Dinner for Sixteen

Last Friday we held a going away dinner for a friend and colleague of ours who will soon take up a new post as assistant professor of biochemistry at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. On a rainy night starting at about 7 pm, we packed sixteen people into our 400 sq ft apartment for a three-course dinner and a copious outpouring of wine and good wishes. Five hours and sixteen bottles of wine later, the last guests left well-fed and in good cheer.

Of course Melissa's careful planning and brilliant execution made the night a great success, and our only misdeed may have been sending off the guest of honor a little later (and possibly a little rougher around the edges) than he meant to be leaving town on the following day...

Here is Melissa's account:

Always up for a challenge I agreed to Matt's idea of hosting a farewell dinner for one of our friends who moved to Atlanta this weekend. That challenge was that Matt was inviting the entire floor in the building where he works - and their partners. In the end we had a guest list of 14 plus ourselves but it could have ended up much bigger.

So how do you cook a three course dinner for 16 people out of a 400 square foot apartment while a storm rages outside, blocking access to the only dining table? It's all in the planning:

Menu

Nibbles on arrival

Pita chips with curried hummus and tabouleh
Olives, artichoke hearts and pickled onions

First Course: Eggplant stuffed with spiced lamb on roasted capsicum with pomegranate dressing

Second Course: Angel hair pasta with a chicken and mushroom cream sauce

Dessert: Mixed berry and apple crumble.

Recipes

Both the Hummus and Tabouleh recipes have already been posted on Foodie Calls.

I made the hummus the night before and refrigerated it in the ramekins I planned to serve it in. The bulgar wheat was also cooked the night before, but the rest of the tabouleh ingredients were assembled a couple of hours before everyone arrived.

Pita Chips

Buy whole pita breads and split in half by gently running a knife between the two layers. Brush rough side with olive oil and crushed garlic. Bake in a 420oF oven for ~5 to 10 minutes until lightly browned. Let cool a little and then cut into wedges. This needs to be started around 15 minutes before people are due to arrive so the chips are a little warm and there is a wonderful toasted garlic aroma in the air to tickle their tastebuds.

Eggplant and lamb

This is a recipe from Cuisine Magazine that I'd made before. I exchanged the chickpeas for minced/ground lamb and added a few fennel seeds. If you can't get pomegranate molasses for the dressing just buy pure pomegranate juice and simmer it in a pan to reduce it to a syrup. It retains all of its tart flavours. I made 2.5x the recipe.

I made the lamb filling, pomegranate dressing and roasted the bell pepper/capsicum the night before. The eggplant slices need to be cooked on the day, but as I needed 16 slices grilled on each side, and I could only fit around 6 in the oven at a time I started cooking them on one side a couple of hours before everyone arrived. I cooked the eggplant on sheets of aluminium foil and once a batch was done flipped the eggplant to the uncooked side and lifted the foil with the eggplant on it and stacked it right on top of the last lot. This held in a lot of the heat and continued cooking so that around 1/2 hour after everyone had arrived and was comfortable all I had to do was transfer each foil layer back to the grill for around 5 minutes to brown the other side of the eggplant.

The roasted peppers and filling I reheated by nuking in the microwave (covered to keep all the moisture in). It took around 5 minutes to assemble each plate with a roast pepper half on bottom, eggplant wrapped around filling on top, finished with a dollop of Greek yogurt and a drizzle of pomegranate reduction. Amanda did the honours of passing out the plates, and by the time she'd finished with the first six, another six were on their way.

Pasta

3 lbs Mixed mushrooms - I used baby bello, portobello and oyster mushrooms
1 lb Skinless and boneless chicken thigh
1/2 lb Butter
1 cup light cream
1 tbsp Chicken stock paste
1 tbsp Dried tarragon
3 tbsp Dijon mustard
2 Sliced red onions
1 lb Arugula/Rocket leaves
32 oz Angel hair pasta

2 tbsp Cornstarch/cornflour to thicken

The night before, I sliced the mushrooms and the red onions and defrosted the chicken so they were ready to go. To cook I first filled a stock pot with warm water and put on the heat to boil the water. This is by far the most time consuming part of the recipe, as it can take up to 30 minutes for a large pot of water to reach a rolling boil. Then I crammed as many mushrooms as I could into a covered pot with a couple of sticks of butter (200 g) roughly chopped, and cooked over a low to medium heat. Every 5 minutes I'd check the mushrooms and try to get the uncooked ones to the top, and vice versa.

The mushrooms release a lot of moisture, and after ~15 minutes of cooking I added 1 tbsp of chicken stock paste and the tarragon to the mushrooms. While the mushrooms were cooking, I sliced the chicken into small thin pieces and got the onions cooking. In a large pan I fried the onions in a little olive oil till they were translucent, and then removed them from the pan. Next I added the chicken a fried till it was cooked through, then added back the onions and added the Dijon mustard. At this point if I had a pot or pan big enough, I would have mixed everything together and added the cream. Instead, I transferred some of the mushrooms to the pan with the chicken and onions and added cream to both the mushrooms in the pot and chicken in the pan, and simmered for a couple of minutes.

With the sauce almost done it was time to cook the pasta. This pasta is so thin it takes around 3-4 minutes to cook al dente. In fact, I was more worried about overcooking it to mush than it not being ready in time, so I left it to the very last minute to cook. Back to the chicken and mushrooms, I thickened the sauce with a paste of cornflour and a little cream. Add a little at a time, since it takes around 30 seconds for the sauce to thicken after addition to a simmering sauce. Stop adding cornflour when you have the consistency you desire. I then combined both the pot of mushrooms and the pan of sauce which just fit in the pan. Drain the pasta as soon as its al dente.

To serve I placed a small handful of arugula at the bottom of each dish, topped with a tong full of pasta and spooned the mushroom, chicken mixture on top.

Berry, apple crumble

Fruit filling
8 granny smith apples
1 lb of frozen mixed berries
1/2 cup of sugar
1 tbsp of ground cinnamon
Topping
2 cups of rolled oats
1 cup of dark brown sugar
1/2 lb of butter
2 tbsp of ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp of ground allspice
1/2 tsp of ground nutmeg
To serve
Greek yogurt
Mint sprigs

The previous night I peeled and diced the apples into large chunks and placed in a ziplock bag with a little lemon juice to stop the pieces going brown. Before everyone arrived I scattered the mixed berries, apple, sugar and cinnamon into two casserole dishes with lids and set aside. I also put all the topping ingredients into the kitchen aid mixer so the butter could soften and it was ready to mix just before I needed it. Just before I started preparing the chicken, I put the covered dishes with fruit in the oven at 380oF to let the fruit stew in its own juices. Around 10 minutes before everyone was ready for dessert I started the mixer to combine the butter and oats etc and removed the fruit from the oven. I topped the stewed fruit with a layer of topping and put back in to the oven uncovered to get the topping nicely toasted (~10 minutes). To serve I topped each portion with a dollop of Greek yogurt and a small mint sprig.

A Pastry Experiment; Lamb Shank with Asparagus; Moussaka of Leftovers

So last Friday Melissa's lab hosted the DFCI Dana 14 happy hour. Never one to pass up an opportunity to feed people, Melissa made homemade cheese puffs for the event. She has been wanting to try this for some time, and after a bit of research she set out to try the recipe she liked best...




They came out just beautifully, light and fluffy with the soft flavor of Gruyere cheese. Melissa stuffed the ones we had at home Thursday night with a salmon cream cheese sauce, chopped asparagus and fennel leaf. I see great things on the horizon with her pastry-type experiments. It took everything I had not to get up in the middle of the night and gorge on the cheese puffs meant for the happy hour.




Saturday was a big day out: food and wine shopping in the morning, a quick stop in the lab to tend to our cell cultures, then a light lunch at home. Some soba noodles with caramelized onions, bacon (mmmmmm... bacon...) and chopped asparagus.





We had little time to dawdle over lunch since we were due at Jillian's for bowling with about a dozen other people in celebration of a birthday. After a nice dinner at Eastern Standard in Kenmore Square we went down to the Roxy for what turned out to be a great night of music and open bar. My sister-in-law Casey's younger sister Kelly was in town with her company Rock Star Karaoke NYC (that's karaoke with a live band and backup singers) to play a private event at the club. This thing was enormous. A German biotech company rented out all three floors of the city's biggest dance club and threw open the bar(s) for what had to have been well over a thousand people. Although it was a private event, we got in as guests of the band and partied with them after the show. Sweet. See Evan's post from the day for some pics.


I ended up having quite a late day at the lab Sunday while Melissa recovered from Saturday's shenanigans in front of the television. Somewhere between movies inspiration struck, and by the time I got home she had made a roast lamb shank with red wine, tomato and onion sauce, blanched asparagus and lima beans.




The lamb was so tender it fell off the bone at the mere sight of a fork, and the meat just melted in your mouth. You have to cook it long and slow and turn it with love (see Melissa's recipes and notes below). We had a Trader Joe's La Boca cabernet with this dish (it was also in the lamb) that turned out to be really nice for $4 (seriously, $4). Not too shabby.




Finally, Monday's moussaka. We had been given some baby eggplants from a local farm recently, so Melissa made a nice moussaka using the eggplants, some pepper jack cheese we had in the freezer and the leftovers from the lamb shank dinner.

You can't go wrong with those ingredients, really. It was a rich and tasty dish with subtle reminders of the previous night's dinner lamb shank. Gotta love the continuity...


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Melissa's Recipes and Notes

Lamb Shanks

1 large or 2 small lamb shanks
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 head of garlic
1 tbsp of dijon mustard
1/2 cup of red wine
1 red onion
1 tsp of salt
1 tbsp of whole black peppercorns
1/2 cup of water
A couple of sprigs of rosemary
4 dried bayleaves

Place lambshanks into large casserole dish. Pulse tomatoes in a blender to chop tomatoes finely. Slice onion into half rings. Peel all the cloves in a head of garlic. Combine all ingredients and pour over lambshanks. Make sure the liquid is around half way up the side of the casserole dish. Bake covered at 380oF for 3 hours or more while turning shanks every hour or so. Around an hour before you intend to serve uncover the shanks to allow the liquid in the dish to evaporate to leave a thick sauce. Remove bayleaves before serving.

Lima beans - previously described

Asparagus

Break off stems that are woody at the bottom of the spears and place in a casserole dish. Blanch by pouring enough boiling water over the asparagus spears to fill the casserole dish. Cover and let sit for around 10 minutes. Drain and coat with parmesan cheese and freshly ground pepper.

Moussaka


There were quite a bit of leftovers from the lamb dish and I was secretly hoping Matt might have another late night in the lab and I could have a second meal out of them. What was left was really only enough for one, so when Matt came home at a normal hour I came up with a quick and easy moussaka-like recipe to finish them off. Howell and Melinda had given Matt some small eggplants and we had some pepperjack cheese left over from a Dana14 Happy Hour. Add in a few grape tomatoes, some basil leaves and a pepper from the plants outside and we had a meal on our hands.

3 baby eggplants
Salt
Olive oil
~1/2 to 3/4 cup of cooked lima beans
~10 large basil leaves
~6 asparagus spears - cooked
~6 grape tomatoes
1 small mild pepper
~1/2 cup of sauce and lamb pieces from lamb shanks
1/2 cup of pepperjack cheese cubes

Slice baby eggplants longways, salt and drizzle with olive oil. Grill/Broil in oven and flip when each side is golden brown. When eggplants are nicely brown and all the sponginess is gone they're ready. Make layers of ingredients in a small casserole dish. Here's the order I laid down the ingredients Cover the bottom of a small casserole dish with lima beans. Then add ~5 whole basil leaves. Make a layer of eggplant slices using half of the eggplant. Cover with sauce from lamb shanks. Chop asparagus spears and pepper together and sprinkle over sauce. Half grape tomatoes and put on top of asparagus. Cover with rest of basil leaves. Throw in cheese cubes and cover with the rest of the eggplant slices. Put lid on dish and microwave for 5 minutes. Remove cover and sprinkle with a little parmesan cheese and put in 400oF oven uncovered until parmesan cheese is melted and a little crispy (~5 minutes)

Cabbage Lovers Rejoice...

... or: "Fun With Cabbage".

Two weeks since our last post... Rest assured we have been eating, but with a long weekend trip to Texas to see the Call family (enchiladas and margaritas galore) and lots of nights out here in Boston, we haven't had much to put up.

Speaking of family, check out these photos my folks snapped of us with the newest member of the Call family, Betsy Ruth Call (2 mo) with her older brother Beckett (3 yr) and the proud parents Brian and Casey Call.

Now to the food:

Three recent meals reflect Melissa's versatility with a simple and humble ingredient: cabbage. Now I was never a huge fan of cabbage, although I have consumed my fair share of coleslaw growing up in the south. And what the Germans do to cabbage borders on offensive. But since knowing Melissa I have met quite a few cabbage-based dishes that went down quite well -- cabbage stir fry, spicy Asian-inspired cabbage soup, it's even been used in omelets. These are not vegetarian dishes, but the methods for preparing the cabbage can easily be adapted to meatless ingredients. (By the way, all three dishes were made using just one head of cabbage.)

First, a great example of the Asian style cabbage dish: chopped cabbage and soba (Japanese buckwheat noodles) stir fried with pork tenderloin and sambal oelek chili paste. Not fancy, just really tasty and full of whole grain goodness; topped off with a smattering of uncooked cabbage for a bit of crunch. As usual, a gewurztraminer is our choice with spicy Asian-style foods. Cono Sur "Vision" gewurz (2007, Casablanca Valley, Chile) is our current favorite for under $20.

The second dish was an inspired combination that came out fantastically well: cabbage and lima beans with bacon, caramelized onions and red capsicum (bell pepper). Cabbage and lima beans are both ingredients that strike fear into the hearts many a finicky American child, but my biases were jettisoned a long time ago when it came to trusting Melissa's culinary judgement. The flavors in this dish were beautifully melded, largely because of the way Melissa cooked it all. The lima beans take around and hour or more to cook, so they were boiling away long before the rest of the dish was prepared. Around 30 minutes prior to the lima beans being finished the onions were caramelized in a slather of olive oil. The bacon went in next and slow cooked until done, and slices of capsicum were added just prior to serving. The cabbage was wilted by steaming over the lima beans just as they were finishing. Layer upon layer to serve and washed down with a Sam Adams Light. Yum.

As good as that dish was, the last one was really the coup de grace. A simple beef stir fry made with sambal oelek and red onions, with fresh arugula from the garden (it grew like mad while we were gone), accompanied Melissa's roasted cabbage. She sliced up the remaining cabbage in thick (about 1 inch) slices and roasted them in a roasting pan with olive oil and a bit of sea salt. The cabbage softened to a perfect consistency and the caramelized edges were smoky and just a little sweet. And it's visually stunning. Wow. Cabbage -- who knew? A 2007 Mondavi Private Selection chardonnay (CA) did the trick with this dish. Crisp and fruity with very subtle oak.

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A quick note on a nice wine we had while comfortably accommodated at Brian and Casey's beautiful new home in Fort Worth, Texas. I have met a number of inexpensive red blends from California that I have really enjoyed (think Red Truck). This Bordeaux-style blend from Napa Valley was really nice: Bangin' Red from Crescendo Hills Winery. Not sure what year it was, but I did read the label and I remember it had cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec, zinfandel and probably some petit verdot. (Aside from not being made in Bordeaux, the inclusion of zinfandel grapes keeps it from being a true Bordeaux blend). Nice ripe berries, vanilla and spices on the nose and in the mouth; not particularly complex, but a great red for about $10.

Try it out if you spot it in your bottle store...

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Melissa's recipes

Stir fried noodles with pork and cabbage

250g Pork tenderloin
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1 tsp of sambal oelek (or other chilli paste)
1 tbsp of sesame seed oil
Soba noodles
1/4 large cabbage
1/4 cup of rice wine vinegar
1/4 cup of water

Slice pork into thin strips
Marinate in Soy Sauce, Sambal Oelek and sesame seed oil.
Boil Soba noodles together with cabbage in a pot of water
Stir fry Pork in hot pan with a little olive oil (saving the marinade juices for later)
Drain noodles and cabbage and add to frying pan
Add in marinade, rice wine vinegar and water to the hot fry pan so it coats the noodles, cabbage and soba. Let it boil off some steam for around a minute to reduce the liquid and make sure any pork juices are cooked.


Cabbage and lima beans with bacon

1 cup of lima beans
1/2 red onion
4 rashers of bacon
1/4 cabbage
1 red capsicum (bell pepper)


The lima beans take around and hour or more to cook unless you soak them overnight in cold water or soak them in hot water for an hour or two before cooking. I can never plan that far in advance so I boil them for around an hour at 20 minutes. While the lima beans are cooking, slice the onion into half rings and slow saute in olive oil until they're soft and add chopped bacon to the pan. Continue to cook on low to medium heat until the onions are fully caramelized and the bacon rendered and chewy. Add the sliced red capsicum to the frying pan a minute or two before serving and toss with the onions and bacon. Steam the cabbage over the lima beans in a bamboo steamer for 5 minutes. (alternatively boil in a little water for ~10 minutes). Serve the cabbage on the bottom, then lima beans, topped with the onion/bacon/capsicum mixture.

Sliced flank steak with roasted cabbage

500g of flank steak
1/4 cup of soy sauce
1 tsp of sambal oelek (or other chilli paste)
1 tsp of sesame seed oil
1/2 red onion
couple of handfuls of arugula (rocket)
1/2 a cabbage
Olive oil

Slice cabbage in 1 inch thick slices leaving stem intact. The stem keeps all the leave together so you can roast pieces of cabbage rather than "leaves" of cabbage. Brush with olive oil and season with salt. Roast in a 400oF oven for around an hour. Turn during cooking when each side is a nice dark brown. The dark brown parts are not bitter but instead become wonderfully sweet and chewy like roasted onions. Slice the flank steak thinly and marinate in the soy sauce, sambal oelek and sesame seed oil for ~20 minutes. In a hot/medium fry pan saute sliced onions until almost translucent. Turn up the heat and add sliced beef (draining off excess marinade before adding meat to pan). Quickly stir fry until meat is seared all over. Serve on a bed of arugula with roasted cabbage.

Filet Mignon with Broccolini; Crepes Flambe

Despite the Monday holiday Melissa and I both worked a full day in the lab -- we both need to keep things moving ahead right now, and we were happy to do it. In the evening we settled in to a dinner of filet mignon with a medley of mushrooms in a white wine and dijon mustard sauce, and steamed broccolini (often sold as broccoli rabe). Melissa's filet mignon is always incredible. The beef tenderloin we get from BJs wholesale club is high quality, and we get a great price by buying a whole tenderloin and carving it up and freezing it at home. Just as important as the quality of the meat, though, is the way Melissa cooks it. After seasoning with sea salt and lots of coarse cracked peppercorns, she uses a very hot cast-iron griddle pan to sear the meat and seal in the juices, then serves it up very rare. And the mushrooms -- yumm... White wine and dijon mustard form the base of the sauce, with tarragon and a little chicken stock powder for seasoning. A 2006 Yellowtail Reserve Shiraz (AU) accompanied this dish.

Amanda showed up halfway through dinner to drop off some Gourmet magazines she thought we might want, and she got to share in the mushroom bounty. Even more exciting were the crepes Melissa decided to make for dessert. We had taken some great pics and videos of Melissa making these before, but somehow I managed to lose the files after deleting them from the camera disk. So I'm taking this opportunity to post some fresh photos. The basic crepe batter is one egg with 3/4 cup of flour and milk until the right consistency is reached. It should still be very liquid but viscous. She usually flavors the batter with a little sugar and vanilla. One ladle goes into this small non-stick pan on medium-high heat -- the flip requires a bit of finesse, but as long as the pan was well buttered it won't stick.

The really cool part is the flambe. We like a mixture of Apple Jack apple brandy with sugar that was pre-dissolved with a little water in the microwave. Abot 1/4 cup goes into the pan with a generous pat of butter, and light it up. It usually requires multiple lights to burn off most of the alcohol, but what is left behind is a syrupy, buttery, candied-brandy flavor that makes an awesome dessert.

Some marry into money, but I married into a much tastier kind of riches...

Pork and Papaya Stir Fry; Grilled Snapper; Shrimp Quesadilla

As I wrote up the last post, Melissa was closing the deal on the mystery ingredients Evan brought the previous Saturday. She used the butternut squash that night, but the papayas weren't ripe yet. So last Wednesday she whipped together the most interesting stir fry she has made yet. Sliced pork tenderloin was seasoned with soy sauce, cracked pepper and a drop of liquid smoke, then pan fried and served with chopped papaya and arugula over rice. The fruit provided a great contrast to the savory pork, and the ground up papaya seeds were used as a garnish -- the slightly spicy flavor of the seeds nicely connected the fresh fruit with the pepper in the pork. It all went very well with a bottle of 2007 Ku De Ta Sauvignon Blanc (Casablanca Valley, Chile).

Thursday we went to an open house at the Sam Adams Brewery here in Boston. They brought out the Oktoberfest beers and served sausages and sauerkraut. It was a full-on Oktoberfest event -- Bavarian-looking oompa band and all -- and a very nice night.

Saturday we had a few people around for a nice summer dinner at our place, and Melissa combined some of her best recent ideas to make a fresh and delicious dish. Wild red snapper fillets were grilled with sea salt, pepper and butter, and served with peach salsa, grilled polenta and arugula. We had a 2006 Xplorador Chardonnay (Central Valley, Chile) and some fantastic weather with our dinner out on the patio.

I had picked up some huge shrimp when I bought the snapper for Saturday dinner, but the snapper fillets were so large that Melissa didn't use them that night. So they made their appearance for Sunday dinner -- pan fried with butter and garlic and served with cheese quesadillas. That salsa contains the first jalapeno peppers to come off our pepper plant in the garden; a little late in the summer, but very spicy nonetheless.

It was a tasty week...