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appetizer: quince paste I made a while ago, with possibly nut candy to go with if I can promise cross my heart and hope to die that I won't eat it all before we get there.
dinner: romanesco trees (slice florets vertically, steam lightly, marinate)
some pickled veggies I have in the fridge, arranged as garnish
cabbage rolls stuffed with pumpkin, pumpkin seed (somehow I think eating pumpkin flesh and pumpkin seed at the same meal is probably treyf to the ultra-orthodox: anybody know?), drained and sieved cottage cheese (on principle, thank you, and not because I'm not cool enough for ricotta), caramelized red onion and shallot, freesh sage, assorted dried herbs, and of course a wee bit of tapatio, cooked in tomato sauce made with oregano and cinnamon the way certain greek recipes do it
probably some carrots sliced to look like trees too, to try to tempt that one niece whose only vegetable is carrot and then not always (she is a grown woman, but why shouldn't I try to seduce her to the world of yummy vegetables?)
My brother in law makes a ton of meat things, so I don't.
dessert: probably nothing. There's always too much dessert. And the appetizer I'm bringing is pretty sweet anyway.
I've parboiled and separated the cabbage leaves and made the filling. I may decide to put more flavor things into the filling. I believe I parboiled the leaves a bit too long, but not so long that the project is impossible. If they won't do the trick, I'll make a lasagne-shaped casserole instead.
Someday when I am really feeling grand I'll make a dinner for somebody, which will feature Svickova, Chartreuse, and mushroom dumplins in yellow beet clear borscht (I made that last thing once and it was heaven). Svickova, as my constan readers will remember, is a Czech dish involving marinating a hunk of beef with root vegetables, roasting them together, and then pureeing the vegies into a smooth velvety earthy almost-sweet sauce which you may or may not enrich with cream. I have been playing with this method and it kept coming out way too sour, even as I cut the vinegar to a smaller and smaller proportion of the recipe I had. Then I went online. I found recipes posted in North America and recipes posted in Prague. The ones posted in the US or Canada had the vinegar measured in cups or fractions of a cup. The ones posted in Prague had a couple of tablespoons of vinegar. So now I know the secret to good Svickova: less vinegar!
As to the chartreuse, I have a recipe that involves layer after layer of mashed things in a reconstructed head of savoy cabbage: rather like those layers of color we used to uncover in the candy called jawbreakers. I imagine they still make those, sadly. Anyway, when I wanted to link to the recipe, I found that none of the recipes online, including the ones from sites about Thomas Jefferson, whose recipe it is supposed to be, had that form, and none of them had ground meats in the layers either. Instead the vegetables were variuously mashed and whole and were arranged decoratively in a charlotte mold, held together by mashed potatoes and cream. I can't figure out which is the more attractive starting point, actually.
The point is that usually I don't make fancy pants food, just kind of eccentric food, and someday I want to make a large festive meal of all fancy pants, all obscure food that appeals to me.
That's the sort of thing I would do more often back when I had the nice fellow around to egg me on.
dinner: romanesco trees (slice florets vertically, steam lightly, marinate)
some pickled veggies I have in the fridge, arranged as garnish
cabbage rolls stuffed with pumpkin, pumpkin seed (somehow I think eating pumpkin flesh and pumpkin seed at the same meal is probably treyf to the ultra-orthodox: anybody know?), drained and sieved cottage cheese (on principle, thank you, and not because I'm not cool enough for ricotta), caramelized red onion and shallot, freesh sage, assorted dried herbs, and of course a wee bit of tapatio, cooked in tomato sauce made with oregano and cinnamon the way certain greek recipes do it
probably some carrots sliced to look like trees too, to try to tempt that one niece whose only vegetable is carrot and then not always (she is a grown woman, but why shouldn't I try to seduce her to the world of yummy vegetables?)
My brother in law makes a ton of meat things, so I don't.
dessert: probably nothing. There's always too much dessert. And the appetizer I'm bringing is pretty sweet anyway.
I've parboiled and separated the cabbage leaves and made the filling. I may decide to put more flavor things into the filling. I believe I parboiled the leaves a bit too long, but not so long that the project is impossible. If they won't do the trick, I'll make a lasagne-shaped casserole instead.
Someday when I am really feeling grand I'll make a dinner for somebody, which will feature Svickova, Chartreuse, and mushroom dumplins in yellow beet clear borscht (I made that last thing once and it was heaven). Svickova, as my constan readers will remember, is a Czech dish involving marinating a hunk of beef with root vegetables, roasting them together, and then pureeing the vegies into a smooth velvety earthy almost-sweet sauce which you may or may not enrich with cream. I have been playing with this method and it kept coming out way too sour, even as I cut the vinegar to a smaller and smaller proportion of the recipe I had. Then I went online. I found recipes posted in North America and recipes posted in Prague. The ones posted in the US or Canada had the vinegar measured in cups or fractions of a cup. The ones posted in Prague had a couple of tablespoons of vinegar. So now I know the secret to good Svickova: less vinegar!
As to the chartreuse, I have a recipe that involves layer after layer of mashed things in a reconstructed head of savoy cabbage: rather like those layers of color we used to uncover in the candy called jawbreakers. I imagine they still make those, sadly. Anyway, when I wanted to link to the recipe, I found that none of the recipes online, including the ones from sites about Thomas Jefferson, whose recipe it is supposed to be, had that form, and none of them had ground meats in the layers either. Instead the vegetables were variuously mashed and whole and were arranged decoratively in a charlotte mold, held together by mashed potatoes and cream. I can't figure out which is the more attractive starting point, actually.
The point is that usually I don't make fancy pants food, just kind of eccentric food, and someday I want to make a large festive meal of all fancy pants, all obscure food that appeals to me.
That's the sort of thing I would do more often back when I had the nice fellow around to egg me on.
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