Marga's Foodblog

Menu - Michaela's BD party - version 2 ( after initial round of shopping)

The menu hasn't changed much, with the exception of the salad (couldn't find arugula at Safeway yesterday, so I'm going with a mixed green salad).

Potato Chips
Tortilla chips
Baby Carrots
Steamed Broccoli
Baguettes

Guacamole
Salsa
Sour cream
Dip (storebought)
Cream Cheese

Mini P&J sandwiches

Provoletas on Bread

Chicken Satay
Tofu Satay
Beef Anticuchos
Mango Sausages
Grilled Portobello Mushrooms

Potato Salad
Mixed Green Salad with Gorgonzola Vinaigrette

Birthday Cake
Ice cream cake
Ice Cream

Sodas
Juices
Beer
White Wine

Though it hapenned over a month ago, I figure I should write about the great Bourguignone dinner that never was before I delete the menu from the "next on the menu" section and have it disappear forever.

I had invited my friends Alistair and Suzanna to dinner a week after I had Eddie & Arthur over for a Bermudian dinner. Sometimes I get overly ambitious which proves to be a mistake. I decided to skip on the other "B" cuisines and go directly to Burgundian because I wasn't confident on the recipes I had for the other cuisines. With only a week to prepare, I didn't have enough time to research enough to be confident that the Bolivian or Bhutanese menu I'd prepare be both enjoyable and manageable.

It was not as easy to come up with a Burgundian menu as I first thought. It was a given that I'd serve Beef Bourguignonne as a main dish, but finding appetizers was harder. I didn't want to repeat the same ingredients on different dishes, which meant no mushrooms in the appetizer and no cheese as I wanted to serve a cheese course. That finally didn't happen so I decided on some cheese pastries. Dessert was even more difficult, I couldn't find anything suitable save a bread pudding (Mike hates bread pudding) and decided to serve strawberries in wine as we were in strawberry season, though I wasn't very confident on them. I never could find any vegetables to serve.

The dinner didn't come out great. The store-bought pate de campagne was great (oh, how I'll miss pate for the next few months!), but I don't think Mike liked the eggs dijon style. I couldn't quite figure out how the Burgundian cheese pastries were supposed to be, but they sounded like empanadas so I used empanada shells, the cheese filling was OK but not as good as plain cheese.

The braised Boeuf Bourguignone should have been great, and it would have been if I hadn't let it run out of liquid in the oven. I tried to save it by adding more wine (Cab, I didn't have any burgundy left) and stewing it for a while, but it wasn't that great that night. The next day, though, it was like mana from heaven, soooo delicious, convincing me that next time I make it I have to let it rest for a day.

I never found the Burgundian cheeses and never got to dessert, probably a good thing.

For alas, not only did my dinner fail but my guests forgot to come! They are also new parents and the invitation had been extended a month before, so it was easy to understand how they could forget. I have to admit that as much as I wanted to see them, I wasn't completely upset that they didn't make it - this was not a meal I was proud to serve.

I'm planning to cook another Burgundian dinner when I get to it, so this menu won't go on my webpage. Here I leave it just as a memory:

Burgundian food
Pate de Campagne
with Cornichons
Eggs Dijon Style
with mixed greens
Cheese pastries
Beef Bourguignonne
with egg noodles
Vanilla Ice Cream
with Strawberries in Wine

Burgundian food
Pate de Campagne
with Cornichons
Eggs Dijon Style
with mixed greens
Cheese pastries
Beef Bourguignonne
with egg noodles
Vanilla Ice Cream
with Strawberries in Wine

A couple of months after I actually cooked it, my Bermudian menu is online. It features recipes for fish chowder, pienapple spareribs, coconut rice and banana pie.

My Halloween party is over and the menu and recipes are now available in my website. You can find them at http://www.marga.org/food/party/hallow04/

These include the recipes below plus a recipe for chili con carne and one for meat empanadas.

I have finally finished cooking the Bhutanese dishes I proposed to make months ago. It took me such a long time because I was actually fearing making them - hearing the heat (which made me seed the peppers in a couple of recipes) and the potential blandness. After all, how good can dishes with such few ingredients and no herbs or spices taste? I foud out - pretty darn good. Once again (it happened to me with Albanian and Belarussian cuisine before) my prejudices have been shown to be baseless.

The dish I cooked last night, a beef with mushroom curry, was particularly good so much so that I can imagine making it again for company. It was my first time cooking oyster mushrooms and I have to say I loved their texture, I'll certainly use them again.

The menu is at http://www.marga.org/food/int/bhutan/

I cooked my Belizean dinner sooo long ago that I can't even recall it, but for some reason I never put it up on my website. Yesterday, as I was exporting my food pictures to flickr, I came across the ones from Belize and realized my omission. Apparently the Belizean food I'd cooked hadn't been very good, but it still needs to be up. You can find the menu here

Yesterday we had a BBQ at our house. It was a great excuse to clean up our patio (finally!) and have friends over. In particular, we hadn't seen Ralph and Ruth for a year, I have to make sure to invite them over for dinner soon. Well, not too soon, I don't think Mike can handle more than one dinner event per month.

I wanted a complete no-work menu (no work for me, that is, Mike still had to do the grilling :) so I settled for:

-Chips & dip (storebought)
-Red Potato Salad
which I like 'cause I don't have to peel the potatoes to make it.
-Apple & chicken sausages
which I found out are not very good on hot dog buns
-Tri-tip
I sprinkled kosher salt on it, let it rest for a couple of hours, and it was absolutely delicious. Like all my beef, I bought it at Costco.
-Apple pie
from costco
-Dreyer's Ice Cream
which Ralph appreciated as he works there

Ralph brought some Chinese sausage and some salchichas, and both were wonderful. Sandra brought some very popular green salad.

All in all we had a wonderful, relaxed time in the patio, and now that it's clean I'm planning to entertain there more often - plus start grilling a lot of food. Meanwhile I have 3 lbs of sausages to get through.

Mike - my husband, that is - is running for School Board in San Leandro (check out his website) and he's having a kickoff party next Thursday evening. If you're a San Leandran, or even if you're not, you are welcomed to come. It'll be from 7-8:30 PM at Zocalo.

Anyway, I'm in charge of the menu, and this is what I'm planning to serve so far:

-Meat empanadas
-Mini quiches
-Crudites
-Fresh fruit
-Cookies
-Fish crackers (for the kids)

I may also make pinwheel sandwiches, but I think I probably have enough with the stuff above. Plus I don't want to over-extend myself either. After all, it's about him, not the food :) That said, he LOVES deviled eggs, so I may make those as well.

I've finally put up my Bosnian Menu. I cooked the meal what now seems like ages ago, and had my friends Parker and Donovan over. The food was pretty good, and we all had a great time.

Comments on my Bosnian menu can be left here and they will be linked from the Bosnian Menu page.

I've finally decided what to make for Thanksgiving. Here is my menu:

-Bread with olive oil, white balsamic vinegar & cream cheese
-Braised Chicken with bacon & bread stuffing (325, 2 hours)
-Traditional green beans casserole (350, 25')
-Mashed potatoes
-Chevy's corn tomalito (250, 2 hours)
-Persimmon bread (350, 1 hour)
-Apple pie

I want to have a semi-traditional thanksgiving, so that my 4-yo can start appreciating traditions, but I'm not a big fan of turkey. Plus, our friends Lola and Iggy will be coming to dinner after having a traditional Thanksgiving dinner at their family's, so I want to offer them something somewhat different. Any suggestions/comments?

Last evening we hosted a Hanukkah/Holiday party for our closest friends. I like to have parties to which I invite all my friends, but our house is too small to accommodate more than a small number of people - specially now that most of our friends have kids.

I wanted to make a very simple menu for the party, 'cause I didn't want to spend all my day in the kitchen as I'm prone to do. So I figured I'd cater it 'a la costco. But then I talked to someone who had thrown a party the week before and told me they'd spent the whole day putting appetizers in and out of the oven - and that didn't sound so appealing either. Finally, someone told me that brisket and donuts were traditional Hanukkah dishes, and suddenly my whole menu appeared before my eyes. I served

-pita bread (supermarket - 1 package eaten, mostly by the babies who loved it)
-artisan bread (costco, quite yummy)
-baby carrots (a kid favorite)

-creme herbed cheese
-roasted pepper dip (I loved it, but it wasn't as popular with others)
-hummus (from Costco, very good)
-ranch dressing

-latkes with sour cream and apple sauce

I used this recipe for latkes as a base, but I didn't want to bother washing and drying the potatoes, so I just mixed them with the egg and onion as I shredded them. That was really a mistake, because onions have a LOT of liquid. So I'd recommend drying them, even if you don't wash them, before mixing them in. It wasn't an unfixable mistake, however. I just added a bit of flour and squeezed out the liquid from the latkes as I put them in. I also added considerably more salt than the recipe asked for. They turned out very, very, very yummy. They were definitely a favorite with the kids, but also with the adults. They disappeared quickly. Fortunately my friend Arthur brought more (to make at my house) - so everyone got to have as many latkes as they wanted.

BTW, I didn't find making latkes to be as much of a pain as other people say. I was surprised at how easy it was to shred the potatoes - it took me just as long as it took Mike to peel them. I hate peeling potatoes myself, but Mike doesn't care so he always does it for me.

Anyway, I'm glad we had latkes for Hanukkah.

-Brisket, made from this recipe. I don't know how Jewish this particular recipe is, but it was amazingly delicious. The braising liquid, in particular, was out of this world. The meat turned out a little bit dry, I think I overcooked it, and next time I make it, I may try a different cut - but lord is the sauce yummy. And it's also VERY easy to make, and all you need is a cutting board, a plate and ONE wide pot. A 4 1/2 lb brisket was enough for everybody (of course, I'd warned them that this wasn't dinner, just hors d'ouvres) and now we have leftovers for lunch!!!!

-Vegetable eggrolls from Costco. They seem popular enough, the kids liked them too. Mike thought they were just OK, though he'd eaten more of them if there weren't other things to eat.

-Quiche from Costco. This proved the least popular thing, I'm not sure if because my guests don't like quiche, or the quiche wasn't that good. Anyway, I'm taking the other one (the package has two) to a potluck next week. And I may bring the already cut one (pre-sliced) to a cookie exchange today. Perhaps with all those cookies people will like something salty.

-Sushi from Costco. People thought it wasn't exciting but good.

And for dessert: doughnuts. I got 2 bakers dozens ($6 each at Safeway, not a bad deal), but we only went through 14 donuts or so.

The party itself was very nice, the kids had a lot of fun playing together, the babies behaved quite well, and the adults could chat comfortably. It was great!

Now it's time to prepare for Xmas Eve dinner next week, I hope to have the energy to do it.

In Argentina, like in many Latin American countries, the big Christmas celebration happens on Christmas Eve. While I've lived in the US well over 20 years now, for me Christmas Eve will always be the time to be with friends and family and celebrate the wonder of life.

This year we were happy to have, in addition to our best friends Lola and Iggy - with whom we always spend Christmas eve - our friends Eddie and Arthur. They've become some of our best friends in San Leandro, and who knows, spending Christmas Eve with us may just become a tradition (if they don't move back to Texas first).

My menu was very similar to the one I served on Christmas 2004, the last Xmas we spent in the US. Last year we were traveling in Argentina and ate at hotel in the tiny town of Cachi. But the 2004 menu had been so good, that I didn't really want to change it. So I served:

A sliced baguette with olive oil, European butter, smoked salmon, hummus and roasted pepper sauce.

As you can expect, the smoked salmon quickly disappeared - but so did the bread. Camila couldn't get enough of spreading the butter on the bread. She ate the center of the bread, but left the crust behind. Mika loves dipping bread in olive oil, and was quite excited to be able to do it again. Unfortunately (for her), the olive oil was the generic kind, and not the orange olive oil we tasted while shopping a couple of weeks back.

Mixed Greens Salad with Gorgonzola Vinaigrette

This is a favorite of Mikes, and it's so good that I usually serve it when I need to make a salad. Even Lola who dislikes blue cheese - and Kathy who dislikes cheese in general - like it here. This time I used red currants instead of cranberries (I had them at hand) and Lola thought they were an improvement.

Les Halles Mushroom Soup

Once again this was a winner. Iggy, specially, raved about it. This time I added extra morels and some porcini so everyone could get their fill. I imagine I'll make this again next year.

Leek and Camembert Tart

Another winner from epicurious. This was everybody's favorite of the evening. I plan to make it again, but next time I won't try to make it into a circle, I don't think there is much to be gained by that. A recipe was enough for 8 people but I'm sure everyone would have liked seconds.

Prime Rib with Cabernet Jus

This time I used Costco Prime Rib, prime ($11 lb), and while it was good it wasn't nearly as good as the one I made last time ($16 lb) with meat from Galvan's Market. Live and learn. I think next year I'll make lamb or something different.

The cab jus was good but unnecessary.

Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes

Always a winner, and they reheat so easily. I did make too much, though (3 times the recipe). Next time I'll just double it :)

Green beans almondine

Also a popular choice. This recipe is very simple and produces quite a good result - and shocking the green beans gives them a beautiful bright green color.

Dessert was a chocolate cake that Eddie brought (very, very yummy) and Costco pumpkin pie, which was also quite good.

We had several bottles of wine, all very good, but the clear winner of the evening was the Bonny Doon Muscat, Vin de Glaciere. It was impossibly delicious, and I don't even like Muscat. If it wasn't Christmas day, I'd send Mike in search of another bottle.

In all, we had a great Christmas Eve dinner. The kids played wonderfully in the other room, and then even ate some meat (as they knew dessert was coming). The babies were calm and friendly, and the company could not have been better.