New Year’s Eve, 2007
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Persimmon slivers wrapped in proscuitto
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Persimmon slivers wrapped in proscuitto
&
Tapenade with french bread
Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne
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Fennel & potato soup
Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne
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Fennel & potato soup
garnished with smoked salmon & fennel feathers
Pouilly-Fuissé Louis Jadon 2003
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Shrimp toast with red pepper rouille
Monterey Valley chardonnay 2003
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Butter lettuce with roquefort, candied walnuts, & blackberries
Pouilly-Fuissé Louis Jadon 2003
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Shrimp toast with red pepper rouille
Monterey Valley chardonnay 2003
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Butter lettuce with roquefort, candied walnuts, & blackberries
Glimmerglass water 2007!
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Beef daube (Montana mule deer)
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Beef daube (Montana mule deer)
& spatzel & green beans cooked with bouquet garni
Château Lafon-Rochet Saint-Estèphe 1993
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Apple & goat cheese tartlets
Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne
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Fireworks on snow
Château Lafon-Rochet Saint-Estèphe 1993
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Apple & goat cheese tartlets
Mumm Cordon Rouge Champagne
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Fireworks on snow
Hope I got that right...
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As we had six sleepy children on premises, we ended up skipping the final drinks and tea after the fireworks, but it was a grand six hours of eating and drinking in the new year. May you have a good 2008 with a sufficient scattering of joys and the pleasantest of surprises!
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For a few more menus (wish I'd kept track of these for the past decade), click on the "New Year's Eve" label.
*Michael’s Sour Blackberry & Sweet Walnut Salad
½ sour cream
1½ cup walnuts
1 cup brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
Mix sour cream and sugars together in heavy-bottomed pan and boil at 240 degrees (soft-ball stage). Mix nuts in and stir around until coated. Take out and spread on wax paper and separate with two forks. Sprinkle with cayenne.
Wash and separate a head of butter lettuce. Divide lettuce among six salad plates. Top with: four sour blackberries; about an ounce of roquefort; a half dozen candied walnuts.
Dressing: cup of olive oil to ¼ cup lemon juice, one clove of garlic, salt and pepper.
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Upcoming Event: Dan Braum and I'll be reading at KGB Bar in NYC on January 16 at 7:00. p.m. I may read narrative poems and a small story. Hop here to find out who we are and more!
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Photo credit: The photograph of fireworks is courtesy of www.sxc.hu/ and Peter Hall of Valencia, Spain.
Marly, you're a gem, your rules for editing a treat.
ReplyDeleteThis blackberry idea is most interesting, the first savoury one with those succulent little berries I've seen. I shall try it in the season, if I remember. Now I'll probably discover that what you call a blackberry and what I do are entirely different. You say tomato...
Happy New Year to you and all yours!
Happy New Year to you too!
ReplyDeleteI sure wish I had your chef hanging about, and your pot boy as well!
We had a wonderful left over beef stew, toasted french bread, and then crackers cheese and white wine. Stayed up till 1, then crashed into bed.
Thanks for visiting my site today as well. I just updated it with more, and resolutions.
May your new year be the best and your reading the greatest.
what, no Miller Lite?
ReplyDeleteLucy,
ReplyDeleteThere are a number of different things that are called blackberries here--blackberries and blackcaps and dewberries and so on. Originally Mike was thinking about a scattering of pomegranate seeds, but the two we had were lousy and there were no more to be had. The blackberries were grand, though.
b. q.,
Ah, that sounds pleasant as well. Good company and good bread and wine and good leftovers are just fine!
Dave,
The little and big Millers are definitely not lite!
Happy New Year!
ReplyDeleteThe shrimp toast sounds intriguing, the menu as eclectic as ever -- it's an annual treat just to read!
Oh, and KGB is a great place to read, or so I hear, since I only KNOW people who've read there, but never actually BEEN there myself.
Enjoy the big city.
Sounds delicious. Where did you get blackberries in the winter, though, sour or not?
ReplyDeleteMay it be a year of blessings for all your loved ones, including of course the cats.
Hi James--
ReplyDeleteHow's writing? Shall have to take a look.
The shrimp toast was very good--another night where it's hard to figure out what's best. I put up the salad since it was a Mike-invented recipe and won a share of the glory. But I think the shrimp toast was from "Bon Appetit."
I read at KGB 363 days prior to this year's reading. And I absolutely froze--had to buy a scarf on the street to wrap up my head.
jarvenpa,
One wanted sour, since the walnuts were sweet... The enterprising chef got those somewhere in Oneonta, I believe; he went on a great gathering expedition, though was chagrined not to find juniper berries and pomegranates.
Happy, peaceful wishes to you and yours as well. I want to see a picture of the future bottle wall!
Now THAT was a feast to usher in the new year!! We had pork loin roast braised in milk (Italian style), lentils de Puy tossed with olive oil and lemon juice and sea salt and a delicious salad of mache, feta, tangerines and toasted pecans. Short and sweet.
ReplyDeleteOh, your shrimp toast! Will have to look it up on Epicurious.com.
Happy New Year for the second or third, maybe, time!
Short and sweet means you're not starving yourself today in repentance! But that sounds very good to me...
ReplyDeleteNot sure where the shrimp toast came from, a cookbook or a magazine. I'll have to ask.
sounds absolutely decadent.
ReplyDeleteI'm still in those years of mostly-grown-youth where my cheese and crackers are accompanied with rum 'n coke 'n ginger ale.
Here's to a new year of most excellent
Cheese and crackers plus the effervesence of youth sounds darn good to me.
ReplyDeleteOh my
ReplyDeletei think i now know what the definition of a "groaning board" is...this sounds absolutely scrumptious way to get one's self all the way past midnight
Oh, I do wish it were the time whan Zephirus eek with his swete breeth / Inspired hath in every holt and heeth / The tendre croppes,etc.!
ReplyDeleteZephyr, so nice of you to float by on this nasty frigid Yankee day. Yes, groaning board was right. The dining room table is feeble, broken by a large pack of little girls having a delightful birthday party some years back. It ramped up the birthday excitement, as I recall.(We saved the cake.) The leftovers are still with us. The rouille gets better over time...
And now, back to helping organize my son on his somewhat belated college applications. Different kind of groaning!
Marly, the colours in this post are delicious!
ReplyDeleteYum!
I have no idea what recipe you use for shrimp toast Marly, but we have a dish here in the UK which isn't so much seen these days, but was a staple of 'posh teas' in my youth.
ReplyDeleteYou need those tiny little succulent, brown shrimp which are so hard to find. They never show in supermarkets, but are to be found at really good 'wet fish' counters. That having been said, I hadn't seen any for years until I came upon them at the Wednesday open market in Machynlleth, about forty minutes drive away from here. I nearly fell on my knees in gratitude before the startled fishmonger when I spotted them. Now he sees me coming and gets his little stainless steel trowel at the ready, knowing my greed for these treasures of the Atlantic. You can keep your langoustine, lobster and spider crab! Those brown shrimp are quite simply to die for.
My late mother simply melted salted Welsh butter in a pan, tipped in the shrimp and let them sizzle for but an instant. Then they'd be snuggled into individual pots or ramekins, pressed down firmly with the back of a spoon and topped up with the melted butter, which would coagulate with the shrimp juices to 'seal' the tops. The briefest, lightest fall of shavings from the nutmeg grater to dust the surfaces. The ramekins would be stored in the cool larder until everything was ready.
A steaming pot of Assam tea, to be taken with or without milk. Thin slices of nutty, brown bread, toasted and kept hot, hot, hot in napkins. (Timing with this is essential!) The potted shrimp are then spread onto the toast and eaten instantly as the warmth melts the butter and shrimp juices. If you try this, every person present must have their own pot, or fights and bloodshed will follow as surely as night follows day! Enjoy!
C H-J
Clive,
ReplyDeleteYou need to put a pronunciation guide in your notes! I can just feel that name swimming around in my mouth... Alas, some Welsh blood is not enough to know how to say such wonderful-looking things.
I will notify the chef. And I'll have to ask him for the recipe for our shrimp toast. Think it came out of a cooking magazine. You know, I believe I may have forgotten how to cook after so many years of being diner only. I'll send the recipe--or maybe post it--when I get back from NYC.
That's a wonderful account--feels so old-fashioned now, doesn't it? Time's such a slippery substance.
Memories of childhood food are so entrancing. A lot of mine have to do with going to the garden to pick. And mine are as much old-fashioned "deep South" as yours are of lost Welsh teatime.