This year is an uber special one, well for many reasons, but my BFFs and Brady's girlfriend just moved out here so it was our first Christmas together in four years. Alana, their little girl, just turned 3 and she is a whole lot of fun.... being that they were in their new pad and how busy they are still settling I wanted to do something really yummy and hopefully memorable so I embarked on a 5 - 6 course Christmas Eve menu which actually turned out to be YUMMYLICIOUS. Some of these things I'd never attempted before and some I test drove just days before without perfecting, but it's all about
learning.Tanja had dressed the table beautifully and Michael decided to break out some of the wines he'd purchased the week before in our outing to the Russian River valley, so it was great because we had a amazing wine pairings for our dishes.
We started off with my paté mousse which I made at Michael's request, he liked it when he first had it and mentioned it some days before, it is quite yummy so why not! Paul and Aaron also participated in our dinner experience which made it just that much more fun.
Our first official course was the sage stuffed shrimp wrapped in bacon, these went so fast there is no photo. But I was very surprised that the sage was in no way overpowering. It's a very simple dish but quite tasty; then again it was wrapped in bacon so how can you go wrong. That was followed by our second course which was a simple purple potato soup, served in tall shot glasses. It was yummy and something I'd made before so I felt confident at least one thing would work out well
Our third course was a spinach salad with roasted pine nuts and an orange vinaigrette topped with duck confit. Mind you this was my first attempt at Duck Confit but WOW it was amazing. Cooking takes like 3 hours and the irony is you render all the duck fat simply to cook the duck in the same fat all over again, weirdest thing EVER!!!!
Third we had swisss basil pappardelle pasta with a sausage, mushroom and thyme situation. This was my first time working with this kind of pasta and since I seldom eat pasta (carbs) I was like hooked on phonics!!!! YUMMY.
Fourth course was awesome. I made a take on Osso bucco using turkey legs which makes it less heavy but wow the flavours were all spot on. Again a dish I'd never actually tried before but it was awesome. Served this over
cauliflower mash with roasted carrots in a sage butter sauce. These carrots by the way are so easy, but completely rock out any dish as a side... they are amazing!Lastly was dessert, and I am SOOOO not a dessert guy, but I'd tested out choux pastry some days prior. I'd been wanting to make croquembouche for some time and I though I could sort of add a Christmas twist to it. Let me say this is a DANGEROUS dessert. Working with hot caramel is not fun and
caramel stays REALLY hot for a long time, literally hurts more than a grease burn. It's sick.... the results however are divine!!!!So I decided to stuff the choux with 2 sauces one a simple rasberry & cranberry reduction the other I added some whipped cram cheese to mellow it out so there were two different types of choux in the Croquembouche.
The wines we had were from C. Donatiello winery, we had the Christie Chardonnay which is probably the most amazing Chardonnay on earth and the Floodgate Block 15 Pinot Noir... OMG absolutely off the charts!!!!!
As if we didn't have enough Tanja made this other dessert which I'll get the name of in a bit, but it was this like almond cake thing that was basically crack, it was so amazingly addictive and delicious that I could have eaten a whole pan.
We were blessed to be able to enjoy so much great food and I was grateful to partake in the experience with such great friends as well as Brady & Tascha & Quinn.... it really was a Merry Christmas.
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