New Year's Eve: What are You Eating or Serving?

[Prawncrackers]

I'm defrosting a freezer load of seafood and putting together the mother of all hotpots tonight. Don't have to cook and I get my freezer back in readiness for the new year!

[Chris Amirault]

Night Before New Years Eve party ended up as follows:

tortilla stations with corn and flour tortillas

carnitas

chipotle shrimp

poached chicken

tomatillo salsa

smoked mushroom salsa

pickled red onions

homemade hot sauces

additional condiments

guacamole

tuna tapenade with preserved lemon & olives

ras al hanout spiced nuts

hummous with crudites

smoked salmon crackers

Smart Food popcorn

chocolate covered pretzels

World Peace Cookies

prune armagnac ice cream

Regent's Punch

Cuba Libres

Paul Jaboulet Aine Parallele 45 2007

Hugel Alsace Classic Pinot Gris 2006

Fever Tree G&Ts

Sam Adams variety pack

Details, lots, over here in the foodblog.

[deensiebat]

Just made a batch of these ridiculously delicious cookies: blue cheese and jam savories. Like the best cheez-it ever. Must not eat them all before party...

[jscarbor]

Very low key...my wife works tomorrow so just dinner for us and our kids. I'm starting with sesame crusted wonton cups filled with seared tuna and a Ginger soy "guacamole". A nice simple salad with arugula shallot apple and dulce gorgonzola. For entree I bought this awesome looking 2" thick bone in prime dry aged ribeye at a little butcher shop for $18/lb! Practically stealing this thing IMO.

[jscarbor]

That looks and sounds really good.

[gfweb]

Low key for us too. A succession of tapas-type dishes. Fried spicy tuna cakes on pumpernickel with a bit of mayo, soy-glazed beef tenderloin and boursin on italian bread, ham and potato croquettes. Liquor.

[Emily_R]

Good grief people! I am astounded by the intricacy of these menus -- I'm amazed that people aren't exhausted from all the cooking for Christmas. Tonight was dinner home just the husband and I -- menu was homemade wonton soup, including homemade broth and wonton wrappers. But I would happily have been an eater at pretty much any of your homes! :-)

[gfweb]

Just made a batch of these ridiculously delicious cookies: blue cheese and jam savories. Like the best cheez-it ever. Must not eat them all before party...

that looks fantastic!

[Prawncrackers]

Here is my New Year's Eve hotpot in all it's glory. I had a very low-key xmas cooking-wise and this extended to New Year Eve too. That's why a hotpot was ideal. Most of the stuff I had in the freezer; frozen chicken wings and Iberico ham bones for the base stock, regular sized prawns, mussels, oysters, turbot, sliced lamb and beef from previous hotpots. The most notable exceptions were the mahussive penaeus monodon or giant tiger prawns. They've been tempting me all year at the wholesale market and on Thursday I finally bought a box. It's hard to get a sense of scale but note my sushi knife (10" blade) and the bottle of wine, these puppies were meaty. I bought some tofu puffs, lettuce, Chinese leaf, cuttlefish and beef balls too. The only cooking I did was to simmer the stock, prepare the turbot and prawns, and make the sesame dipping sauce. That's the beauty of hotpot! One of my guests brought some Black Forest and Donut Cupcakes too. We were so stuffed that we didn't even get to soak some noodles:

[Chris Hennes]

Wow, the seafood you have access to is incredible! That is gorgeous.

[Peter the eater]

Nice spread Prawncrackers.

My lobster poutine was a big hit, as was the game hen. People got a half bird with a bunch of roasted roots, minty peas and wild rice from Saskatchewan.

My baby spinach sunchoke salad, on the other hand, sucked. The dulse vinaigrette was too "marine" and the raspberry juice made the shrimp look like neon pink garden grubs. No photo record.

[Big Mike]

That menu makes me sad inside because it's so kickass. The party I was at was pretty low key for food. I brought a homemade sourdough ciabatta and baked brie and those were probably the two most interesting things there.

[Chris Hennes]

Peter can you say more about that lobster poutine? It looks excellent: how did you make it?

[Chris Amirault]

And what was the gravy?

[David Ross]

Just made a batch of these ridiculously delicious cookies: blue cheese and jam savories. Like the best cheez-it ever. Must not eat them all before party...

I think I could eat dozens of those beauties--and many glasses of champagne. Delicious!

[Shelby]

Peter, I want your poutine (that sounds dirty...lol) and Prawn, I want your seafood. SOOOOO yummy looking.

[Dave the Cook]

We had a failure, too, and as a result, there's bacon in various forms all over the place. My brother sent us some beautiful king crab, and that led to the idea of a dish that combined crab, artichoke, lemon, red bell pepper and bacon. For Christmas, I had received this modernist starter kit, and I decided to try something simple, like the bacon powder from the Alinea cookbook.

I made a half-recipe, as the kit only provides about 50 grams of powder. The problem was that it didn't taste much like bacon. So I rendered another 150 grams, to get another 50 grams of bacon fat. Adding this to the "powder" did make it taste more like bacon -- a lot, in fact -- but it was no longer a powder. And the longer I stirred, the gooier it got. So I took some bacon bits -- the crispy meat from which I'd rendered the fat -- and put it in the dehydrator. After about an hour at 150°F, it was drier, but of course, fat doesn't evaporate, at least not at that temperature. I ground it up anyway, just to see what would happen. Very tasty paste is what happened, though it lacked any visual appeal.

Anyway, we mixed that into a remoulade, and used that to top a reconstruction of a crab, more or less:

The "antennae" are dehydrated red bell pepper; the "eyes" are slices of Meyer lemon, dredged in Wondra and deep-fried.

The second, and final dish, because it was already getting close to midnight, was coffee-rubbed rack of lamb, a cake of fried grits, and a fancy version of red-eye gravy. Tomato chips were a garnish.

[Peter the eater]

Peter can you say more about that lobster poutine? It looks excellent: how did you make it?

I steamed a 2 pound 10 dollar lobster for 18 minutes, then cooled and shelled it. Meanwhile I made a white sauce with the steaming juice and added the lobster meat just before spooning over the shoestring fries.

I tried a few white cheddar curds in the sauce but they didn't help. I suppose a dark chicken gravy with lobster chunks instead of curds could work.

[Chris Hennes]

I'd be concerned that a chicken gravy would overwhelm the relatively delicate flavor of the lobster: I think your choice to go with a lobster-stock-based white sauce was probably the best one. Did you make those fries yourself? Using which technique?

[Peter the eater]

I'd be concerned that a chicken gravy would overwhelm the relatively delicate flavor of the lobster: I think your choice to go with a lobster-stock-based white sauce was probably the best one. Did you make those fries yourself? Using which technique?

Russets were cut on a big mandoline at the smallest setting. They were soaked for a few hours, dried off and deep-fried quickly in veg oil with a bit of lard. They're light and crisp with almost no white inside.

[CatPoet]

Well lets make a broad  thread  about  nibbles, lunch, dinner, dessert and drinks.

 

What are you going to have?

 

Menu here is pretty set. Lunch will be raclette  with bread, salad and pommac to drink,  pommac is a Swedish none alcoholic alternative to champagne, even though it doesn't  taste like but it has a more grown up flavour then normal sodas.

 

Dinner, pulled pork  stuffed into pita bread with  lettuce and vegetable and sour cream sauce   ginger ale or more pommac   and for dessert  chocolate fondue with marshmallow,  pound cake and  banana, is there anything else we  could dip that isnt out of season berries?

 

 

Nibbles, we are think nuts since the kid likes it.

[Norm Matthews]

New Years Day food in the South has traditional food associated with good luck and good fortune.  Black eyed peas is traditional. A lot of people make it in Hoppin John but I don't care for beans and rice combined. I make the beans with ham hocks. My sister makes a hot chip dip with black eyed peas.  It is also traditional to have greens and I make Collard greens. I remove the stems and that takes out any bitterness. Pork and corn bread are both symbolic and traditional for New Years too.  

 

While I am not generally superstitious, one year I did a traditional Mexican dinner and fell and broke three bones in my ankle the next day so I am sticking to the Southern dinner my mom from Arkansas made. 

Edited December 26, 2014 by Norm Matthews (log)

[CatPoet]

Well  on New years day,  we  are going to have lentil soup, same dinner as we had as newly engaged and since it is 5 years anniversary  we are going to make it.

[TicTac]

House cured gravlax

Black Truffle / Foie Pate

Selection of cheeses from Quebec/Italy/France

3-4 types of local Breads (blackbird baking co.)

5 Spice smoked duck breast toasts w/ green onion and soy reduction

Roasted garlic white bean spread

The most amazing fresh churned butter (recently found at Cumbrae's - a local butcher)

Smoked oysters

Puff Pastry Provencal tart

Wild mushrooms (for the breads)

 

Selection of chocolates

 

And wine...lots of lovingly aged wine.

[Shel_B]

Who knows what we'll have.  It's several days away, no plans have been made - we're recovering from last night's festivities.  I think Toots and I will have a quiet evening at home, drink some French apple cider that I recently acquired, and maybe have some dinner ... something light.