Preview: Dinner to get whacked for!

Tomorrow, we cook a long overdue offering we made at Horizon's fall service auction.  (J was sick when we had it originally scheduled.)  Seven guests paid good money (to the church) to dine with us, so we need to live up to our side of the bargain.

The only thing I really haven't decided on yet is...a signature cocktail to serve, along with beer.  I'm thinking mojitos or maybe a subtly exotic margarita (prickly pear?), but still toying with other ideas as well.  Any suggestions?

The meal is built around Puerco (or Cochinita) Pibil, banana-leaf-wrapped pork braised in achiote paste, as featured in the Robert Rodriguez movie Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

• Cochinita Pibil (this link includes the recipe as well as the 10-miunute cooking school video; very funny but not rated G!)
• Salad of avocados & citrus (will be consulting Judy Rodgers on this, and plan to create a citrus-cilantro dressing)
• Fried platanos (plantains, the yummy soft ripe ones, a la comida Cubana)
• Buttery white rice
• Black beans
• Corn tortillas from the local mercado
• Aztec Chocolate Pudding with vanilla ice cream
• settled on Tequila Refrescas

P.S. No pictures of the food, but did snap the tablescape...

Blame it on the economy...and Twitter

Haven't posted for a month; gah! I never read anyone else's blog either, because I was reading blogs of folks I actually know (or at least have met a few times, except Pioneer Woman who's got a HUGE following, and A.McQ. but I feel like I've met her), and now I seem to spend my evening online time catching up on Twitter, and sometimes Facebook, or LinkedIn. And then I don't get around to any blogginess.

Work's been stressful, but the layoffs in our area are complete for the time being, so now I'm just back to working hard.

And I'm behind on menus! Rather than try to recreate the past month, I'll just go from this past Sunday, and try to stay more on top in the future. Last Sunday was one of our service auction offerings, so we had seven folks over for dinner - here's the description from the auction catalog:

Sunday dinner - Old School Guerrero-style, the way the Tias STILL do it. Start with a cocktail? Mojito? Margarita? Cuba Libre? Then get into it: Delicious rich chocolaty Chicken Mole, Arroz Mexicana, Frijoles, Guacamole, Home Made Flour Tortillas, Fresh tender Corn Tortillas from the tortilleria. Finish it off with hot coffee or "Chocolate Popular." To kick it up a notch how about Pastel Tres Leches for dessert? You've been looking a little thin, you need some hearty comida mexicana to build you up for the cold winter days. ¡Sabroso! ¡Hasta entonces!

The funny part is that this little gringa did most of the cooking (kudos to G-man for the cleaning and the homemade tortillas!), but, as the husband said I've "learned from the best!"

Wein-rerro Dinner

We polished off the last of our HUUC service auction offerings Saturday, with a wine & dine extravaganza co-hosted by the W's (although with Ms. W under the weather, it was just not as fun!)

• Alsatian Flammekueche (puff pastry tart with soft cheese, bacon & onion) - LUCIEN ALBRECHT WINERY, RIESLING, 'CUVEE HENRI' , 2004
• Chilled Green Pea Soup aux Fines Herbes Mousse - GROTTE DEL SOLE GRECO DI TUFO, VE NATO, 2006
• Poached Beef Tenderloin with Savory Sabayon & Wild Mushroom Saute, accompanied by Herb Potato Maxims and Julienned Vegetables - GROTH WINERY 2005 OAKVILLE CABERNET & RESONANCE WINERY WILLAMETTE VALLEY PINOT NOIR 2006
• Chocolate Dome - QUINTA DO VESUVIO 2001 PORT, PORTO, PORTUGAL

Mr. W outdid himself on the pairings (as always); I'm not sure I could pick a favorite if I had to! All the recipes except the beef & soup can be found in Julia Child: Cooking with Master Chefs, and the beef is from the 1996 edition of Cooking at the Academy, from the California Culinary Academy & KQED. (The soup was made up on a riff from How To Eat -- just frozen peas cooked with chicken stock, fresh basil and a pinch of curry, pureed, and chilled; whip some creme fraiche to stiff peaks, fold in some finely chopped herbs, and dollop on top.) We used the 120+ year old Limoges china, the silver plate, and four "stems" per person, all of which are lovely, but have to be hand washed. (In fact, 36+ pieces of glassware are still waiting for some tender loving care, although we did rinse out the red wines and port...)

Did manage to take a picture of the cake, but nothing else!

So Sunday night family dinner with Unca' Ron & Tia Elsa was take-out from First Chinese BBQ (hey, T-Rob -- I see there's a location in Austin!):

• barbecue roast pork
• young chow fried rice
• stir-fried rice noodle with curry
• crispy shrimp
• beef with snow peas
• broccoli chicken

We switched up and had frozen pasta tonight, but tomorrow will be leftovers by the yard -- have everything but the shrimp to eat a second time.

A Civilized Cocktail Hour

We hosted another one of our Horizon service auction offerings last night -- something about Summer Night Cocktails -- I'll have to find G-man's flowery description. It included:

• Maytag Blue Cheese & Crackers
• Crispy Green Beans & Carrot Chips
• Cantaloupe Slivers with Lime & Black Pepper
• Fig, Thyme & Gorgonzola Tartlets
• Warm Marinated Olives
• Crab Gazpacho Shots (from Central Market)
  
• Dry Jack Crisps
• Elderflower Sours
  
• Classic Gin & Tonics
• Martinis
  
• Cuba Libres
• Dark & Stormys
• Chocolate Stout Mini-Floats (yes, beer with ice cream - try it, you'll like it!)
  

It was a smallish (5 plus us) older crowd, but lively. J played his Lego Star Wars video game in our room; when I asked him if he was having fun, he said "Yes! Are you having fun talking?" What more can I say?

La Vida Cubana

We hosted one of our Horizon service auction dinners this evening.  Here's Gil's description from the auction catalog:

A Cuban feast!  Start off with a refreshing Mojito or a Cuba Libre.  The meal will feature our infamous 3-day Roast Pork!  We massage and pamper this pork roast for three days to make it extra succulent!  And no Cuban meal would be complete without buttery arroz (rice), frijoles negros (black beans), and platano (fried plantain).  How about a cool sweet-onion and vinegar salad to add a little crunch and counterpoint this rich meal.  And to ensure a foodgasm, we'll finish the meal off with a Pastel de Tres (maybe even Quatro) Leches (moist cake soaked in three different milks).  And of course, musica Latina!  Ciao!

My normal "menu" version with recipe links:

• Cuba Libres & Mojitos ('cept Gil makes 'em with simple syrup - mixes better than sugar)
• Avocado & Sweet Onion "Salad" (just slice them thinly and douse with white vinegar, fresh cracked pepper, and a dash of olive oil and salt -- makes us long for Versailles)
• Cuban-Style Grill Roasted Pork (still couldn't find skin-on shoulder roast, but this is the second time we've made it, and works out fine -- although I'm always too tired at the end to do anything about the Mojo Sauce and bought out the Goya Mojo Criollo again, garnished with some fresh slices of orange)
• Black Beans with Ham Hocks, Cilantro, and Lime
• Fluffy White Rice
• Fried Plantains (slice on the diagonal and fry in a few tablespoons of oil until well caramelized -- the black ones are ripest and my favorite, the less ripe ones are harder to peel and more starchy)
• Tres Leches Cake (we've made several of these over the years, and agreed that this was the best, most balanced recipe ever -- although we topped it with softly whipped cream with a touch of vanilla, run, and brown sugar rather than meringue and fruit)

*phew*  It was an eight-pound roast, and one of the three couples who won the bid couldn't make it, so needless to say, tomorrow's Sunday supper en famille is going to consist of a lot of delicious leftovers!

Gee, it's good to be back home again...

Saturday found us catering the Horizon Spring Service Auction, FIASCO. (That's the title, not the description.) The theme was Mardi Gras, and luckily, it was nibbles, not a meal. The hard part was getting folks to take an appetizer-sized serving of red beans & rice -- that ran out pretty early!

Horizon FIASCO MENU, Spring 2008 (included a number of improvised recipes)

• Red Beans & Rice (vegetarian, much to G-man's chagrin)
• Sliced Andouille Sausage (beef, pork, chicken, turkey)
• Merle’s Spinach Balls
• Blue Cheese (& Parmesan) Mystery Rolls (thanks, P-dub!)
• Pecan Crusted Goat Cheese Log
• Shrimp & Crab Spread
• Spiced Pecans
  
• Banana & Chocolate Moon Pies (Little Debbie Marshmallow Pies, to be precise, but close enough)
• Assorted Pepperidge Farms Cookies
• Hershey's Kisses in Dark Chocolate (purple wrappers) & Caramel (gold wrappers) -- all I needed was green for Mardi Gras...
  

So tonight, it was a simple supper with Ron as our only guest. Some of Nigella's "temple food" (as in, my body is a temple)...

• Hot & Sour Shrimp Soup
• Vietnamese Chicken Salad with Mint
• Julie's Organic Caramel Ice Cream with fresh strawberries for dessert (hey, a girl needs a little vice!)

(I also wrote a depressed diatribe last night that I meant as blog post, about how much I am not enjoying my early forties, but it's on my other computer. Besides, it's probably best not to wallow in writing that veers towards "Fabulous forties? More like fat, frazzled, and frumpy..." and goes on in a most self-pitying way from there. Perimenopause, what a joy!)

It's Always Five o'Clock Somewhere...

There will be no Sunday supper club, because we're going to jaunt over to the museum after church to see an exhibition of early Christian art. (Hmmm, who would have thought I would be saying such a thing?!)

Plus we held our final PASTA offering for the year this evening, La Hora de Cocteles con Los Guerreros. And a lovely cocktail hour (or three!) it was. Inspired by a feature (check out Elevated Basics and Extra-Credit Elements for recipes) in the now-defunct Blueprint magazine, it included:

• Elderflower Sours (and Gin & Bitter Lemon, and good ol' G&T, and even a couple of Dark & Stormys)
• Dry Jack Crisps (these worked much better than the Parmesan ones we did with the Caesar at Christmas)
• Fig, Thyme & Gorgonzola mini-Tarts
• Crunchy Garbanzos (the leftovers are destined to become hummus)
• Warm (Spiced) Olives, Almond Stuffed Olives, Hot & Spicy Pickled Green Beans, and Pickled Carrots
• Stephen Pyles' Sweet & Spicy Pecans (a perennial favorite)
• Crudites with White Bean Dip
• Dry cured Spanish Soria Chorizo & Aged Manchego with plain and toasted baguette
  
• Dark Chocolate Nestle's Crunch Eggs with Caramel (the chocolate selection at Target rocks, and the wrappers matched my decorating scheme of lavender, blue, and green!)
  

No time to lose -- we've got to figure out our offerings for the spring fundraiser FIASCO next. This cocktail party was so fun, I'm leaning towards another one, and Gil wants to do the three-day Cuban Roast Pork from Cook's Illustrated, and hopefully we'll rope the W's into another Wein-rrero wine & dine surprise. And I kinda wanted to do a white trash / Elvis thing, but I'm feeling so stuffed tonight after all the nibbling and imbibing that perhaps a more virtuous offering built around summer Thai beef salad or barbeque salmon would be a better choice.

Wein-rerro Wine & Dine Redux

We had our second co-hosted service auction dinner benefiting Horizon this past Saturday. We pondered how to top our August efforts, and decided it was going to have to involve beef this time. Not just any beef; how about a nice Chateaubriand?

Once again, Jen worked her hostess magic -- at our house this time! -- with decor and menus (and lovely pictures coming soon), Chuck outdid himself on the wine, and Gil and I shared the cooking honors.

Le menu --

• Bacon Wrapped Breadsticks & Pecorino Crackers with Lucien Albrecht brut Rose NV (a lively sparkler to start everything off in a festive way)
• Vichyssoise (from Anthony Bourdin's Les Halles Cookbook) with Tio Pepe Extra Dry Palomino Fino Sherry & Morgan Winery Chardonnay 2006 (your choice, or try 'em both!)
• Beef Wellington, Haricots Verts, Slow Roasted Tomatoes with magnums of Grgich Hills Cabernet 2004 and Groth Winery Cabernet 2004 (big and perfect)
  
• Almond Cake (from Amanda Hesser's Cooking for Mr. Latte, a wonderful collection of essays and recipes) & Cherries Jubilee sauce with Dr. Pauly-Bergweiler Bernkastler Badstube BA (mmmm.... oh. so. good.)
  

We even farmed out all the kids for the evening to a sitter at casa W, and a very good time was had by all!

I finally went to the doc to see if it's just been a rhinovirus or if I have Haemophilus influenzae which is bacterial, as opposed to "the" flu which is viral -- hmmm...

Turned out the G-Man had h. influenzae (he'd basically been sick off and on since Thanksgiving), and it was time to ascertain whether the lingering tiredness, mucosity, and intermittent sore throat I've entertained for more than two weeks was perhaps worthy of antibiotics as well.

So I spent two. hours. waiting. to. see. the. doctor.

Yes, that's right -- my appointment time was 11:15 and I finally saw her after 1:00 PM. And now I wait until the results of my throat culture come back, hopefully on Friday. We do like her, and partly because she does care enough to talk and listen to all her patients, and that was why she was so late (someone before me was apparently having personal as well as physical crisis), but I have to say it was a rather sizable chunk out of my day. And my productivity had already been shot by staying home the day before, when I slept for four hours (remember the lingering tiredness?)

However, what I really meant to post about was how much better this blog would be if I let G-Man do the Sunday supper club posts. We are hosting one of our PASTA (HUUC service auction) dinner offerings this Sunday, and here's how he described it in the auction catalog:

La Comida di mi Vida -- Guerrero Sunday dinner OLD STYLE, the way the Tias STILL make it.

• Pollo en Mole: tender steamed chicken smothered in rich spicy chocolate peanut sauce,
• Mexican rice redolent of cumin,
• hours simmered frijoles borrachos,
• home-made flour tortillas and salsa fresca.

Finish it off with

• Pan de Dulce (mexican sweet bread - real bread not that gringo pancreas/thymus stuff!) and
• a steaming mug of Chocolate Popular (can you say choh-koh-lah-teh poh-poo-lahr?) -- cinnamony mexican hot chocolate! And maybe a shot of Kahlua or Tequila liqueur?

The food of my youth!

Now isn't that a heck of a lot more appealing than my dinner menus?

Wein-rerro Dinner: The original

OK, for all those waiting impatiently (=none!), here's the menu and recipe links from our FIASCO dinner on Saturday night -- I pulled pictures from Jen's blog (and you'll see why she's a professional photographer!) and I'll be back with the details of the wonderful wines that Chuck paired with these later...

Spicy Glazed Shrimp
Summer Squash Tart with Kalamata Olives
Salt Crust Fish (our variation was halibut scented with lemon and fennel)
Shaved Fennel & Mushroom Salad (from Julia Child’s Cooking with Master Chefs)
Toasted Almond Panna Cotta with Saba (from Judy Rodger’s The Zuni Cookbook)

Jen's pix... The table



the tart

the salad


the fish...

FIASCO Dinner #2: L.A. (Food) Story

Gil got back from DBLE on Friday afternoon, and we went ahead with our FIASCO (HUUC service auction) dinner as planned on Sautrday. Had four and a half folks from Horizon -- Julian set up the kids' table for himself and our youngest guest -- plus Grammy and us.

The menu featured food from our Los Angeles days:

• Prosciutto & Parsley Pizzas
• Killer Shrimp with sourdough bread
• Wolfgang Puck's Chino Chopped Salad
• Chilled Lemon "Souffle"

A lovely time was had by all, with much flapping of gums and belts loosened all around...