Work has been so crazy lately, that I am usually just trying to get through the week, and rarely have time to actually make weekend plans in advance. I get to friday afternoon, and i think "what am i doing this weekend???" ...and lately, its been "i have absoluately no plans. what can i do? who is around?" so this past week, maybe thursday evening, i was catching up on my cooking magazines, and i thought, why not have a dinner party this weekend? invited emily, bryan, and tanya, and set the plan in motion! particularly exciting as it was the debut of my new dishes, my new serving dishes, and use of some of my new cooking implements.
My menu was in part dictated by the CSA share this week. what could I make to really take advantage of the lovely things that I got in my share? Well, to start, i decided to make a parsnip soup. it has parsnip, potato, and apple, all from my CSA, and then leeks, which i purchased at whole foods (and chicken broth, and cream, and butter, but shhh). it turned out pretty good! as a garnish, because i had some frying oil left, and love playing with my mandoline, i sliced up a potato and an apple, and made chips! yes, i deep-fried thin slices of potato and apple (you can see them in the white cups in the picture above) - and they were pretty tasty! some didnt crisp up quite the way i wanted, because the oil didnt fully dry off, but they were still great, and not soggy.
course #2 was the salad course. this one i really really liked, actually. so this week in the CSA we got celeriac, something i don't think i have ever actually had. but i was very excited about it - originally thought i would make a gratin with it (and i have extra so i might tomorrow night!) but i kept reading about how good it is raw, and i remembered seeing giada making a cold salad with it on the food network over christmas. now, i hate giada. i think she is annoying and smiles too much. so fake. BUT i was intrigued by the idea of a celeriac salad. so, i sliced it up with my mandoline (yes, i'm obsessed with it, it is one of the most amazing gifts ever!!) and then julienned with my trusty green santoku knife, and then did the same with a nice crisp green apple (whole foods, because while i did get apples in the CSA share this week, i really wanted to use a granny smith for the salad for the flavor). i then did the same with a bit of fennel...now this one i was a bit hesitant about, because i don't know how much i like fennel, so i only used half a fennel bulb...and it actually worked quite well! mixed it all together with a dijon vinaigrette, and had a great little matchstick salad that was nice and refreshing!
Okay. now we move on to the main course. So, i am always looking into cooking what i call "real food" which really means that i like trying to cook meat. i eat like a vegetarian half the time, mostly because i don't really know how to cook meat for 1 person in a normal weeknight dinner. so its great when i have people for dinner, because i can cook meat and not have to worry about having so much leftover i wont be able to finish it in time. so while flipping through one of my recent bon appetit magazines, i found a recipe for pork with pears and shallots. now, the recipe claimed to be for a week night meal, only taking 35 minutes to prepare, so i almost didnt want to do it for this weekend because i didn't want to do something so "simple" but the recipe looked so so tasty so i went with it anyway. involves browning the pork and cooking the shallots, then throwing the pork in the oven while browning some pears. i of course worried about whether the pork cooked through, and was paranoid about how well my meat thermometer was working, and ran to borrow my neighbor's, but both thermometers told me the meat was done, and so phew. i didn't kill us.
it was pretty damn tasty. Em and Bryan were late, and the sauce had thickened so much, that I ended up making some extra, thinner sauce, to add on top, and i think that added to it nicely. and of course i am always paranoid about having enough food for people (even though you'll note that we're on the 3rd course right now) so i needed a side dish! a simple green beans with carmelized (or way way overdone) shallots (sensing a theme yet?) which was also tasty.
For dessert, I went with another recipe from the bon appetit magazine. I'd originally been thinking of trying to make these chocolate souffles - the magazine claimed that its not actually that hard, and they will come out perfectly, but i just didn't trust them because you have to serve them warm and i didnt want to have to put them in the oven during dinner considering my dining room is my kitchen. so, maybe next time. this time, i went with this simple chocolate nut tart with dried fruit...that was actually really good. it is really really simple, but tastes really good. like, really really good. pieces of yummy dried fruit covered in chocolate good.
and a slice, so you can see inside:
we ended the night with some of bryan and em's most recent brew, entropy - i don't know how they made it, some special process, but it tastes like a dessert wine, or a port, instead of a beer! it was absolutely delicious though. I was surprised how much i liked it, because i tend to not like the sweeter dessert beverages...but this was just absolutely amazing. mmm. cannot wait until they are marketing their brews!
a successful night!
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