{"id":1322,"date":"2013-01-02T04:41:18","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T20:41:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=1322"},"modified":"2013-01-02T04:41:18","modified_gmt":"2013-01-01T20:41:18","slug":"2012-christmas-eve-dinner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2013\/01\/2012-christmas-eve-dinner\/","title":{"rendered":"2012 Christmas Eve Dinner"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every year since my kids were born (except for 2005, when we visited Argentina) I have made an elaborate, multi-course Christmas Eve dinner.\u00a0\u00a0 I start the menu planning by deciding what meat I will feature as my main dish.\u00a0 I want something eye-catching that I wouldn’t normally cook.\u00a0 Trouble is, after so many Christmas Eves, I’ve run out of choices.\u00a0 I’ve done standing rib roasts<\/a>, boneless prime ribs<\/a> and regular roasts.\u00a0 I’ve cooked beef Wellington<\/a> and plain beef tenderloin roasts.\u00a0 I’ve done turkey, goose, pork tenderloin<\/a> and leg of lamb.\u00a0 One year I made the most delicious rack of lamb<\/a>.\u00a0 Earlier in my marriage, I once even made Ethiopian food<\/a> for Xmas Eve dinner.\u00a0 And last year, I made short ribs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I don’t like repeating dishes – thus my Xmas Eve dinner problem – but I was in a big conundrum this year.\u00a0 My kids won’t let me cook any cute animals – so no lamb, venison, ostrich, duck – and none of us are that fond of pork, so that leaves beef (chicken is just not impressive enough for Xmas Eve dinner).\u00a0 And I really didn’t want to do a roast (nor spend the money to buy top-quality beef).\u00a0 I thought about making oxtails, but the kids balked and, truth be told, after a couple of experiences with really tough oxtails, I wasn’t that willing to risk it.<\/p>\n

So I decided to go for short ribs again.\u00a0 There are many ways to prepare them, after all, and they are a crowd favorite.<\/p>\n

In all, my menu went very well, I think it may have been my most successful menu so far, as everything I served was good-to-great.\u00a0 The two favorites seemed to be the shrimp salad, that accompanied the soup, and the cheese course.\u00a0 It’s sort of sad that that would be the star of a meal I spent 2 days preparing, but there is little you can do to compete against good cheese.<\/p>\n

As usual, I eliminated one dish from my planned menu<\/a>: the fish.\u00a0 I had originally planned to make the leek tarts as an amuse bouche, but they ended up being too big for that purpose, so I turned them into an appetizer instead (and made the eggnog the amuse bouche).\u00a0 I could still have gone with the fish, but given that it needed last minute cooking – which meant more time away from the table for me – I skipped it.\u00a0 I think it was a good choice, both time and flavor wise.<\/p>\n

Here is what the meal ended up being:<\/p>\n

– Eggnog<\/a><\/p>\n

– Plantain and Coconut Soup with Shrimp, Tomato and Avocado Salad<\/a><\/p>\n

– Individual Leek Tarts<\/a><\/p>\n

– Lemon Sorbet, as a palate cleanser<\/p>\n

– Wine-Braised Short Ribs with Cocoa and Star Anise<\/a><\/p>\n

served with garlic & plain mashed potatoes and braised red chard<\/a><\/p>\n

– Assorted Cheeses<\/a><\/p>\n

– Peanut Butter Trifle<\/a><\/p>\n

And there you go \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Marga’s Party Recipes
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Every year since my kids were born (except for 2005, when we visited Argentina) I have made an elaborate, multi-course Christmas Eve dinner.\u00a0\u00a0 I start the menu planning by deciding what meat I will feature as my main dish.\u00a0 I want something eye-catching that I wouldn’t normally cook.\u00a0 Trouble is, after so many Christmas Eves, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[205],"class_list":["post-1322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dinner","tag-christmas","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1322\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}