF (and his boyfriend) who has so much integrity and I know I can always rely on him do exactly what he says he is going to do, one of many things I love about him) and that would have been way too much food for 4 people, I had a small bison chuck roast in the freezer that I had been wondering what to do with. I went on-line to do a little research and saw that most chuck roasts were treated like pot roast. Ok, not a problem. I sauteed the meat on all sides, sauteedd, carrots, onions, celery, de-glazed with a sweet red wine, and let simmer for 3 hours. The gravy looked and smelled divine and the meat was certainly cooked through but it was hard as a rock. So odd. I tasted a piece and it was good but the chunk of meat was hard. I called my mother and she said cook it longer, so I did. I was sorry, though that I did, I tasted better when I tasted it the first time. My Glam BF's boyfriend, a baker who went to culinary school, thought that I should have cooked it even more.  Oh well, it wasn't terrible and I won't buy that cut again, probably bison is too lean ofr the long cooking times of a stew.  The duck appetizer was fabulous and gorgeous, the bison was fine and dessert remained terrific. We had a really lovely evening.

Sunday for lunch I invite my Mom's friends each year and this year I'll start out with a tomato basil soup and then make "lobster" mac and cheese (it's fake, I'm kosher). Probably a tomato salad next to it as it's still tomato season. I think dessert will be affogato-a divine Italian dessert, gelato with espresso poured over it. I decided to be lazy however and not make a whole new dessert. Unfortunately, I found the afternoon ruined for me when one or two of my mother's friends were vocally judgmental and got on my nerves. Either I won't invite the two again or I may not do a lunch for her friends again, plus it's hard to have a dinner on Saturday night that starts at 8 and ends about 1ish then get up at 5 or 6 am to prepare a lunch for 9 at 1 o'clock. I might do a dinner instead, for different peeps. Each year my mother tells me I don't have to and next year I might just take her up on her offer.

I actually used basil from my garden in the soup, my mom thought it was a little too basilly and I know I didn't like but didn't have patience to figure out why. Using basil (or anything) from the pots on my deck gives me the creeps, I am so NOT Alice Waters (!) I do not want to know where my food comes from except that it's from Dean & Deluca, Whole Foods, my local supermarket etc. I see the things that crawl around my garden and somehow rinsing the leaves under cold water is not enough-I'd feel better if I could...perhaps...run it through the dishwasher. But the soup would boil so I felt a little better.

Monday for dinner, my family will come over. I'm still thinking of an appetizer but I'm making a stew and the cookie dessert. I was reading the NY Times food section on Wed as I do every week, reading about a chef that served a watermelon and roasted corn salad. I turned that over in my mind...it sounded interesting...and I know watermelon salads are quite fashionable plus, I thought it would be a refreshing light dish against the heavier stew and it was still a little early in the year for stew becasue it was still so hot. I needed a little more inspiration, I thought just watermelon and corn wasn't complete so I drove to Stop and Shop (I rarely go there as I'd pass at least 4 supermarkets and a myriad of small specialty stores on the way so why bother). I bought baby corn and then saw this jar of julienned celery root from Poland, which seemed really interesting and a terrific addition. While the cobs and baby corn were roasting I chopped up the watermelon (a horrible sticky job) and opened the jar. I fell in love with the taste! It tasted like very slightly pickled celery. Once I assembled the other ingredients I spooned it on top and tasted the whole thing-it was really really good. I made a glaze of pear vinegar and threw the watermelon juice into the pot of reducing vinegar. Somehow, though I didn't think it really needed it. When my mom arrived I made her taste and she didn't want dressing either, then my cousin wandered in to the kitchen and she agreed, no dressing. I put the platter on the table and everyone gobbled it up-it really turned out well and I'm going to do it again. I still have that celery stuff!  We all enjoyed the stew as well, it was full of winey beefy flavor and the meat was really tender-just the right texture.

Oh and I forgot to mention my pumpkin bread. I never make the same thing twice on Thanksgiving, I made this pumpkin bread in 1986 but not in 1987 and there was rebellion! So I have been making it every year since 1988 and a few years ago my aunt asked if I would make it for Sukkot so I do that every year too. It's delicious but I burned the bottom a little. I cut the burned bits off just before serving. :) Again, we had a really lovely evening.

In case you haven't noticed I thrive on all this!!! People who asked me about the holiday are often shocked that I don't want to make one big casserole or some other really big thing and serve it to everyone, it would be easier they tell me. But yuck! First, my husband would not eat the same thing every day for 4 days in a row and second why on earth would I serve leftovers to guests????? If they have enough respect and friendship for me to come to my house the least I can do is give them fresh beautiful food. And why does everything in life have to be solely about ease?

Next I turn my attention to Thanksgiving though I may do a ladies lunch in October!

My Glam Best Friend's Birthday Party

My Glam Best Friend loves birthdays-his casual acquaintance's, his good friend's but especially his own. He celebrates for at least 2 weeks, if not a month (!). What with brunches with some friends, dinners with others, Fire Island weekends (and I am privileged to go to most of his events which gives me much joy for many reasons) and it all culminates for him and his many friends with a grand spectacle of a cocktail party.

He has given me the great pleasure and honor of planning and executing said party so I have a marvelous time twice. We spend the daytime hours cooking and preparing at his apartment then we transport all the food, alcohol, platters, bowls, and cups to the fabulous space that will be the party. Last year a new and ultra hip hotel this year in a coolly glamorous store his friend runs. We whisked all the merchandise away and set up the party.

Its theme this year was Diamonds and Pearls which suits him so perfectly (and it does me too)! 2 weeks before the party we went to craft stores and gathered lots of diamonds and pearls to decorate the space-which turned out beautifully!! We served skewers of mozzarella, grape tomatoes, and basil; smoked salmon on tiny toast points garnished with dill cream cheese, tiny meatballs simmered in a sweet and sour sauce, tiny mac and cheese squares, a cheese platter, bowls of nuts, wasabi peas, caramel popcorn, and copious amounts of alcohol. The only thing we didn't make ourselves were the nuts and the meatballs though they and the caramel corn were the hit of the party! My friend's roommate is a chef at a currently hot restaurant, and when he woke up and offered to help, he took my presentation abilities to the next level which was really exciting for me. He taught me how to pipe the tiny dollop of dilled cream cheese on top of the smoked salmon and showed me tricks on how to get the tiny sandwiches to spiral perfectly on the platters.

His friends really rose to the occasion and put on their best, their most glittery party dresses for the occasion-it was a really really fabulous event! My GBF wore black pants and a long black T with many layers of pearls and chain links around his neck for fabulous effect! I wore a cream strapless sheath with many shades of gold threads shot through (upon which I got many compliments). He wears make up almost every day (which I think is AMAZING and wonderful! It really does make everyone look better and I wish more men would) but many of his friends put it on for this evening and added totally fab jewels to their ensembles. There was even a tie in evidence!! With everyone looking and feeling so beautiful the party got GOING from the first minute the first person walked in the door! It lasted until 9 am the next morning and a very very very good time was had by all!

Handwritten Thank-you Notes

 

I almost always send handwritten thank you notes on beautiful cards or stationary (and sometimes even stationary I have made that matches the invitations I made) to those very lovely people who give me gifts.  Sometimes, I email the notes instead but only if someone gives me something for one of my table settings so that I can include a picture of said table setting.  This is going to the first time I have blogged a thank you note but it's also because I want to include a picture.

A few months ago a good friend of mine had the incredible opportunity to move to London (and my husband and I are going to visit her over President's Weekend-YIPPEE). While I am of course very happy for her I am terribly sad for me. But she sent me Hanukkah and birthday presents which I received yesterday and love them both.  She knows how much I love black, white, and silver tables and look at the gorgeous candles she sent, for just such a table at a future dinner party!  

 

The picture frame is equally ultra cool , particularly au courant for me because I finally have a picture of my glam friend (he takes hundreds of photos but this is the first of us together in which we both look good and we are both looking into the camera at the same time and together) and have been looking for a frame for it-which I have now found!  I can't show you a picture of it because there is too much reflection off of it so you don't see anything but my office furniture or my Blackberry as glare in the photo-but it's an 8 1/2 X 11 black glass frame with a 4X6 clear glass cut out in the center-my glam friend and I look fabulous in it as he printed the picture for me in black and white. 

 

So thank you friend of mine, I adore my gorgeous gifts!

Apres Antiquing Lunch 2010

Every year my Mom, Aunt, cousin, and various friends go to a flea market that raises money for Alzheimer's research, which for the past few years has been held not terribly far from my house so I invite everyone back to my house for lunch. Giving me much joy.

Here’s how my roundabout brain works…how things come together, even years later… 

About 2 years ago I was invited to a caterer tasting at which was served little cups of lobster macaroni and cheese. So delicious!  I had been looking for the right place to serve such a thing ever since. For some reason, on Thanksgiving 09 I had decided I would serve it for this après antiquing lunch.  And now the day has arrived.  Over the past few days I have been thinking of what to serve around it, oh and I must also say that the original was with real lobster and mine will be with kosher and therefore pretend lobster-one of the very few fake things I will ever allow in my life.  We'll see how the tastes differ...I wanted the rest of lunch to be not at all fattening since the mac and cheese has so many calories.  I decided on the very old-fashioned wedge of ice berg lettuce salad with my hand made dill roasted garlic ranch dressing.  Also a number of years ago I was looking for pretty toothpicks, found a website that sold many different styles-of course got stuck with several hundred of them so I skewer a lot of garnishes. I am planning to skewer grape tomatoes to garnish the lettuce salad, though will probably serve them on the block of Himalayan salt which I really adore and tomatoes are always so much better with salt.  Alas my first course. 

The mac and cheese was delicious and very lobstery tasting. I used farfalle for the macaroni and stirred in the chopped fake lobster and of course the cheese sauce.  I would like to do it again but with thyme added.

For Chanukah my aunt gave me a set of casserole dishes in pale blue.  It was very sweet of her but what could I possibly do with blue casserole dishes-everything I wear and decorate with is black! I do wear and use color but always dark colors-navy, hunter green, cranberry, brown-those are the non-black colors in my life.  I do admit that there a few brights I will wear/use turquoise, fuchsia but they are also deep dark colors in their own way. Baby blue is just not in my repertoire. I didn't know how to set the table... I talked to my mom and we came up with a palette of white and navy with pale blue accents.  I brought my white dairy dishes up from the basement and put them on the table. Then I added clear Depression glass salad plates in a pattern called Cubist so lots of texture.  I remembered my vintage 50's Tom Collins glasses had pale blue and gold stripes and others with pale blue and gold bubbles so added them. I tried to alternate the navy salad plates with the clear ones but they really didn't work with the pale blue stripes of the glasses so I alternated two different clear plate choices. I added vintage silverware that was my Grandmother's and was then faced with what napkins to use. As I say, I really don't have much blue to choose from. I took some pale blue jacquard napkins that I brought home from Paris out of a closet that I was saving as part of a gift for my cousin (who uses a lot of blue!). I dug through my other napkins and pulled out a swirly patterned choice of pale blues, greens, and turquoise-they did work together, though not my favorite. Nothing I could do. Years ago I was walking past a shop in Brooklyn and fell in love with a short wide vase, almost a bowl in deep blue and green stripes which seemed to work too. I filled it with silver ornaments and added, in vodka shot glasses, 3 on each side of the bowl, white tulips. Again, not my favorite table but ultimately, it really did work.

 

 

Most importantly, we all had a delicious time even though the flea market was a disappointment-very few vendors were there and what they were selling was unappealing. Apparently, last year, when the economy had been a disaster no one bought anything and the vendors didn't bother to come this year.  As Jet’s fans the world over are saying-there is always next year… 

Scientific Dinner Party

On Saturday night I had a dinner party and enjoyed myself immensely! 

 

For Chanukah, my wonderful husband gave me the first kit available to create molecular gastronomy (Wikipedia explains: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the term started to be used to describe a new style of cooking in which some chefs began to explore new possibilities in the kitchen by embracing science, research, technological advances in equipment and various natural gums and hydrocolloids produced by the commercial food processing industry) at home and I was very excited to try it.  As a person who swipes ideas from restaurants all the time it was frustrating to me that there were techniques and equipment I had no reasonable access to-but this is one barrier that is down and I am thrilled.  Sous-vide is the next hurdle and I have seen articles describing the home cook equipment but they are still very large and over $500 so I’m not ready.   (Wikipedia also explains: French for "under vacuum", is a method of cooking that is intended to maintain the integrity of ingredients by heating them for an extended period at relatively low temperatures. Food is cooked for a long time, sometimes well over 24 hours. Unlike cooking in a slow cooker, sous-vide cooking uses airtight plastic bags placed in hot water well below boiling point (usually around 60°C or 140°F).

A friend at work asked me to do the dinner party-who am I to say no to such a request…I find 4-6 to be  perfect dinner party numbers and if I am the only girl among several boys so much the better!!!!  I knew immediately that I would make the brisket braised in beer once again (it was really good and I had the 6 pack of porter left).  Then I had to decide on an appetizer.  I had trouble thinking of what to serve, I kept thinking of things but rejecting them.  I looked through various, lists, magazines and books but nothing really grabbed me for some reason.  Then I came across “beef sushi”on the Epicurious website and thought how brilliant it would be to make carrot juice into caviar using my molecular gastronomy kit-all so witty a play on sushi.  Get carrot juice at the health food store, grill strip steak, while it’s grilling boil strips of carrots, make a basil/caper/mustard pesto of sorts-spread the carrot strips onto the sushi mat, carefully spread the pesto onto the (slippery and moving) carrot strips, then lay the slices of meat over the carrot strips and roll.  I rolled the whole thing onto a piece of plastic wrap and made a very tight cylinder then refrigerated it for several hours, making the cutting into smaller rolls like sushi much easier.  Just before your guests come mix the carrot juice with the thickener in your “science box” and let it sit until ready for it.  Just before serving (though you know how I hate working carefully in the kitchen when guests are in the living room, but it could not be helped, and I think the next time I can let the finished product sit for longer than the instructions say, meaning I can do it more ahead of time.) put together the special calcium somethingorother bath and with the plastic eyedropper also supplied in the kit, slowly drop one carrot juice drop at a time into the calcium thingy.  I want to get a glass eye dropper as I think it will work out better with it for next time, the plastic dropper is too soft and more than one drop comes out at a time making a glob rather than a caviar shaped ball.  But it really looked like salmon roe on my “sushi” and then I threw some black sesame seeds over it-trés trés professional!  And so exciting that it worked!!!!!!!!!

My glam friend was one of my guests and he explained to me why he has to have jello shots at his annual holiday party-the colors go with Christmas and people really love them, which I do understand but what I don’t understand is why they have to be the chemically fake neon kind when one can make jello from scratch very easily and to my standards. J  So, to show him, for an amuse bouche-pre dessert, I made espresso/Kahlua jello shots in vintage 1930’s glass jello cups.  They were delicious especially when we drizzled my chocolate sauce onto them.  Then I served chocolate cake and cinnamon cookies to dunk in the chocolate.

My glam friend and his boyfriend stayed over after dinner and we had a glam breakfast on Sunday morning.  I poached eggs for the first time-partially because I wanted to and partially because his boyfriend went to culinary school and is a professional baker, so he really knew how to poach the eggs.  They tasted just like poached eggs but what a pain in the neck!!  You could only do one at a time, I suppose I could have had more pots of boiling water going too but…We had fun hanging out in the kitchen, watching the eggs boil (and watching me try to fish the slippery little guys out of the water), munching on the smoked salmon that was supposed to be on the English muffins, on goat cheese, and on buratta (a spectacular, luxurious cheese that is a nugget of fresh mozzarella made from cream around which is wrapped mozzarella made from milk) and crackers.  Finally we were able to sit at the dining room table and had a marvelous breakfast.

I look forward to this weekend when I am going antiquing and serving lunch to friends…more about that next week.

Last Saturday

On Saturday I had a rather busy but fun day. My husband went to work and I did my usual wandering around the city which I hadn't done in quite some time and was really missing. First I got my hair colored at Vidal Sassoon which is always a glorious experience. I'm even now becoming friends with my colorist. Then I got a manicure-again another glorious experience. Now I was free for several hours before the dinner party we were invited to.

I had a terrific lunch at Republic. This is a buzzy loud delicious pan Asian place owned by the same people who own Wagamama in London. I used to eat here all the time but they took my favorite seaweed salad off the menu and somehow I could never find anything I liked as much and wasn't too fattening so I stopped going. After a year or so I found myself in the neighborhood needing to have a quick dinner before meeting a friend at the movie theater a few blocks away so gave it a try. They had changed the menu again and added an incredible sashimi salad that I can't get enough of. I went for lunch on Saturday and enjoyed the salad very much coupling it with a very spicy very delicious green papaya salad.

Then I went into my office to work but my password had expired and without IT there I couldn't do the things I had planned on so left. Somehow by this time it was 4 o'clock and I really wanted to see one of the many museum exhibits around the city that are on my list so I took the train up to the Whitney and saw Georgia O'keefe exhibit. It was painful to give $18 to the museum to spend an hour looking at one exhibit but so it goes especially since it was a wonderful exhibit and I am SO glad I took the time to go.

It showed her very early work, predating the giant flowers that we all know and decorated with in the 80's! There were line sketches from 1915 and 1916 that were elegant and beautiful. Other work was equally beautiful-dark waves of color that also predate the famous flowers but gave you their knowledge. And thankfully there were no dead cow bones-the one genre of Georgia O'Keefe's work that I really detest. There were photographs of her taken by Alfred Stieglitz and while I always knew she was beautiful I never realized just how beautiful she was. And so thin-21st century model thin! It was really very interesting to see the photos juxtaposed with the paintings-so much so in fact that one of the descriptor cards quoted GOK herself in that you cannot understand her later work until you see the photos Stieglitz took of her.

By then I had to rush a little, it was 5 and I was due in the east village at 6. I walked up Madison to 77th towards the train and was distracted by an antique jewelry store that I had never seen before. I went in looked around a bit-such exquisite things that (sadly) I couldn't afford. I had a lovely conversation with the manager and did buy a book that the owner had had made of her vintage fashion postcard collection and enjoyed perusing it while on the train going downtown.

I got to our foodie friend's apartment about 10 minutes early and as a person who entertains often I understand how painful it is when guests arrive early so I wandered around for a few blocks looking in windows...I rang the buzzer at 6:05. I am usually a very punctual person but when going to someone's house it really is better to be late.

Her apartment is huge by NYC standards and her friends were comfortable and intelligent-really a terrific combination! AND (!) her husband was pouring Prosecco into vintage champagne glasses then spooning a cranberry slush into them which was quite quite gorgeous and just as delicious. I am still shocked by this but I actually drank 4 of them over the course of the evening and wasn't even tipsy! How that happened I don't know-I am usually buzzy half way through a single cocktail.

My husband and I had a terrific time, the food was delicious and beautifully served. I take great pleasure in telling you that I have introduced my friend to Depression glass collecting (hence the beautiful serving pieces) and we have begun to go to flea markets wherever we can find them. She was so thoughtful and changed her stuffing recipe to turkey bacon, artichokes, and Parmesan cheese because she knows that my level of kosher doesn't allow me to eat anything from a pig (which is rather difficult these days given how fashionable it is).

It was such a pleasure to spend the evening there.