Holiday Party- Egg Nog, Toffee, and Bruschetta

 

This past weekend I had a party for a group of friends here in Tokyo. It was a pot luck of drinks and snacks, and I provided egg nog, toffee, and bruschetta.

Egg nog is a holiday tradition in my family, but something that is not commercially available in Japan, so I decided to make it myself. It wasn't too difficult, but the beating of the eggs would definitely have been easier with a stand mixer. I started with 8 yolks, which I beat until they turned a lighter color of yellow. I then added about half a cup of sugar and mixed for a while longer. Add 2 cups of cream, 1000 milliliters of milk, and stir some more.

 

 

Then comes the good part- an entire bottle of whiskey. Our tradition is Southern Comfort, and many people use bourbon, but I went with the resources at hand.

 

 

Two tablespoons of nutmeg.

 

 

And the final step, beating 8 egg whites until they form stiff peaks, and then add another half cup of sugar. The egg nog was creamy and smooth, and the whiskey was hidden beneath all of the layers of dairy and spice. I will definitely be making another, though smaller, batch before Christmas.

 

 

I wanted to provide some sweets, but my tiny microwave-convection oven doesn't really lend itself to baking cookies. I went with a homemade toffee topped with chocolate- one batch with peanuts, one without. Toffee is just butter, sugar, salt, and water, so it is quite simple to prepare in the microwave, then pouring out onto a sheet of foil to harden. Melt some chocolate and pour on the top, and there it is. 

 

 

And finally, something savory- bruschetta. Something I realized in brainstorming appetizers is that so many holiday appetizers that we make in the US have cheese in them, something that is quite expensive and hard to come by here in Japan. I opted for roasting tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and basil in the oven for about an hour, until the tomatoes were roasted enough to crush easily into the olive oil. Mix it all together and it's an easy bruschetta or pasta sauce. 

Hope your holiday parties are full of joy and warmth this season!

 

Thanks

 Ah, Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday of all. A day of cooking and drinking, no commercialization, family and friends, and lots of food from scratch. We usually have a big to-do at our place, but this year we wanted to scale it back. We had seven adults, a toddler, and a baby, so a pretty easy meal.

One thing we did this year to mix it up was to skip our traditional Butternut Squash Ravioli. This is an amazing addition to the table, but making pasta, rolling out dough, cooking the filling (usually starting with roasting the squash), and making up tons of tiny ravioli can be very time consuming to say the least. With both of us swamped with work the weekend before the holiday and up to Wednesday evening, it felt overwhelming, so we skipped it this year. I'm thinking ravioli will make an appearance on our Christmas table instead.

What we had in place of ravioli was a tart, but a last minute one at that. I love tarts and went through a serious tart phase a few years ago, but I think my pâte brisée skills have improved since the mid-2000s. The tart and a bonus chocolate pie were actually the result of a baking error I made the night before Thanksgiving. In a rush to bake my pumpkin pie crust I didn't spend the time to seek out my pie weights, and tried to use dried couscous instead. Not a good idea....and I totally should have known better. The crust shrunk down without the proper weight, leaving not enough space for the pumpkin filling, and looked a bit funky around the edges. After a bit of sulking and panic late at night (the best pâte brisée takes a few hours of on and off refrigeration, even pre-chilling the flour) I decided to try the pumpkin pie again in the morning with a basic crust (meaning a lower flour-butter ratio). As a result I had two pâte brisée crusts that weren't beautiful to look at, but still tasted fantastic. Joe had the idea to make a chocolate pudding pie for the kiddo, a great and super easy solution. For the other crust, I decided to wing it with a tart. Tarts are kind of fussy, so this was a bold idea, but it worked out.

Alison's last minute rustic mushroom tart:

One pâte brisée shell (the internet has a million versions, none of which I used, but this one is interesting)

16 oz mushrooms, I used half baby portabellas and half button

1 large shallot
2 cloves garlic
1 egg
Heavy cream- about 1/4 cup- I winged it on this one too
1/8 cup grated Parmesan (or so, again, I used up what I had)
Generous amount of thyme, dash of basil, dash of oregano
Fresh ground salt and pepper
Olive oil
Fresh parsley (about 2 tbsp)

Simple as can be- sautee the garlic and shallot in olive oil in a pan, add the mushrooms, sautee until they start to release their juices, adding a generous amount of thyme (maybe 1/2 a tsp), basil, oregano, salt and pepper. Cool. Add the mushroom mix to the prepared tart shell. Mix together the cream and beaten egg and pour into the shell. Top with cheese. Bake for about 20 minutes in a 350 degree oven. Top with parsley. Tart perfection!

 Other dishes at our table were our Spiced Cranberries, A standard stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, Joe's veggie gravy, roasted Brussels sprouts, and our favorite centerpiece, Tofu Roulade (from the Chicago Diner cookbook). We realized that we only had recipes for the roulade and the cranberries, everything else was invented (fun!).

 The croissants were brought by friends, and came from the always fantastic Wheatfields Bakery in Lawrence.

 There was a non-natural not-from-scratch addition to our table this year- cubes. As Joe and I were preparing for our meal, we were reminiscing about the holidays of our childhood. My Dad's family meals always included this bizarre better-living-through-chemistry-era concoction called cubes. Frozen cubes (literally from the ice cube tray) that consisted of canned fruit cocktail, Miracle Whip (I kid you not), and cream. They were usually served with dinner as a side, often next to the cranberries. As a child, these things freaked me out, but my Dad and his siblings loved them. I had never eaten one, but thought I'd wing it as a surprise, which was also part of my Thanksgiving morning grocery run (we do not stock fruit cocktail or Miracle Whip in our house). I guessed at the recipe (and didn't know about the cream, turns out the internet does not know about cubes), and they turned out not too bad. We added whipped cream once I learned about the cream part, which took off the bite of the Miracle Whip. My Dad ate about six of them (!), so I'm guessing they weren't too far from the originals, heehee.

I have so much to be thankful for this year, most of all being surrounded by such great friends and family and having such bounty in our lives. I hope you had a great holiday, and the leftovers are treating you well!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Halloween Hooplah

 This past weekend we had a small Halloween get-together complete with karaoke, pumpkin painting, snacks, and decorations. I think we had as much fun preparing for the party as we did with our friends- stringing lights and fake cobwebs, making up funny names for the snacks, finding the amazing goth tablecloth pictured above at Target. I recycled an old high school formal and dressed as a flapper, Joe was a Classified Document. Our guests included Mrs. Mia Wallace (a la Pulp Fiction), Tobias and Lindsay Funke (a la Arrested Development), Rosie the Riveter, and Minerva, as well as some non-costumed pals.

 The buffet included Waldo Witches Brew (white wine sangria punch), Mummies Toes (cheese puffs), Dried Bat Wings (preztel flats), Witches Fingers (dried peas), Troll Toenails (peppitas), and a Bloody Mary Bar, which included Vampire's Kiss (the Bloody Mary base), Frankenstein Fingers (celery sticks), Goblin's Eyeballs (olives), Cat's Tongue (peppers), and Owl's Brains (mini pickles).

 We also had Beware Brownies and Reese's Pieces. Some of the mini-pumpkins we painted are below. Happy Halloween!