A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Caviar and Pheasant, Fig, & Cognac Pate: Not Everything Great is Home-made

Gene and I first had caviar at the Petrossian piano/martini bar inside the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. We'd walked by the little bistro several times and one day we just decided to stop in for a drink and a nosh.  Neither of us had ever eaten caviar before so we decided to splurge and give this new-to-us delicacy a try.  Delicious! 

I think it was one of the first times we've ever tried something we didn't know how to eat that we simply asked the waitress to tell us what to do. That seems like a simple concept but it. was a learning experience for us in several ways.  I don't know why I thought the waitress might be snooty, my own insecurity, I guess. As Auntie Miranda said, only a stupid server wouldn't make sure a patron had a great experience with new food or they'd be burning their own tip money up. 

 

 Since then we've been very loyal to Petrossian and splurge on caviar and fois gras every other New Year's Eve or so.  We've been building up quite the tradition:  a good pasta, home-made bread, and a fresh salad, followed by poker or other family games, and a midnight caviar, a good bottle of champagne, and/or dessert buffet with Auntie Miranda, James and Lynn, and Corbin and Jenn. 

(See posts for Baked Mostaccioli with All Day Slow Cooker Meat Sauce,  Baklava, and Jenn's Pretzel/Rolo Bites)

The Petrossian caviar is overnighted from New York inside cold packs.  To serve, all you have to  do is open the tin it comes in, place over crushed ice in a secondary bowl to keep it chilled, and dip it with a non-metallic (to avoid the metal giving the caviar a weird taste) spoon.  Ours happens to be mother of pearl, ordered from Petrossian our first year.  Caviar can be served on soft (our preference) or toasted baguette or regular bread toast points, blinis, or crackers of any kind. Toppings are a personal choice but common sides are chopped hard-boiled egg, sweet gherkins, dill gherkins, capers, minced red onion, scallions, or chives, kalamata olives, and creme fraiche--a type of sour cream with a higher fat content and less acidity.

We served this little mini buffet on a lazy Susan to keep us, lazy celebrators that we are, from having to pass everything around a million times.  I made home-made baguette and bought two kinds of crackers: one light and crispy and the other more toothy and whole-grained.  Along with the caviar, we also ordered a duck fois gras pate and a pheasant, fig, and cognac pate.  Everybody tried many different combinations of toppings with the caviar but it seemed like the favorites were either simply the caviar on a thin slice of baguette or any of the breads topped with caviar, creme fraiche, capers, and chopped sweet gherkins.  There is something about that combination that meets the magic taste combination of salty, sour, sweet, and savory. Mmmm... I'm already looking forward to next year even though this year has barely begun. 

Other purveyors of caviar:   Caviar Galore

For more information on caviar types and terms:   Caviar Info

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New Year's Day: Get your Black-Eyed Peas on!

Celebrating with Baklava

Baked Mostaccioli w/ All Day Slow Cooker/Crockpot Meat Sauce

 

 There's nothing like pasta, the ultimate comfort food, to feed a small army of company at the holidays.  It's tasty, it's easy, and it can usually be made ahead, all pluses in my book so that I can serve a delicious meal to my friends and family but also be able to relax on the day of and during the party instead of running myself ragged, cooking. 

Traditionally at New Year's Eve, I make a big lasagna, but this year I went to the same song, different verse, choosing to created a Baked Mostaccili dish instead. 

Several of my guests plus friends on Facebook asked for the recipe, so this is it:  Glenna's Baked Mostaccioli for a Crowd.  Even though the recipe easily serves 8-10, it can easily be cut in half for a family dinner or can be made as a whole and split into two separate baking dishes, freezing one for later. 

   

Jenn's Yummy Pecan, Rolo, & Pretzel Chip Nummies

 

 Our friend, Jenn, brought these to our annual New Year's Eve party and they were a huge hit: the perfect combination of crunchy, salty, sweet, nutty, and chocolate.  They're a quick and easy addition to any dessert table that will disappear faster than any other treat.

Thank you, Jenn!

Celebrating with Baklava

 

 While the entire rest of the food blogosphere posts nice diet recipes for at least the first week of the new year, I'm going to go radical and tempt your tummy with step-by-step photos of how to make the sublime, baklava, my favorite densely rich, sweet, and decadent treat that's a pastry I can only describe to the unititiated as a cross between a bar cookie and candy.  Or as simply "the most yum in a bite I know of!" It's created from layers of paper thin pastry dough brushed with butter and filled with pistachios, walnuts, and almonds, along with warm spices and soaked in honeyed syrup.

Baklava can be traced back to the "cradle of civilization", Mesopotamia (the modern Iraq area), in the thousands B.C. but its most commonly associated with the Ottoman Turkish Empire of the 15th and 16th centuries whose capitol was Constantinople (modern day Instanbul, Turkey).  I'm pretty confident you can consider that a dessert must be good if it's been around for 5,000 years, don't you?

I'll admit that I assumed baklava would be difficult, or at least complicated. to make but the truth is delightfully that it really isn't. There a lot of steps, but most of them are all about the layering of pastry and filling.   For anyone experienced in working with phyllo dough I would consider this easy to make, and even for those who've never worked with phyllo before, I would still say it's only a low medium in difficulty.  The key to the recipe is in the steps and preparing the work space.  Some baklava makers create the pastry first and then make the syrup while baking so that it remains hot. I make the syrup first and set it aside while I make the pastry so that even though the syrup is close to room temp when poured as the final step, the baklava is so hot it quickly soaks in.  Having a little counter space is the only clincher to working with phyllo dough because it's easier to lay it out, then move it in towards you to butter and stack.  You'll see what I mean as you read through the recipe and see the photos.

Happy New Year 2013

New Year's Day: Get your Black-Eyed Peas on!

I'm not a huge fan of black-eyed peas but this is one recipe I love and make every year: Cowboy Caviar.  With its mix of black-eyed peas, black beans, corn, celery and other vegetables, it's a wonderful cold side dish, you get your New Year's Day good luck black-eyed peas, and it's a great do ahead recipe for New Year's Eve or New Year's Day parties!

While black-eyed peas are grown in many countries, they are particularly eaten here in the southern United States.  There are two southern traditions that explain the superstition of eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day for luck, both grew out of the Civil War. The first is the legend that whenever Sherman's Union troops sacked cities or plantations and raided the food supplies, the northeners considered black-eyed peas and field corn to be food for slaves and stock, and left it, so all the starving southeners felt "lucky" to have any food left to celebrate New Year's Day with at all.

The second is a much more pleasant legend.  Again placed during Civil War times, legend has it that many slaves celebrated the New Year's day that the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect by eating Hoppin' John, a common, hearty dish, made of a combination of black-eyed peas, rice, pork, and greens (also yummy). 

Other legends place black-eyed pea eating as far back as the Talmud and the Egyptians but having grown up eating very southern-ish, my favorite is the thought of celebrating the Emancipation Proclamation and the hope of great strides in civil rights of all men and women of all everything in our country's future.

Nannie's Banana Pudding for Gene

 

Gene's Christmas Eve All Favorites Thank You Dinner

2012 has been a long year at our house. While we've had our share of blessings in many ways, my health was not one of them.  After a year or more of not feeling well, constant fatigue, and intermittent chest pain, palpitations, high blood pressure, and vomitting, we found out this fall after numerous trips to several doctors, an ER visit with overnight observation, and a full cardiac work up that all of that chest stuff was caused by, drumroll please, gall bladder dysfunction.

Say what?  Yup, you read that right. All that false path heart fear was really just my silly ole gall bladder acting up. I never had abdominal pain at all! Crazy, I know.

So an operation, pneumonia, and several weeks off work to recupe my stamina, I'm back in the groove and can remember who that energetic fun Glenna used to be and is again!

As a small thank you to my wonderful hubby, Gene, who waited on me hand and foot, took over all of the house chores, and did everything to take care of me while I was depressed, shaky, and pukey all the time, I didn't volunteer to work Christmas Eve like I often do, but instead stayed home for a cozy Christmas Eve dinner of all of his favorite foods as a small token of thanks for his help, his sense of humor, and his patience helping me through this awful year health-wise. Thank you, Honey!

Gene's Christmas Eve Thank You Dinner Menu

Oven Fried Chicken

Mashed Potatoes

Corn

Creamed Spinach (Okay, that one's my favorite)

Dinner Rolls

Nannie's From Scratch Banana Pudding

(chicken and creamed spinach recipes follow, banana pudding tomorrow!)

New Product Spotlight: Chicken of the Sea No Drain Tuna

Chicken of the Sea tuna, the standard my whole life for tuna sandwiches and tuna casseroles, has a new product: no drain.  I grew up on the oil-packed tuna, switched to the water-packed version as an adult to save calories, but am now an ardent fan of the no drain version.

I'll let you in on a little pet peeve of mine. You know how after chicken or tuna salad sits for a little while there's that sort of watery stuff in the bottom of the container that you have to mix back in.  As much as my intellectual mind knows it's just the extra liquid from the tuna and what-not forming that, nothing bad at all, but my emotional brain always thinks "Ewwww."  I know. It's a teeny tiny thing but it bugs me. 

The No Drain tuna takes care of that problem. Even after sitting in the fridge for two days, the tuna salad I made with it was still nicely homogenous in texture, hearty to the bite, and with no weeping. I also liked that the flavors (mayo, mustard, pickle relish)  I mixed in with it stayed very crisp and true, without getting watered down or needing extra spices to correct for the added mositure I don't always get completely drained out of the water or oil-packed tunas.

Chicken of the Sea No Drain Tuna--Definitely a thumbs up at our house!  Can't wait to use it in the tuna casserole and other recipes.

Recipe after the click.

Be Back Soon.....

I'm currently (and have been for the last week) knitting and organizing furiously for Christmas Knitting in the NICU. There's a local TV station coming to film tomorrow which is awesome, but which also cut our planning/knitting/organizing time down by two weeks.  Not complaining at all, just explaining.  Will be back soon.  In the meantime, if you'd like to see what I've, along with my nifty knitting co-horts, have done in the the past, check out these links:

Knitting for the NICU blog:   www.afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/knittingforthenicu

Earlier posts here on The Fridge: http://afridgefulloffood.typepad.com/my_weblog/knitting_for_the_nicu/