Thursday, January 5, 2012

Cheers to 2012!

Well, considering it's January 5th, I think it's high time for a New Year's update, no?

If you know me in real life, you know that I refuse to go out on New Year's Eve.  It all started my freshman year of college, when my favorite pair of sweatpants MYSTERIOUSLY disappeared at a house party. If there's one thing this girl can't bear parting with, it's a good pair of sweatpants. Then, I became an adult and moved to New York City, where I was forced to pay $100 bucks to feel like a sardine packed in a tiny bar, fighting with gelled-up dudes from Jersey to get a bud light from the testy bartender. Who needs that? Not me.

Anyway, this year, like every year, I stayed in with some friends and we cooked a fancy dinner.  My chef friend took the reins on most of the meal (we'll it was say 65-35), but I'm going to post photos of his stuff anyway, because it's so pretty.  Call me if you want him to cater your next dinner party. No, really. He does that in real life.

Check out below for 5.5 courses of 2012 bliss. Also, these are some terrible iPhone photos. Maybe my new year's resolution should be to buy a new camera.

First, we started with a very classy cocktail hour, complete with gougeres (aka are cheese puffs),

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oysters, and champagne.  I'll spare you a close up of the oysters, because I think they look like boogers. You can see them in the background, though.

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The only thing I love more than champagne is pink champagne.

I made the first course, which was a spinach salad with bacon, mushrooms, and a warm vinaigrette.

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Boring but delicious. Then, Chef Geoff made the next course (with apologies to the French Laundry cookbook), a truffle custard with a parmesan chip.

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The restaurant serves these in egg shells, which is sort of absurd. We did ok with the little ramekins. Those parmesan chips are amazing. It's a chip made of burnt cheese… also known as THE CHIP OF MY DREAMS.

 

Our fish course (also made by CG), was quite beautiful. Pan-fried grouper over a bed of swiss chard (hey! I chopped that! I helped with something.) and delicious grits. The garnish is morel mushrooms and brown butter crumbs.

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Um… does anyone recognize my plates from that Corel commercial where the models are throwing them to prove that they are unbreakable? Yeah. Thought so.

 

Next, for the meat course (CG, again) we had osso buco with a  delicious demi glace served over saffron risotto and topped with a little bit of gremolata.

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And finally, a VERY molten chocolate cake with cinnamon ice cream and bourbon caramel sauce. These were a minor fail because they sort of fell apart, but they tasted really delicious and I managed to de-uglify them with ice cream. I blame the five bottles of wine consumed before I plated the cakes.

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All in all, it was a SUPER CLASSY new year, just how I like it.

I'm working on a list of resolutions as we speak. I can say for sure that two things are on there: 1. Become the Julia Childs of Asian cooking (this one should take some work) and 2. Adhere to a more regular blogging schedule.

 



2 comments:

  1. Clearly I was in the wrong place on NYE!!

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  2. That all looks great! Now I understand why Doug said he was stuffed with food on NYE. BTW, I'm Doug's sister, Margaret, and I also like baking/cooking with a special emphasis on desserts. :)

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