Steak and Eggs

Occasionally, I like to be a little decadent.  Probably more than occasionally.  In fact, in my life, many a common bond has been forged over this shared interest.  So for those of you out there that "occasionally" like to go all out, this breakfast is for you.  No other lazy weekend breakfast says decadence like steak and eggs.  Especially with garlic butter and sauteed mushrooms.

 
It's an easy breakfast (hence made for the "lazy" weekend), if you take advantage of some key Whole Foods'/your market of choice's sliced mushroom blend and garlic herb butter.  I imagine it's not too hard to make the butter yourself, with garlic and herbs, but I prefer imagining that step to actually chopping anything first thing in the morning.  You'll need a package of mushrooms (or more, to appetite), as many filet mignon steaks as you have guests, eggs, garlic herb butter and fresh chives, ideally.


1.  Begin with putting a pot of boiling water on for the poached eggs - add some salt and vinegar to promote egg cohesion, but don't expect much in that department if you're not using a poaching pan (which I detest for its faux tidiness of eggs). 
2.  Next put a dollop of that garlic butter in a pan, let it melt and add your package of mushrooms.  Sautee these while the water's boiling.
3.  Once you're close to boiling, put your steak in a pan with a pat of butter.  Do you notice that any recipe labeled as "decadent" must involve butter?  It's no mistake. 
4.  Slide your eggs into the now-simmering pot of water, where they gently cook for about 4-5 minutes.
5.  Turn the steak once during the egg cooking time.
6.  Plate the steak, then the mushrooms, add a pat of remaining garlic butter to the steak, then throw the eggs on top, after carefully lifting with a slotted spoon and patting dry with a paper towel.



Add some fresh squeezed orange juice and a New York Times crossword puzzle and you've got yourself a morning.

Flying Monkey and Reading Terminal

Bananas Foster Whoopie Pie by Flying Monkey Patisserie

When I talk about my blog with people, I invariably get asked by the more results-driven folks out there, "what are you going to do with that?"  I mumble something about not wanting a second job and that it's just a fun hobby, but I often conclude with the story of Elizabeth, a woman I met at a Philly blogger potluck several years ago. 

At the time, she worked part-time as a baker but otherwise maintained a desk job and wrote a food blog on the side.  Today, she owns Flying Monkey Patisserie at the Reading Terminal Market and has invented such creative items like the Pumpple Cake, a thanksgiving cake combining apple and pumpkin pies and cake.  Together with her baked creations, she has appeared on the Today and Rachel Ray shows.  Now that's doing something with your blog.

At her recommendation, I tried the peanut-butter-and-jelly bar, which I highly recommend for its taking one of my favorite combinations and making it a bit more refined and cookie-sweet, but retaining its comfort food nature.  I also tried the whoopie pie above and the creme brulee whoopie pie, below.

The caramel sweetness was unmistakable and the sugar crystals made for a nice nod to a traditional brulee topping.  The Bananas Foster whoopie pie, though, hit the mark for me -- a subtle blend of a banana bread with a mildly sweet creamy filling.

But it's Reading Terminal, and I can never visit just one store.  I had to pick up curry in the Spice Terminal and swing by Iovine Brothers' Produce, the massive produce market in the "back" corner of the market.  Fresh herbs, pounds of squash, shiitake and portobello mushrooms, onions, and other ingredients to comprise the lunch for 8 I'm doing on Monday came to about $20.  I love this place.  It's normally chaos, but sneaking in on a sleepy Saturday morning is perfect.

Last but not least, I stopped in Chocolate by Mueller to pick up a chocolate brain for my neurosurgery peeps at work.  They also have chocolate hearts, ears, liberty bells, and pretty much anything else you're interested in getting, in chocolate. Including the chocolate onion pictured below on top of the brains.  I have no idea of the appeal of that one.





The Reading Terminal Market is located at 12th and Arch in Philadelphia.  Check out Flying Monkey at www.flyingmonkeyphilly.com.

Roast Chicken with Herbs, Lemons and Shallots

There's something about cold weather that inspires serious cooking.  Armed with a desire to spend the evening cooking and a Le Creuset I had yet to break in, I found myself attempting the quintessential non-holiday centerpiece:  Roast Chicken.  I started with Martha Stewart's guidance in her Cooking School book for timing, but branched off with my own ingredients.  The results?  Best. Chicken. Ever.  I don't eat white meat (I know, I know, I'm the perfect dining companion), and I couldn't help myself from eating it here.  It was that moist. 

First, the ingredients:

8-10 shallots

2 lemons

3-4 sprigs fresh sage

3-4 sprigs fresh rosemary

Salt

1/2 stick butter

Small roasting chicken

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Remove all shallot skins, dice half of them, reserve the rest intact.  Chop all of the herbs, careful to remove herbs from stems.  Quarter the lemons.

I don't know how necessary this next step is, but it gave me some assurance I was giving the chicken the maximum flavor.  Sautee 1/4 stick of butter with the diced shallots and about half the herbs.  Salt liberally.

While those ingredients are cooking over low heat (Le Creuset tells me never to put this guy over a high open flame), prep the chicken by rinsing in cold water and drying.  Then soften your butter for about 10 seconds in the microwave and much like you would butter a cake pan, butter your chicken all over and then sprinkle the rest of the herbs over the butter.  If you want to get crazy (I know I did), combine the herbs and butter and insert into the pockets between the breasts and skin.  Stuff the cavity with the quarted lemons (as much as possible) and remaining shallots.  Drizzle lemon juice over the chicken.

So, unbeknownst to me because I am not a veteran chicken roaster, I think this is "upside down."  Whatever it is, everything about this chicken was juicy and moist.  I cooked it for 30 minutes uncovered, then 25 minutes covered, then 5-10 uncovered again.  You want to get the internal temp (measured at the deepest part of the thigh) to 165 degrees.

But the bonus of roasting?  Pan gravy topping.  While the chicken is resting, put the dutch oven back on the stove and deglaze (a.k.a. add) white wine, about a cup.  Cook on low/medium until reduced by half.  Carve up the chicken (good luck, I struggled on this one) and pour on the pan jus.  Enjoy.

Le Creuset



Le Creuset, 6 quart oval, Ocean Blue

 On the 9th day of Christmas blogging, my father and stepmother gave to me... my first Le Creuset (my first dutch oven, for that matter).  Hesitant about such products due to their pure heft joining my tiny kitchen, I had been eyeing the ocean blue version exclusive to Williams Sonoma with new interest.  It's just so appealing.  Although it may become a permanent fixture on my stovetop, given the lack of space to put it elsewhere, I can't wait to make stews and roasts with it.

Christmas Dinner

On the 8th day of Christmas blogging... I choose to write about my awesome Christmas dinner.

Clockwise from the giant bowl of: mashed potatoes, corned beef and cabbage, sauerkraut, fresh ham, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, sweet potato puree.  Ridiculous amounts of delicious food!  Props to my mother for pulling off the fresh ham, which is challenging to make and tempting to overcook (she resisted!).  She used Paula Deen's recipe, available at the Food Network site, http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/fresh-ham-recipe/index.html, and featuring soy sauce and spices.  Fairly simple, fairly delicious.

Duck Foie Gras and Pork Shoulder

PorcSalt's duck foie gras, La Tur,
and La Brin Camembert

On the third day of Christmas blogging.... DCWB found homemade duck foie gras.  As faithful readers (a.k.a. friends and family) know, I love appetizers.  They're perfect little bites and allow for variety and fun combinations.  So you can imagine my reaction getting the call that foie gras had been purchased and a meal would be built around it.  Hello, Sunday dinner.


See the amazing spread below -- mixed Greek olives, three amazing cheeses, including a La Tur and a La Brin Camembert, two different date varieties, roasted garlic, balsamic vinegar, baguette and water crackers, all highlighting the foie gras.  Served with Sancerre, of course.  

A word on the foie - it was purchased from PorcSalt and it was exquisite, featuring a full-bodied richness with a hint of deeper game flavor than the traditional goose.  Apparently, this local company supports the slow food movement and likes to flavor its foie gras with truffles, white wine and a splash of cream.  Um, wow. On the PorcSalt representative's recommendation, we tried the foie on baguette with a drop of balsamic vinegar.  The tangy sweetness highlighted the flavors in the foie perfectly.  It also prompted combinations of the cheeses, balsamic vinegar and roasted garlic on the bread. 

A decadent hour or two later, the slow roasted pork shoulder was hitting its stride.  Roasted in a dutch oven in broth and a host of spices, including rosemary and sea salt and other fresh herbs, the pork was falling off the bone.  After warming corn tortillas over an open flame, drizzling sour cream and sour cream on the base and topping with roast pork, the result was mouth-wateringly amazing.  And happily appetizer-like with its bite-size goodness.

Who knew that this season, I would add duck foie gras and roasted pork to my list of things-to-be-grateful-for? 

PorcSalt is a "slow food evolution in Bucks County," and can be contacted through http://www.porcsalt.com/.

Signature Potato Salad

Nothing signals summer like potato salad. A staple for barbecues, summer holidays and family outings, it's the perfect comfort food tempered by its coolness. After tasting my mother's potato salad over July 4 weekend, I became determined to make my own potato salad - my signature version, so to speak.

As it turns out, potato salad is much harder than it looks. Trying to make it your own? Well, there may be more peeling potatoes in my future. I started with the ingredients featured to the left, as well as Martha Stewart and Julia Child ideas floating around my head. I also opted against the vinegar or "German" styles. While I love them, there is something to be said for the cold and creamy taste of classic potato salad.

I used about two pounds of red potatoes, hoping they would stand up to the challenge of being firm (they did). I peeled and covered them with water and set them on the stove to boil, despite Julia Child's instruction to go for simmering. I can't pay attention to the boil/simmer dichotomy, Julia, I'm way too busy with prep.

The majority of my prep was spent on mayo. While I adore my mother's version because it reminds me of her and my family, I am strangely averse to mayonnaise (or miracle whip or anything else like that). However, I've had great homemade mayo at fancy restaurants and loved it, so I thought that might be part of this salad. After looking at several recipes, it appeared Martha's was the easiest, so I went with that. It calls for two eggs, a dash of dry mustard, 1 cup each of light olive and a vegetable oil, 2 tbsp of lemon juice and 1/4 tsp kosher salt. Mixing all of the ingredients together except for the oil, you then add the oil slowly while blending (or whisking, as I did, with an electric whisker). I recommend going light on the salt, or adding it at the end to taste. I also used slightly less oil as I wanted a thicker consistency. I ended up putting in about a teaspoon of sugar to take off the salt edge, but this may have been a misstep. All in all, not bad, not wonderful for my mayo-hating palate. Another key is light olive oil -- I used the good stuff and it overpowers the flavor.

All this whisking made me lose track of the potatoes, which were over-boiling (told 'ya I had no time to monitor). I turned them down and let them go until the fork test said "done, but not crumbly." I drained them, but let them sit about 5 minutes before I remembered my mother's trick of running cold water over them to get them to stop cooking. It works!

And now we come to both the easiest and hardest part: seasoning. I ended up going with chopped mild yellow onion (about 1/4 -1/2 cup), bacon bits (the kind on the jar is better for you, but TRB wisely noted that the freshly made ones may have had more flavor) and chopped chives to taste, with a little light sour cream to even out the mayo tang.

The result? I need to work on the spicing, to bring this up from good potato salad to great, and make the mayo in advance so I'm concentrating on the potatoes and bringing everything together. I'm also thinking of using real bacon freshly cooked and browned onion bits versus raw. Any other advice is always welcome, as I'm hoping to perfect the recipe.
Perfection aside, I'd like to think it still fits well into this tailgating meal. Beer, a Phillies win, and fireworks are all good accompaniments, I might add.

Kitchen to Couch

In the last six months since it was published in The New York Times, Michael Pollan's article, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, has stayed with me, acting like a small voice, a call to action. In it, he reports on and explains our society's move away from time in the kitchen actually cooking to instead watching, discussing, and writing about food. If you didn't read it, you should, especially since you're reading this blog and probably have some interest in food writing: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/magazine/02cooking-t.html.

Winter weather stimulates my appetite for slow-cooked, lovingly prepared foods. But am I making them? Nope. Sure, I will host a dinner party (or New Year's brunch), but when it comes to my daily food needs, I am far more likely to defrost a frozen meal or eat out rather than come anywhere near "cooking." Yet I write a food blog, watch cooking shows, discuss food and restaurants with my friends, and generally think about food.

It's apparent I'm not alone. Pollan ponders the disconnect. He reports that our food preparation time has halved since the time Julia Child was on television to about twenty-seven minutes a day, roughly half the time of an episode of Top Chef. (My ratio is more pronounced, with about five minutes of preparation to a full hour of Top Chef watching). When did we trade time in the kitchen for, as Pollan eloquently puts it, "hyperexuberant, even fetishized images of cooking that are presented on screen"?

In case it's escaped you, let me underline one of Pollan's points: today's cooking shows teach you nothing about how to actually prepare the dishes. I've certainly been sucked into Food Network's "Challenge" series about building the largest structure out of sugar or the cake that looks most like a cartoon character. Um, learning about cooking? Not so much. Pollan suggests that what used to be education has now become more about selling -- a brand of chef, a prepared sauce, and whatever else fills the content of the commercials.

Pollan closes on two notes that smack of hard truth. Pollan points out that cooking strikes "a deep emotional chord" in us, an anthropologically identifiable part of our culture, and then throws in this doozy: "obesity rates are inversely correlated with the amount of time spent on food preparation." And cites the studies, admonishing us in the end that the diet to embrace is to "cook it yourself."

So, in January, in this time of acknowledgements and resolutions, I confess that I watch more food television and eat out more than I cook, that I cannot cook a meal without following a recipe, that I cannot remember the last time I cooked for myself after work, and that I want to change. I resolve in 2010 to "cook it myself," not to stop eating out, but to perfect a routine of home cooking that works into my life and is healthy and workable long term. Wish me luck.

Maido and Miso Soup

When I returned from Japan, I was desperate to find a place where I could buy and recreate some of the wonderful food I had there. While Chinatown and Washington Ave. markets do offer some Japanese food, Maido in Narberth features only Japanese food - and is great fun.

Most of the foods offer Japanese labels (although thanks to regulations, an English "nutrition information" sticker is usually somewhere on the package) and finding the place can be tricky (follow the website directions closely), but I found that once I arrived, Maido offers the foodie equivalent of an excellent used book store - someplace in which you could get a little lost browsing.

Here are some highlights of what I purchased. My mother was coming for Easter and hesitantly agreed to try an all-Japanese meal (I sold her on the idea that it would be more healthy than ham and potato salad, which it is, although that's not saying much).

Onto miso soup! I pulled these recipes from http://www.epicurious.com/, although Martha Stewart's new cookbook also features them in almost identical form. Apparently, there are few ways to make it. Here's what you will need:

1 oz. kombu (kelp)
1 cup katsuo bushi (dried bonito flakes)
1/4-1/2 cup dried wakame (seaweed)
1/4 cup shiro miso paste (white fermented soybean paste)
1/2 pound soft tofu
1/4 cup thinly sliced scallion greens

Miso soup starts with dashi, "Japanese Sea Stock." To make dashi, you put about 1 ounce of kombu, or dried kelp, into 6 cups of water and bring to a boil (pictured right). Once boiled, you add 1 cup bonito flakes (pictured left) to the mix, remove from heat and let stand for 3 minutes. Bonito flakes are a type of dried fish (skipjack mackeral, according to one website) and have the consistency of flaked prosciutto - a bit oily. They're also very pungent. (My cats go a little crazy when I open the bag). After three minutes, strain all of that stuff out with as fine a sieve as you can find. I strain mine twice, because I find the bonito to be just that strong.

And congratulations - the hardest part of making miso soup is now over for you. Once you have the stock, simply heat it up (if it's not hot already), take a cup out and mix with a 1/4 cup of miso shiro paste to blend it (pictured right). Add the blended mix to the stock, along with 1/2 pound soft tofu cut into cubes and thinly sliced scallion greens.
If you'd like seaweed in your miso, soak 1/4 cup of wakame in a warm water about an inch over the wakame until it is reconstituted and add that to the soup, too.

And voila! Miso soup, ready to serve. I think it tastes better than most restaurants to make it fresh, but it's not too different from what you might get. It's also nice to add the ingredients according to your taste preference.

Thanks to my mom for helping me with the pictures and being such a supportive taster.

Maido is located at 36 N. Narberth Avenue, Narberth, Pa., http://www.maidookini.com/.

The Perfect Omelette

It only seems fitting that now, mere weeks before my 35th birthday, I have finally mastered the art of making an omelette. It came to me suddenly -- I no longer had to push in the cooked egg on the periphery, creating a swirling maze of overdone and done egg. Rather, I could use patience, let everything cook evenly, and, with a little bit of confidence, flip the whole omelette straight to perfection.

I share these tips with you, with some trepidation that maybe you, and everyone else, already knows these things. Nevertheless, here goes. Start with three eggs. De-shell (you knew that one, I know). Beat them in a bowl, with a fork, until they achieve a uniform consistency. In the meantime, melt a slab of butter in a non-stick pan, being careful to make sure the butter covers all of the pan and as much of the sides as possible.

Like so. When the butter is melted and is covering the entire pan, dump the three egg mixture into the pan. Turn the heat from high to medium. Let the eggs start to set a bit and then -- this was my revelation, so brace yourself -- start swirling. Initially, this will look a lot like the first picture, above. The idea is to get everything evenly cooked. Swirling the uncooked portion on the sides, around the cooked, will help this along. Don't be panicked by air pockets; they work themselves out. When you get to something that looks a little like this (in the course of less than a minute),

start swirling enough to loosen the entire omelette from the pan. Here, you're judging whether or not it's solid enough to flip, to finish off that last little uncooked portion. Try to have as much cooked as possible before your flip. The trick to flipping is to, while holding the pan handle, push forward very quickly, so that the omelette starts to lift, then immediately jerk your hand back, so the omelette flips back on to the plate. Practice with sauteing vegetables if it's easier. Confidence is key. As are two cups of coffee.

You may want to ignore what appears to be, but no one has yet to definitively confirm is, the spattering of raw egg around the pan post-flip. I have no idea where that could have originated, and am sure has nothing to do with prematurely flipping the omelette before it was cooked enough. Nothing to do with that. The important thing is, what remains of my flipped three eggs look very pretty in the pan (and, for the record, did land in the pan).

The next part is all up to you and is all, mercifully, downhill from here. I wimped out and used my pre-grated bag o' cheese from the store, and ended up with a straightforward cheese omelette. I enjoy putting some freshly cut chives on top, with a little salt. Variations on the theme can include yesterday's roasted vegetables, or mixing in fried onions into the initial egg omelette and adding lox as the filling, or whatever sounds good to you.

Okay, it looks a little overdone to me, too. I've got a couple of weeks until my birthday, I'll work on it.

Sunday Dinner

So I was invited to a potluck Friday night. I immediately began to research recipes for covered, make-ahead, transportable dishes. As Friday night drew nearer, however, it was clear that "planning ahead" would involve "ordering a platter." (Thanks to Genji at Whole Foods, where sushi platters are pretty inexpensive). I did manage to get as far as purchasing the groceries for said covered dish, though, and come to think of it, I owed a few people a home-cooked meal. The concept of Sunday dinner began.

Inspired by recipes from http://www.epicurious.com/ and Martha Stewart's Quick and Healthy Cookbook, I had initially chosen a butternut squash, goat cheese and hazelnut gratin. But now that it was no longer my one covered dish, I had to figure out a good main dish. I gave some long, hard thought to attempting Thomas Keller's roasted chicken recipe from the Bouchon cookbook. Other home cooks had commented to me that this recipe was very easy! and delicious! I've eyed it a few times. This time, I sat down with it. Over coffee, in fact. I read about the brining, the sitting, the twine, the resting, and the jus. I associate brining with Thanksgiving and, honestly, other cooks. I just wasn't feeling it. Something about how I somehow make two small chickens or how Keller comments that at home, he just salts the thing and puts in the oven (well then, why bother with this brining craziness?). I was deterred.

I settled on the rosemary and garlic roasted chicken recipe from epicurious. As the reviewers commented, it was actually pretty easy. Step number one that made it easy was having the butcher, not me, butterfly the chicken, making for minimal raw chicken handling. Always a good thing. From there, you make a paste of garlic, rosemary, olive oil and juniper berries (which Whole Foods does not, in fact, carry, rendering them irrelevant to my little world), salt and pepper. Via a spreader, you slather the paste onto (and into) the chicken and roast over sprigs of rosemary. For an hour or so, depending on the size of the chicken. Which means you can essentially prepare the chicken in the casserole dish in the morning and worry about later. Ditto for the butternut squash recipe, which I will try to avoid copywright infringement by not reciting here. Together with a happy citrus tarragon salad, I have to say that for perhaps the first time ever, I was a cool and collected hostess, having already assembled the salad and simply pulling two casserole dishes out of the oven to serve.

As for Thomas Keller, well, someday.

Appearances to the contrary, those are really hazelnuts, not olives, in the butternut squash gratin in the above picture.

Lemons and Shallots

Faced with the happy task of hosting a shore house for a rotating list of good friends, I knew I wanted to cook. A lot. And so I have. Perhaps it's the spring, but the recipes I have selected seem to involve lemons in some form, and shallots. Sometimes together. It's crazy fun.

Meal 1 - Lemon and Parsley Chicken with asparagus couscous. Born from my intrigue with pan sauces, wherein the pan remains of the sauteed chicken are used for their flavor, I stumbled upon a page of recipes for pan sauces in Cooks Illustrated. This one, which also calls for capers (Ocean City grocery stores seems devoid of capers for some reason), was also great without. To make it, after sauteing chicken cutlets pounded thin, add oil, minced shallots, chopped fresh parsley, butter, 1 teaspoon flour, 3/4 cup chicken broth, and 2 tsp. lemon juice. The shorehouse is also devoid of measuring spoons, so I suggest winging the ingredients. It still turns out well. Simmer until reduced and serve over the chicken.

Meal 2 - Shrimp and scallops with fresh herbs and lemon risotto. Thanks to Martha Stewart's Quick and Healthy Cookbook (now rather old, but still one of my all-time favorites), I discovered a risotto recipe that isn't quite as heavy as most risottos. This one calls for the usual leek sauteed in butter, then arborio rice with a 1:2 ratio to broth, but then 1 tbsp. lemon zest with 1 tbsp. lemon juice and fresh chives added at the end with a little more butter (it is, after all, Martha Stewart). No cheese. It's pretty amazing. I sauteed shrimp and scallops and then, when all were cooked (about 2 min. on each side), tossed them with fresh tarragon, basil, and, of course, lemon juice. Fresh and delicious.

Other recipes I've tackled have included eggs benedict (fresh lemon juice) and smoked salmon butter (look it up on epicurious.com, it's wonderful with pumpernickel and features shallots and lemon juice). There have also been a few non-lemon/shallot recipes and a few amazing co-chefs (thanks, guys!). In fact, my chile rellenos friend, who expertly made fresh guacamole for burritos, was surprised that the Martha Stewart recipe lacked lemon juice.

As it turns out, cooking in a kitchen roughly the size of my apartment that overlooks the ocean is pretty pleasant, regardless of the outcome. I'm attempting lamb tonight and perhaps some combination of shallots and red potatoes. Wish me luck.

Holiday Party Hors D'Oeuvres

If you or anyone you know is vaguely affiliated with the corporate world, odds are good that you will find yourself at a holiday party this month. And, if you're like me, you'll find yourself eating appetizers to compensate for your spending your dinner hour at said party. Odds are also good that you're not paying for these tasty-but-small treats. So let's all take a moment to be grateful for the free food and, if you're lucky, the open bar. Now that we've taken that moment, let's dissect, shall we?

Classic Standards.

Miniature hot dogs, a.k.a. Pigs in a Blanket. These usually butlered hors oeuvres have become so beloved, I've found them served everywhere from the Union League to the American Legion. Or at least places like those places. The cliche is truth however; these morsels deliver the right mix of pastry dough and comfort food, without sabotaging your teeth or shirt.

Other pastry items include mini-quiches and spanokopita, the latter of which I place in the "items to avoid" section. Absent the propensity of spinach to get stuck in your teeth, however, I'm generally a fan of pastry-wrapped items because, let's face it, anything wrapped in buttery dough is generally good. And, even better, you can easily tell when it's not; the dough appears too brown or dried out.

Shrimp Cocktail. Another offering that's reliably good and again, you can tell when it's not.

New Favorites.

Lamb Chops served by the chop. Although I made the mistake of topping with mint jelly on one round (jelly which shortly ended up on the floor), the idea of eating something by the chop was smart and different, and aided by the medium rare tender meat that allowed for biting off reasonable size pieces.

Boneless Short Ribs. Delicious small bites of pork make for a wonderful appetizer substitute for a meal.

Smoked salmon open sandwich bites. Delicate layers of salmon, butter and whole grain bread topped with capers make for the perfect bite.

Caviar bar. Although this still remains a myth for me, my friends tell me it's an amazing offering. Try to get invited to the right wedding for this one.

Comme ci, comma ça.

Crabcakes. In tiny form, many mistakes can be forgiven with this appetizer. As long as the crab flavor comes through somewhere in this popped bite, all is well. Being from Maryland, however, my expectations for crabcakes outside of Maryland remain low.

Carved Beef. Often less than tender, and therefore mostly inedible unless you have the right fork and knife, carved beef can be more trouble than it's worth. If done right, and with enough tables to sit, the beef can be wonderful however. Proceed with caution.

Items to Avoid.

Bruschetta. This garlic (always a no-no at a corporate party) and tomato mixes atop toasted bread spell trouble. The second I bite into one, the remainder of the topping usually falls off the bread and onto the place it can do the most damage -- usually a white shirt.

The cheese and cracker plate. Simply because there are usually more interesting offerings than these snacks, unless of course you know your cheeses well enough to identify them and recognize when the extraordinary is being served. I don't, sadly.

Skewered chicken with peanut sauce. Usually very hard to eat, especially if you add the peanut sauce (which in my mind, makes the chicken and is usually necessary for the chicken to taste good). Again, the propensity for this going badly for you is high. Avoid.

Best of luck.

Let them eat steak

With the advent of very cold weather comes my need to hibernate. And eat a lot. Thanksgiving usually signals my taste buds to re-orient to rich starches, from mashed potatoes to pie. In an effort to pick my decadent meals wisely, I've gone back to my favorite diet: low carb. The only diet allowing unlimited portions. Sure, if you cheat, you've then eaten the type of meal typically reserved for midwestern farmers, whose manual labor allows them to burn off about 3000 calories per day, but if you don't cheat, the results can be good.

Which brings me to steak. Whole Foods and DiBruno's offer excellent cuts of my favorite, New York strip. Whole Foods offers "dry aged," which I actually find has a better flavor. While you're at DiBruno's (or your favorite upscale grocery store), don't forget to pick up soppressata and fresh mozzarella -- after all, you're on a diet, you shouldn't feel deprived. In any case, if you're not up to cooking or eating a three inch thick steak, any other New York strip will do; just watch that you pick one without a line of cartilage running through the middle. I am not a huge fan of Omaha Steaks, whose taste and size pales in comparison to Whole Foods, for roughly the same price.

I'd like to think I've perfected the preparation: sauteed. Melt a healthy slice of of butter (carb free! eat all you want!) in a standard frying pan (non-stick for easy clean-up, regular if you're going to do something fancy with the browned bits) and wait for it to bubble a bit. You should be on medium high heat. Add the steak. If more patient than I am, you should hear the crackling of meat when it hits the pan, a signal that the butter was sufficiently hot. If not, it's still okay. Partially cover for three to four minutes. I usually leave the lid "ajar" by about a centimeter so the meat doesn't steam, but you may not even need the lid if your steak is relatively thin. Turn the steak over and partially cover for three to four minutes more. Again, if patience is your virtue, after you remove the steak from the pan, let it sit 1-2 minutes to finish up. This gets you to medium rare, the temperature at which, if you bought an expensive steak, you should be eating it.

Then top. You can be really lazy and enjoy the saffron or garlic herb butter sold by Whole Foods. Melted on top of the steak, it's hard to match. Or get crazy and prepare a quick sauce of diced, sauteed shallots and reduced red wine in the same pan. If you're feeling decadent, sprinkle some Roquefort over the top. Dieting never tasted so good.

Pumpkin Soup Update

Perhaps the key to a good dinner party is going with the flow. It's a practice that I've heard about, but never quite got the hang of. However, equipped with a burnt arm, an ambitious menu, and one ever-positive helper in the form of my cousin, I'd like to think I did just that. Guests arrived while my cousin and I were still cooking (as it turns out, a recipe that will produce 50+ blinis cooked in batches of 8 max takes a long, long time), but I think it was okay. You can't really wrap a slice of filet around a lump of crabmeat, but it didn't stop me. The hollandaise sauce approached solid form as it waited to be dolloped, but I plowed ahead. About an hour after the party was scheduled to start, I took off my apron and sat down.

And the soup? I warmed it up but it took a sideline to the hors d'oeuvres. In fact, a few people were too full to eat it. But it was good.

My lessons learned: 1) creme fraiche is better spread thin on bread than something savory like a sweet potato pancake; 2) everything you have planned to make will take double the time you allotted for it; 3) next time, explore the "chafing dish" option; 4) have a bar at the ready with an ice bucket for guests to help themselves; 5) give serious consideration to the concept of catering; and last but perhaps more important, 6) remain grateful for your friends.

All in all, a great evening.

Pumpkin Soup Meltdown

Never bite off more than you can chew. All of us have recurring lessons that we never quite learn or process and this particular cliche is my cross to bear in the kitchen. The lesson was brought home last night in my four hour foray into pumpkin soup.

Harvest Pumpkin Soup, to be exact, a recent Martha Stewart recipe. My approach to cooking is often to research recipes (preferably on epicurious.com or any site with reader feedback), and then modify them with anything I think might improve the dish. With guests coming on Friday night (and my working during the day), I needed something to make in advance. And I trust Martha's judgment, which often errs on the side of adding butter. This approach really works, by the way.

My menu includes the pumpkin soup, surf and turf appetizers consisting of steak, crabmeat and hollandaise (with a shout-out to Top Chef for the inspiration), sweet potato pancakes with creme fraiche and caviar, and good bread and herbed butter for the soup. My Chiles Rellenos friend is bringing dessert. Pumpkin cocktails, spiced sweet potato chips and dip and caramel popcorn complete the meal. Thanks go out to Whole Foods for carrying sugar pumpkins, the state store for miraculously carrying pumpkin liqueur, Caviar Assouline for not just caviar but also creme fraiche, and DiBruno's for their recently expanded meat and seafood selections. I've managed to collect decorations, carve a pumpkin and purchase an extra chair.

So back to t-minus two days until I will have officially bitten off more than I can chew. I made the classic mistake of not reading the recipe before beginning to cook. Which means, as you would predict, it was quite possibly the hardest recipe short of making bread. Martha asked me - yes, I began to take it personally - to make pumpkin broth first, which then is added to a more typical soup puree base. Of course, the recipe read something like this: 1. remove the seeds and stringy fibers from two sugar pumpkins. (done! threw those right in the trash!) 2. bake the pumpkins for 50 minutes. (they're in there! baking away!) 3. take the reserved seeds and fibers and begin the broth. (huh? really? the ones in the trash?)

After carving up additional pumpkins for the sole purpose of obtaining said seeds and fibers, and after chopping and cooking the numerous turnips, potatoes, and parsnips, I then was instructed to blend the mixture in the batches. A couple of blends went well and then things got ugly. The soup was probably a little too hot and I was a little too tired, but the lid popped off and pumpkin soup dribbled forth. Which would have been a good wake-up call, if I choose to heed that warning. I didn't. I only became less patient. The next batch I chose to blend more without any wait. Resulting in a pumpkin soup explosion. Over me. Over the kitchen. Over the cats. Later, as I discovered, over the ceiling, if that's even possible.

Prompting the meltdown. The Patient Boyfriend ("T.P.B.") fetched ice. I announced, "that's it! I'm not making dinner! I'm not finishing the soup! I'm done!" There may have been tears. T.P.B. tasted the soup and thought it was good. I modestly protested and was not so modestly pleased. Over the next two hours, I managed to clean the explosion, apply lidocaine and aloe to my arms, make dinner, eat ice cream and watch a scary movie.

And the dinner's back on. Wish me luck.