New Year's Yummies

OK, I know it's a little boring that I made the Chocolate Creme Brulee a second time this holiday season.  What?  On Christmas and then New Year's Eve?  Well, it was for a whole new crowd AND making a truly great recipe is not only brilliant (knowing a beautiful thing when you find it) but it's damn Lazy!  Doing a super-easy recipe a second time in one week is super-brilliant and super-Lazy!  Another opportunity to use my new kitchen torch: Priceless.

Now, when you have a super-easy recipe it is easy to get cocky when manifesting all its goodness out of a series of ingredients.  And, having just read the book "Eats, Shoots & Leaves" which is a gloriously funny study of punctuation and how we arrange our words and things on a page, well I just about fell over when I saw that I had missed ONE WORD when I made the recipe last time.  The word?  Strain.  The sentence from whence it came?

Strain and pour into individual porcelain ramekins.

I have a serious problem with that sentence.  It is physically impossible to do both straining and pouring in one step when dealing with just about any substance, but particularly with a rich, thick chocolate soup type mixture.  You need to strain from one large vessel (the recipe says 8 portions, it's closer to 10 or 11) to another.  Then you take the strained thick yummy liquid and pour it into ramekins.  This is two distinct, rather complex moves.  Pouring a thick batter of any kind into any vessel without spilling is its own feat.  Bottom line: you cannot "strain and pour."  You strain.  Then, you pour.

Did it change the recipe?  Indeed, it was smoother.  Was it better?  No.  A little different texture, with not as many deep chocolate surprise speckles for the taste buds in the second strained version.  Yet, both were outrageously good.  So, now you have an excuse to make it twice too!

Lesson learned:  When a recipe looks and reads as unbelievably simple, stop, read it aloud so you can catch any strain-like potential landmines hidden in the minimalist instructions.

The other recipes which were, in my mind, absolute winners, which I will do again and again are Greek Spiced Baked Shrimp and Greek Lemon Pilaf.  I easily made the Shrimp the night before, up to the point of baking.  Perfect for dinner parties where you don't want to slave while entertaining. 

The rice I did an hour before the party began, and I was afraid it was going to be goopy, but I left it on the stove for the next hour and a half -- obviously heat off -- and it dried up perfectly.  It was absolutely gooey and not ready to serve at the recipe's completion so I had a back up plan (mix in perfect microwaved Trader Joe's rice bag) but luckily it took care of itself.  I love anything lemony, and this is delightfully lemony and a perfect match for the Shrimp dish.

Buon Anno Nuovo Appetito to all. 


LInks to all the recipes:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/chocolate-creme-brulee-recipe/index.html

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Greek-Spiced-Baked-Shrimp-350590

http://www.yummly.com/recipe/Greek-Lemon-Pilaf-Recipezaar?columns=2&position=1/13



Literally The LAZIEST Dinner Party EVER!

I'm not kidding. This is it. Most LAZY and most DELICIOUS dinner party ever!

You know how I love all things Italian. Well, the Italian tradition is seafood for Christmas fare. So, Cioppino is a very popular Christmas dish.

Well, Best Boyfriend in the Whole Wide World, Aaron, found the ultimate most amazing Cioppino recipe by none other than the Genius Giada. She's the best -- simple, easy, fresh, textural. And in this one, FENNEL and RED PEPPER FLAKES are the two ingredients that kick it up several delicioso notches. Unbelievable.

And, this is how this works into a dinner party. If you are a couple this works incredibly well because you can literally start the entire dinner party about an hour and a half before people come and still have time to shower, change and relax with a glass of wine before your guests arrive.

How we worked it -- he cooked the Cioppino -- which is unbelievably easy -- while I set the table, made the salad, and prepped the bread. I made the Tiramisu ahead of time only because it's better when it soaks in but if you start two hours ahead you can even make Tiramisu too because it literally takes about 20 minutes to put a Tiramisu together.

I have to admit we have done this same menu twice in the last week. Last night we made it for a friend who is recovering from the flu (he's not really sick, just still congested) and this soup just has a way of feeling soothing and nurturing, let alone scrumptious for the soul!

Menu: Salad (I used butter lettuce, arugula, chopped mushrooms, thinly sliced cucumber, toasted parmesan almonds, shaved parmesan, lemon, olive oil, salt, pepper), Big warm crusty bread (that I sliced in big hunks, put butter in between slices, rubbed olive oil on the outside, and baked for about 10 minutes to melt all the buttery oil juiciness in) and Cioppino. Nice red wine, ice water with lemon...and I put a big hunk of lemon on the plate under the bowl so people could squeeze their own lemon on top of the soup.

This is not only an elegant meal -- for eating soup after all -- but all the various seafood textures and tastes make it so rich and nearly decadent. It is a celebration unto itself.

Perfect holiday fare ...but also perfect for any winter celebration -- even for two!

Buon Appetito!!!