Friday, January 3, 2025

New Year's Dinner: Paella Mixta

The theme for New Year's Eve and Day dinners is seafood.  New Year's Eve we make crab cioppino again, using leftover cioppino sauce from Christmas Eve with new Dungeness crab, scallops, shrimp, and rigatoni.  To that we add a kale salad with homemade bread crumbs, avocado, pecorino cheese, and a dressing of garlic paste, pecorino cheese, lemon juice, olive oil and salt/pepper.  All accompanied by a sliced baguette and a light-bodied cabernet sauvignon which complements the spice of the cioppino sauce.

New Year's Eve

On New Year's Day, we make paella mixta with chicken, chorizo, and shrimp.  We soak saffron threads in hot water for 15 minutes while we cook chicken, shrimp, and chorizo in a paella pan until browned.  Our old aluminum pan won't work with our new induction cooktop, so we're cooking dinner on the grill.

Ingredients

Cooking the chicken, shrimp, and chorizo

We remove the shrimp from the pan and continue cooking the chicken and chorizo with paprika, garlic, chopped tomatoes, bay leaves, and minced onions until the onions are soft.  We add the saffron mixture and  homemade chicken broth and bring to a boil.  We then add bomba rice along with artichoke hearts, peas, and roasted red peppers. 

Add in the tomatoes and onions

Add stock,  rice, artichoke hearts, peas, peppers

Continue cooking

When most of the liquid is absorbed, we return the shrimp to the pan, nestle mussels into the mixture, hinge side down, and continue cooking until the mussels have opened, the liquid is absorbed, and the rice is al dente. We remove from the heat, let it all sit for a few minutes and then serve.

With shrimp and mussels

Finishing up

Done

Served

What a great holiday dish.  We'll have to declare our own holidays occasionally in order to make paella mixta more often!

Happy New Year!  Wishing you all a happy, healthy, and prosperous 2025!





Tuesday, December 31, 2024

Christmas Dinner: Beef Wellington

Christmas Day we make beef wellington, accompanied by green beans with lemon and capers, duck fat potatoes, and a simple lettuce salad.  We start by cooking diced pancetta until crisp and then adding butter, assorted mushrooms, and diced shallot.  Once the mushrooms are browned, we add garlic, thyme, and vermouth and, after a little more cooking, set the mixture aside.  The beef tenderloin is tied into a log, browned on all sides, and set aside to cool.  We make a layer of sliced speck, cover it with the mushroom mixture, place the beef on top, roll the speck tightly around the beef, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate.  Several hours later, we roll out a puff pastry sheet, place the chilled beef/speck/mushroom log on it and roll the pastry tightly around the log.  We then brush with egg wash and bake.

Ingredients ready

Pancetta, mushrooms

Beef tenderloin, speck

Speck/mushroom roll

Wrapped in puff pastry

Done, ready to serve

We start with a cheese dip appetizer with crackers and sliced baguette while we set the table and pull together the salad, green beans, and potatoes.  Accompanied by pink champagne.

Cheese and champagne to start

Table ready

Salad

Preparing the vegetables

We blanch the green beans in boiling water, allow them to cool, then cook them in butter, garlic, and red pepper flakes, adding lemon zest at the end.  The potatoes are boiled until tender, cooled, carefully smashed in our hands until flat (but still in one piece), drizzled with duck fat, and baked with rosemary and garlic.  We  plate and serve dinner with a red Saint-Émilion Bordeaux wine,

Dinner is served!

Merry Christmas!

What a festive and delightful meal!



 



Friday, December 27, 2024

Christmas Eve Dinner: Crab Cioppino

We follow an old family tradition and have crab for Christmas Eve dinner:  hot crab dip to start and crab cioppino for dinner.  First we pick three dungeness crabs (purchased cooked and cleaned at our local grocery store).

Picking the crab

Picked and ready to use

For the hot crab dip, we combine crab meat, grated Monterrey Jack and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheeses, finely-chopped jalapeno pepper, thinly-sliced scallions, mayonnaise, Worcestershire sauce, Siracha sauce, and salt/pepper.  Transferred to a square baking dish and baked until golden brown, the dish is served with crackers and fresh bread.

Mixed, ready to bake

Done, served

To make the cioppino sauce, we sauté onions, garlic, and parsley, then add two cans of San Marzano tomatoes (pureed in a food processor), two cans of tomato sauce, one can of tomato paste, and two bottles of clam juice.  Season, bring to a boil, and simmer for an hour.  We add the crab, along with some shrimp and scallops, and simmer another 1/2 hour,  To finish off, cooked rigatoni (nicely al dente of course) is added prior to serving with a Lebanese-themed taverna salad of tomatoes, chickpeas, bell peppers, English cucumber, kalamata olives, shallot, capers, scallions, baked pita chips, and fried halloumi cheese (with a dressing of red wine vinegar, garlic, oregano, and olive oil).

Ingredients ready to go

Getting started

Adding the crab and pasta

Bon appetit!

Getting ready for Santa

This is the beginning of some fun, fabulous, and tasty cooking for the holiday week.























Tuesday, December 24, 2024

Seattle's Gingerbread Village

Gingerbread Village has been a tradition in Seattle for 30 years.  Located in the lobby of the Sheraton Grand Seattle, the village is designed by local architects and created by the Sheraton culinary staff.  This year the displays depict famous four famous worldwide locations:  India, London, Sydney, and Paris.  Visiting the display is free, but donations are requested to benefit type 1 diabetes research.  Here are this year's displays, some as large as 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall.

At the entrance, the Gingerbread Village Airlines flight information shows the destinations.

Destinations on Gingerbread Village Airlines

We enter and visit this year's locations.

India

London

Sydney


Paris

What fun!

We wish you all a Merry Christmas!