Category — Entertaining
bloody brilliant!
My barrage of Christmas recipes has come to an end, time to let you know what we did for our New Year’s Eve Brunch.
I decided to host the brunch after my friends, Laura and Mary, and I was reminiscing about a fun annual Christmas cocktail party I used to host. I don’t recall why I stopped, but I’m sure it had something to do with feeling too overwhelmed, and then it fell by the wayside in the following years until it was forgotten. By the time I thought about hosting the cocktail party this year, it was too late, so I switched it to the NYE Brunch.
What made the original party unique, was that I would send out recipes to all the potential guests and they would choose a recipe (first come – first serve), make it, and bring it to the party. The concept is great because, as the host, you still have complete control over what is served and how it is set up. And as a pot-luck guest, you don’t have to “think” of what to bring. And since you get all the recipes for every dish in advance, you don’t have to rely on someone to send you the recipe for that thing you just loved and want to make in the future. Plus, since everyone contributes, everyone feels completely invested and proud of how the party turns out.
For me, the #1 host benefit is that the RSVP’s come in, fast and furious! I sent out the email invitation with all the recipes attached at 3:00 PM on December 12th and everyone who could make it had responded by 6:00 PM the next day! Here is what my email looked like –
January 3, 2012 3 Comments
Christmas cards and decorations
If you usually receive a Christmas card from me, it should arrive today or tomorrow. And there is one person to thank for that… my friend, Tram Mai. There is no way I would have gotten it done if Tram had not had an ingenious party this past Sunday. (I’m a bad influence, I helped convinced her to name the party this… and I don’t mean the cute “mai” part, I mean the honest “s**t” part).
Yup, she invited friends over at 11:00 AM for a pot-luck “work” party. Bring whatever project you haven’t had time to do… or have been procrastinating on (that would be the cards, in my case) and get it done!
So I packed my cards, envelopes, Christmas letter, mailing list, and THIS Orzo Salad and headed over. While enjoying wonderful food, including a fabulous polenta-smothered mushroom and onion sauce made by Tram’s husband, Steve, I knocked out 75+ cards! All hand addressed, signed, stuffed, and sealed. The dreaded cards were the Achilles’ heel for the three of us, but we got them done.
December 20, 2011 5 Comments
festive duck
First things first – Happy Birthday to my BBF, Jennifer Markett, who lives in Illinois! I LOVE YOU! And if you were here with me, I would be serving you this wonderful duck strudel! xoxo
Pictured above is my collection of authentic vintage French confit pots. Pretty, aren’t they? Duck confit has been a preservation method, for cooking and keeping duck in its rendered fat in France, for centuries. It results in supremely tender, moist, and extremely flavorful duck. You can then sear the duck legs in a hot skillet and serve them as is, shred the meat and add it to salads, or into the delicious and festive strudel recipe, I have for you below.
One of the great things about this strudel is that you can assemble the entire thing a month in advance and freeze it. Pop it in the oven for your Christmas celebrations and impress your guests! It is out of this world glorious!
A sealed glass jar of confit may be kept in the refrigerator for up to six months, or several weeks if kept in a reusable plastic container. To maximize preservation, the fat should top the meat by at least one inch. As the fat turns solid and prevents any air from reaching the meat, so basically the confit technique is a way of hermetically sealing the meat. The cooking fat acts as both a seal and preservative and results in a very rich taste.
I have been collecting authentic confit pots from France for a while now. Before refrigerators, the pots were used to “refrigerate” the confit. The entire inside of the pot is glazed and the glaze drips decoratively down the outside rim of the pot. The rest of the outside of the pot is left unglazed. The pot was filled with the duck and sealed with the fat. The pot was then buried in the cold mud and the unglazed outside of the pot would soak up that coldness and keep the duck confit perfectly chilled until ready to dig out and use.
The amount of duck confit used in this recipe is small, only 4 ounces. So instead of going to the trouble to make my own confit, I purchased a leg quarter from Chef Vincent Guerithault of the famed Vincent’s on Camelback. Call ahead, and Chef Guerithault will happily sell you some too. Or you can make your own duck confit, I’ve included a recipe from Epicurious.com at the bottom of this post. It is not difficult, just time-consuming. You will need to salt the duck for at least 24 hours before beginning and you have to render duck fat from the duck skin, which I have posted about before. The link on how to do that is there in the recipe too. But if you just purchase the confit, you can get going on the strudel recipe…. right now!
December 3, 2011 1 Comment
pink and green…
… is kinda of red and green, which makes this very pretty appetizer or brunch pizza perfect for Christmas.
Naan can be found on the bread aisle at most grocery stores, at Trader Joe’s, or at Costco. And smoked mozzarella with other specialty cheeses. But if you can’t find the mozzarella, substitute smoked Gouda.
December 2, 2011 1 Comment
rear view window
Thanksgiving 2011 Photo Album
This is how it always begins… the bird goes into the oven…
My Dad always brings the Beaujolais Nouveau!
Anticipation – potato bread rolls! A Hopkins’ Thanksgiving and Christmas tradition!
November 26, 2011 2 Comments
Tip Time – no stress allowed!
Before we get to today’s timely tip, I want to remind you that if you need help with a Thanksgiving timeline, CLICK HERE. And if you are looking for Thanksgiving recipes – go to the “Complete Recipe Index” over there on the left and scroll down to the red “Holidays” section and then scroll down to “Thanksgiving” where there are more than 30 Thanksgiving recipes awaiting you.
Weekly Tip #7
I know that at least some of you are hosting Thanksgiving in 3 days and that you are stressing. One of the major stresses is, “How am I going to get everything done?!?” The reason this is common stress is that many of us, including me, don’t seem to be able to delegate tasks. Even though several guests and family members have offered to help – it is hard to begin to even know where to start delegating when all the burners are blazing, timers are going off, and your mind is racing. It seems as though it is just easier to do everything yourself. The solution to this common problem? Decide today what you can have people do for you when crunch time comes. Remember, you are going to have some stress because… it’s a holiday and everyone is around you!
Make a list of non-cooking tasks – the last thing you need is more bodies in the kitchen. And make sure everything needed to complete those tasks is in plain sight, otherwise, you’ll get stressed telling people what drawer or cupboard to find things in, or end up dropping what you’re doing and getting it yourself.
November 21, 2011 3 Comments
85 years young!
Happy Birthday to my dear mother-in-law, Patricia Hopkins, who turns 85 today! We are in Rockton, Illinois to celebrate with her. It was a short five years ago that the whole family threw Mom an 80th birthday party. The pictures here are from that lovely November day, five years ago. The first is of Mom and her three sons; Roger, Tom, and Dave. In the next, she is pictured with her three daughters-in-law; myself, Beth, and Debra. And lastly, a picture of the birthday buffet. (And now I’ve added a photo at the bottom from this year’s 85th birthday dinner)
November 13, 2011 1 Comment
cooking together
We had our friends, Steve and Tram, over for dinner on Sunday. Well, golf and dinner for the boys and antiquing and dinner for Tram and me. As an added bonus, Marissa arrived home at about 5:00, just in time for dinner. She had been in Tucson for UofA’s Homecoming and was able to drop in on Scottsdale for a whirlwind 22 hours.
Tram the Reporter (writing down the recipe for me), Steve the Chef, and Marissa the Photographer
This was a new sort of dinner party for us, I had a co-chef in the kitchen! Steve is a fabulous cook and he actually ended up making more dishes than I did. Plus he and Tram provided the main ingredient – halibut – that they caught themselves, in Alaska last summer. So Good! Steve and I each took half of the halibut and cooked it our own way.
To top off the perfect day, Tram brought THE MOST gorgeous and delicious angel food cake that I have ever seen or have had the pleasure of eating. She made it from a recipe recently given to her by her mother-in-law. It was divine! If she decides to share it with me (I didn’t even ask yet – I mean she just got it from her MIL!), and if she gives me permission, I will share it with you. Until then just drool over that picture above! Oh my!
Today I am sharing with you Steve’s recipe for halibut with limoncello sauce. If you were smart enough to make the homemade limoncello I taught you how to make last year, then you are ready to crank this out. If not, purchased limoncello is perfectly wonderful to use too.
Thank you, Tram and Steve! xoxo
November 8, 2011 4 Comments
Halloween tradition
As far back as I can remember, our pre-trick-or-treating tradition has been to have everyone gather around the grill and make their own pizza. Our neighborhood is famous for a great Halloween. All the streets are cul-de-sacs and on many of those streets, the families all gather at the entrance and put out tables where the kids can just come up to table and pick candy from five bowls placed out (1 from each house). Meanwhile the adults socialize, eat, drink and just have a great time together.
There are already loads of kids in neighborhood, but it seems everyone invites all their friends to come here to trick-or-treat too.
Other houses set up elaborate haunted houses that attract not only the kids, but the adults, as well. Joannie, my neighbor from 2 doors down, dresses up as a witch each and every year and makes the kids do a trick before they get their treat, her house is a destination for the kids!
We go through 4 or 5 huge bags of Costco-sized candy each year. When my two kids were young, we’d have at least another dozen kids at our house (from outside the neighborhood) over to have pizza and then head out for their candy. [Read more →]
November 1, 2011 6 Comments
Crafts 101- part 2
Since standing on my feet in the kitchen for long periods of time is out of the mix at the present time, how about a holiday craft? Now, I already told you in the first installment of Crafts 101, I am not a crafty person… not by a long shot. In fact, for this particular craft, I needed professional help. Recently, Peggy and I took a class from the very talented Cindy and Lin Sue of Sweet-Stops on how to make these luxurious fabric pumpkins, which are perfect from the first day of fall, all the way through Thanksgiving. Now that’s some bang for your buck! And when I say “buck” – I literally mean about one dollar! Depending on the fabric you use, or if you use scraps you already have on hand, these beautiful pumpkins may cost no more than that. If you’ve seen them in boutiques, you already know they go for anywhere from $20 to $40 each! That’s just crazy talk!
October 26, 2011 5 Comments
