A new look at cooking and home decorating...with an attempt to add more greens to the plate, more vegetarian options & hopefully lots of new ideas to explore

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Christmas menu

For the past week or so I have been fussing over a Christmas menu. Every year in early December I make the menu for Christmas day and then, by Christmas, the food selection has changed three or four times at least. The problem is that I want to make everything.

My obsessing over food selections is usually accompanied by the obvious unnecessary purchases of new cookbooks for my collection. Obviously unnecessary, because if you have ever tried to sit on the couch in my living room you know you need to push several cookbooks out of the way to find your seat. Every other spare spot in our house has also been filled by cookbooks. Yet, every December I feel the need to buy more.

Early this morning I woke up, sliced leeks to sweat, reduced a bottle of wine, and wrapped Chilean sea bas in paper thin potato slices which had been dipped in butter that I clarified. This afternoon I might make cake. Yesterday before 8 am I sliced up and packaged mis en place to bring to a friends house to make risotto. So, for me the problem with Christmas is not that I can’t cook, but rather, I love to cook and make way too much food.

This year I have sworn to keep it simple

To start- Pate, cheese selection, crackers, olives, Tapinade, a few hot passed
Hors D’Oeurve (I am thinking Italian rice balls and shrimp and basil wontons)

Once seated-
Cup of soup (sometimes I make tortellini en brodo and skip the pasta, otherwise a light soup in a small cup is a nice start to the meal)

Pasta- I make my own, from my grandmother’s recipe Tortellini or Ravioli

Main course- Roast prime rib, mine is no different than anyone else’s. I will make a nice Duxelles mushroom sauce with demi glaze for the prime rib and serve it with Yorkshire pudding or popovers, perhaps a cauliflower gratin and steamed asparagus.

Dessert- I bought some gelato from Ciao Bella, I might make crème brulee or a Yule log, and might also serve a fruit tart.

You now have my very precise Christmas menu, until I decide to change it about an hour from now.

Oh, I forgot smoked salmon and shrimp cocktail for appetizers. And Christmas cookies....

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