Shrimp & Spinach Risotto

• 1/2 C Dry White wine (or broth or water or whatever)
• 1/2 C Water
• 1 Bay leaf
• 12 oz Shrimp in shell, cooked, liquid reserved
• 2 T Olive Oil
• 1/4 C Shallots, minced
• 1 small clove Garlic, minced
• 1 bag pre-washed baby Spinach
• 1 C Arborio rice
• Chicken stock - enough to make 3 C liquid when added to shrimp stock

Bring wine, water and bay leaf to boil, add shrimp, cook until done. Reserve liquid and shell shrimp. Turn on rice cooker and heat olive oil - add shallots and garlic, cook until soft. Add rice and toss in oil to coat, cook for a few minutes until rice has white spot at center. Add spinach and toss for a few minutes to take the raw edge off, add stock and close lid. Stir several times, when rice cooker switches to Keep Warm, add shrimp and stir to combine.

Crab Cakes

Scott and I were sitting around on Wednesday night and our thoughts, for whatever reason, turned to crab cakes. We decided that crab cakes cooked in a Madeleine pan, if they had that same crispy bottom, would be amazing. I surprised him with a test batch on Thursday night and plan to make them Friday for Xmas Eve dinner! The test batch involved panko and lacked shallots - I think these will be even better, but the test batch was good, too!

Preheat oven to 350

• 2 T olive oil
• 1 minced shallot
• 2 chopped scallions, reserve greens

Heat oil and saute the shallots and scallion whites until soft. Then add them to a bowl along with:

• 2- 6 oz cans of crab, drained
• 1-2 eggs
• 1-2 T mayo (probably on the lower end of that measure)
• 1 t dry mustard (maybe go heavier)
• 1 sleeve of Ritz (use your judgment)
• 1/2 t cayenne (maybe go lighter)
• 1 t garlic powder
  
• Worcestershire sauce - a few spashes
• salt and pepper to taste

Refrigerate this mix until well chilled

Butter and flour a Madeleine pan as if to make Madeleines, drop the crab mix into the molds and shape lightly, don't pack.

Bake 20 - 25 minutes

Tilapia with butter, parsley and crackers

Preheat oven to 425

Rinse Tilapia fillets and coat lightly with oil, sea salt and pepper. Sprinkle on fresh chopped parsley and crumble crackers (Ritz) on top of each fillet, top with little pats of butter. Oven for 10-15 minutes.

Christmas Eve Dinner 2010

• Vidalia & Swiss Quiche
• Crab Cakes
• Cheddar and Monterey Jack with crackers
• Roasted Asparagus
• Roast Sweet Potatoes
• Baby Carrots
• Shrimp and Spinach Risotto
• Tilapia with butter, parsley and crackers
  

An explanation to anyone who might stumble upon this post ...

I live in a small apartment with a small kitchen, but I love to cook for a crowd and I love to cook big. Sounds impossible, but it's not even hard if you plan for it. I have been teased that storming the beaches of Normandy involved less detailed planning, but the mocking ends when an overwhelming amount of food arrives on the table at the same time, perfectly cooked and hot. I admit, I am thorough ... I kiss the line between thorough and ridiculous, but it's worth it. This blog post is actually an innovation to my system - in years past I have written the recipes on post-it notes and slapped them on my cabinets, but this year I am linking to all of the recipes in one post instead. (Who am I kidding? I am so Type A when it comes to my kitchen ... and, strangely, only when it comes to my kitchen ... that I will probably have the recipes slapped on the cabinets anyway.) But cooking is the least of the process of pulling off a holiday dinner - like an iceberg, 90% is behind the scenes and if you don't pay it proper heed, it will sink you.

Step One: Menu planning.

Decide on appetizers, main course and desert NOW. Make changes only when necessary and/or well considered. Do not try a recipe for the first time - this means have a test run or save it for another night. The less changes you make, the less improvising and rushing and stressing you do, the more you can actually enjoy cooking and actually visit with your guests. Make a list of EVERYTHING you need to cook the meal. Poke through your pantry to see what you already have. Create a shopping list divided between things that must be purchased at the last minute (fish, touchy vegetables, things you will eat if you have hanging around, etc.) and things you can buy well in advance. Especially around the holidays, you will want to do the bulk of your shopping well in advance - yesterday, on Xmas Eve EVE the store was a madhouse and it took me nearly 40 minutes to escape with 6 tilapia fillets, 1 lemon, 2 limes, 1 bunch of asparagus and 1 bunch of parsley. And I almost had to stab someone. Imagine if I had to navigate a cart through that, if i had to be buying soda and juice and sweet potatoes and all of the other heavy and bulky things that make up a holiday meal. I would generate an impressive body count and never get to use my hard won ingredients because I would be in jail awaiting trial. I know myself well enough to know that I have no business in a grocery store today. Think of the liquor store, too - buy that ahead of time and save yourself the agony of yet another long line full of rushing, cranky people and overworked retail staff.

Step Two: Timeline & Dress Rehearsal

Okay, sounds really Type A, but hear me out ... if you do all the thinking NOW, you don't have to do any later - you can enjoy your guests AND create a great meal.

Consider cooking methods and temperatures. This is a huge pitfall that you can easily avoid - if you are cooking 2 things that require vastly different temperatures, you need to either rethink your plan or find a way of working around it - this is not the kind of surprise you want to face when your guests are imminent or already on the scene! Here's another one ... will everything fit where it needs to go when it needs to go there? If you have 6 things that have to be in the oven at the same time ... will they all FIT at the same time? Did you plan to use the large sautee pan and the large stock pot at the same time forgetting you have only 1 large burner and that since they are huge and your apartment stove is tiny, like the Highlander, there can only be one?

Sometimes you can make small changes to temperatures and cook times so that things can cook together - try not to move up or down more than 25 degrees if you can help it, keep in mind that moist things get dry the longer they are left in the oven (so lowering the temp and lengthening the cook time might not work) and vice versa - just really think about it before you make the change - sometimes it is not worth it.

Consider serving dishes and table settings - cut out as much of the fuss and last minute scramble as you can. It's easier and it makes you look like a Zen Kitchen God/dess ... you are just waltzing around, relaxing, perhaps tossing something into the oven or giving a pot a stir, sipping on some wine and then BAM! Dinner is served, it looks like a spread from a magazine, it's served on a freshly pressed table cloth with creatively folded napkins, using the good china!

Prep ahead. If it can be done early without sacrificing something in the dish, DO IT. And do it as soon as you can - I caramelized my onions yesterday and now I don't have to worry about messing with them today!

Seriously, write down a timeline. WRITE IT. Then you can set a timer, when it goes off you look at your list, it tells you what to do, you do it, reset the timer and then you get to go back to the party. Maximum relaxing without sacrificing a thing in the kitchen. Just sit down with the recipes and take a realistic look at the timing and prep requirements for each. Once you have that figured out, work backwards to figure our when each one needs to start in order for them tio finish at the same time. Here is my timeline. I am serving food in two waves - Scott can't make it until a bit later, so I want to delay dinner to give him time to get here in a leisurely manner. My mom has said that she, my dad and sibs will arrive "around 6ish" which could mean anywhere from 5:45 to 6:45. I will split the difference and count them for a 6:30 arrival and that is when I want the first wave to come out of the oven. So, my timeline begins at 5:30

• 5:30pm - Preheat oven to 375 and prep quiche
• 5:45pm - put quiche in oven, butter and flour the Madeleine molds and put the crab cake mixture into them
• 6:10pm - put crab cakes into the oven, arrange the cheese and cracker platter
• 6:30pm - everything out of the oven - serve.

And I am thinking that 8pm might be a good time for dinner to be served - the first wave is fairly substantial, give people a chance to get hungry enough to eat dinner, have a drink and relax.

• 7:00pm - cut and season sweet potatoes, snap and season the asparagus
• 7:15pm - preheat oven to 450, arrange the sweet potatoes on parchment and baking sheet, start risotto
• 7:30pm - sweet potatoes go into the oven, arrange asparagus on parchment and sheet, put carrots in pot with 1/2" water covering, start prepping fish
• 7:45pm - asparagus goes into the oven, put carrots on to boil, flip sweet potatoes, finish fish prep
• 7:50pm - fish goes into the oven, tend to carrots
• 8:00pm - everything out of the oven and off the stove - serve.
  

Step Three: Doing It

Wear something comfortable, if you have long hair, keep a clip nearby, make sure you have plenty of kitchen linens ready to go. Set the table, do your prep work. Do any cleaning or straightening that you need to. Do everything that is NOT on your timeline. Then check the time - the difference between the time it is now and the time your timeline starts is yours to do with as you please. Nap. Watch TV. Get drunk. It's up to you! You actually feel refreshed and ready to visit instead of harried and hoping your guests are running late, looking forward to when they all leave so you can collapse, exhausted.

Caramelized Onions

• Enough onions to mostly fill a crock pot
• Olive oil, bacon fat, whatever you have - no more than 2 T, and it's almost optional
• optional but nice - salt, pepper, herbs (I like Thyme - goes well in Vidalia & Swiss quiche)

Slice onions thin and add to crock pot - mix well with oil/fat and seasonings. Cover and let it go on low for up to 24 hours or on high for as few as 4-5. Crock pots tell you never to lift the lid and stir - I disagree. Don't do it often, but if you don't check on these occasionally, they may start to burn around the edges. When they are done, I like to let them drain through a fine meshed sieve and cool a bit before refrigerating.

Vidalia & Swiss Quiche

• 8oz Gruyere (or other Swiss Cheese ... or even a white cheddar is nice)
• Caramelized Vidalia (or other sweet or mild) onions - 2 medium or 1 large
• 6 eggs
• splash of milk - less than 1/4 C - just enough to help the eggs get fluffy
• salt and pepper to taste
• (optional) diced ham or bacon (delicious, but quiche is great without them, too.)
• pie crust - I use pre-made. I can't be bothered to make my own.

Preheat oven to 375. Set up pie crust in deep pie plate - I don't bother blind baking or poking with a fork - can't be bothered. (Though I get better results using dark metal or earthenware pie plates.) Pile onions and cheese into pie crust (and anything else you may be adding to the quiche.) Beat the eggs with the milk and salt and pepper to taste (I like 7 grinds off a pepper mill and a healthy pinch of kosher salt) then pour over cheese and onions. I use my hands to kind of mix and combine it, then smooth it evenly in the dish. Into the oven for 45 minutes. When cooking more than one at a time, mix the egg filling separately so you don't over fill or under fill. If it seems really full, put a baking sheet or foil beneath it to catch any overflow. You can cut back on the onions and use an extra egg to get a more eggy quiche, but the Vidalia are kind of the point of this quiche.

Baby Carrots

Put baby carrots into a pot and cover with water by 1/2" - bring to a boil over high heat, then drop to medium. Simmer until fork tender (3-6 minutes). Drain, return to cooking pot and add a few pats of butter to melt - you can also add fresh parsley or other herbs - toss to combine.

Creme Brulee

1 C Heavy Ceream
2 T Sugar, and
1/3 C Sugar
2 X-large or Jumbo egg yolks
1/2 t vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 300 and prepare boiling water.

In a saucepan over medium heat, combine cream and 2 T sugar. Cook, stirring occasionally, until small bubbles appear around edges of pan (5-6 minutes.) Set aside.

In a bowl, beat egg yolks and vanilla until smooth and light. Pour hot cream mixture into egg yolk mixture (by tempering - very little at a time to prevent the eggs from scrambling!) Beat CONTINUOUSLY until well blended. Strain mixture through a fine sieve into a bowl. Divide mixture between 4- 4oz ramekins.

Arrange ramekins in a baking pan and place on middle rack of preheated oven. Fill pan with boiling water to halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Cover pan loosely with aluminum foil. Bake until custard is just set, about 25 minutes. Chill 2-3 hours.

Sprinkle remaining sugar evenly on top of the cooled custards. Move kitchen torch continuously over the surface of the ramekins in a circular motion until sugar melts and becomes golden brown and bubbly. Serve immediately.

Fresh Pasta

A day of pasta making with Scott and Fred has been planned for this Saturday! I have never made fresh pasta without my mom or grandmother, I know Scott has made it, but not in a while and Fred has never made fresh pasta (but I am counting on him to be the sauce guru!) So I am collecting some web resources here so I am not scrambling for them on Saturday!

Pasta Tips
Well reviewed pasta recipe (but most users have subbed in at least some semolina and/or bread flour and replaced 1 T of H2O with Olive Oil and noted that it must rest before rolling!)
Whole Wheat pasta
Ravioli dough (with pictures!)

Smoked Salmon Ravioli
Mushroom & Spinach Ravioli
Lobster Ravioli with Crabmeat Cream Sauce
Shrimp & Lobster Ravioli
A Whole Blog Dedicated to Lobster Ravioli (for real!)
Roast Butternut Squash Ravioli
Easy Butternut Squash Ravioli


Vodka Sauce