Tilapia with Orange-Parsley salsa

Given that I'm on a diet right now (damn you holiday eating), I guess there will be a lot of postings about fish. We've been looking through our Cooking Light magazines and trying out some of the dishes...many of these "light" recipes are actually pretty tasty.

Last week, we made tilapia with orange salsa. It's pretty simple, just a quick sear on the tilapia, and top it with chopped oranges mixed with parsley and olive oil. Our steamed jasmine rice is also flavored with a bit of the juice from the orange and more parsley. As an additional side, we stir-fried some baby bok choy, which wound up going really well with the tilapia.

Hopefully, some of the other Cooking Light recipes turn out just as well.


Stir-fried bok choy with garlic and scallions


Plate with tilapia, rice, and bok choy

French seafood dinner - 1/9/10

Since I had a wonderful dish of steamed mussels at the Fig Cafe late December, I couldn't get it out of my head and I've been wanting to replicate it since. Uly and I decided to go to Marina Food, our local Asian supermarket but unfortunately, they were all out of mussels. Good thing we decided to check out 99 Ranch, which was a slightly farther drive, but they happened to have some black mussels in stock!

Uly didn't really want to have just the mussels for dinner, so we also decided to also get some fish at the market. Having just watched Julie and Julia the day before, I was inspired to make some Sole Meunière, the dish that started Julia Child's love of French Food. Having looked at several recipes online, the technique seems pretty similar among all of them: dredge the fish in flour, cook them in butter, then after the fish is done, add more butter and brown it in the pan, finishing with some lemon juice. Pour the sauce over the fillets and garnish with chopped parsley and lemon slices, and voila, Sole Meunière! It was super good, maybe 'cause it tastes like buttah... :)

Continuing on the Julia Child theme, I decided to make a lighter version of Moules Marinière, based on her recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, all I did was remove the butter (Ah, the sacrilege! Julia probably rolled over in her grave) However, since I'm on a diet and the butter wasn't central to this dish as it was on the Sole Meunière, I figured we could go without it this time. After all, some of the other internet recipes I saw don't have it, and I don't think the Fig Cafe had it for their dish and that was still good. Anyway, it was the wine that was the main flavor component of this dish. This dish still wound up really tasty, and I did not miss the butter at all. Good thing we bought a whole bunch of mussels...I wound up eating a sh*tload of them (so much for diet), but at least I finally satisfied my craving!

For our sides, we had some steamed jasmine rice with scallions, and some sauteed Brussels sprouts. The Brussels sprouts were also inspired by our meal in Sonoma, and I have to say it's turning out to be one of my favorite vegetables. I just like the slight bitterness that it has, and it's a very hearty and filling vegetable.

For the wine, we figure keep going with the French theme and opened a bottle of La doucette Pouilly-Fumé 2005 that Uly got from work (Thank you Keith Richards for your always excellent taste in French wines!) This wine is from the Loire region of France, just across the river from Sancerre. The grape used is Sauvignon Blanc, so it is a great match for fish and shellfish.



Here are some more pictures from our seafood dinner:


Moules Marinière


Sole Meunière


Brussels sprouts

Happy New Year!

Well, this is my first post of the new year, and of course, it's gotta be about my New Year's Eve party! This was probably my first big "fancy" party since my 30th birthday, and I'm glad it was a success.

Since this was a cocktail rather than a dinner party, we just had a bunch of finger food that would go with champagne. We had several different appetizers:



Smoked salmon wraps - These were great "make-ahead" appetizers that were super-easy to make! Uly's mom showed us how to make turkey wraps before, and these were just a variation of that, using smoked salmon as the main protein and putting herbs with the cream cheese. It went perfectly with the bubbly!



Mini-quiches - I cheated a bit on these since these were actually store-bought from Costco. I just wanted to have another appetizer that didn't require too much work on my part, plus it provided a vegetarian option. The meat ones had bacon and cheese, while the veggie ones had spinach and cheese.


Left: spinach/cheese quiches, right: bacon/cheese quiches

Gougeres - I made these once using a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, but they wound up hard and looking like little turds. This time, I used Alain Ducasse's recipe, which turned out great! I was even able to make them ahead and freeze them (made them a week before the party). All I had to do for the party was heat it up for 5 minutes and they were done! I wound up making a few batches to make sure people can enjoy them while hot, which is when they taste the best.


Dates stuffed with blue cheese - This was another old party standby. I first learned to make this at one of Nick and Jinglan's parties, and Jinglan showed me where to find the recipe on Epicurious. I've made it with Parmesan before, but found out that I prefer it with blue cheese, as I've had it at Bar Tartine. For the vegetarians, I left it plain, but the meat-eaters get to eat it the way it's meant to be eaten...wrapped in bacon (everything is better with bacon)! I've used the thick-cut bacon before but it took too long to cook, I used the thin-cut bacon this time and it works much better.


Left: dates stuffed with Point Reyes blue cheese, right: wrapped in bacon

Crab puffs - This was actually Uly's invention. He took our regular crab cake recipe from our America's Test Kitchen cookbook and made them bite-sized. He made them into little balls, and instead of regular breadcrumbs he used panko to give them some added crunch and volume. He made these the day before, and we just fried batches throughout the night.

Lumpia - My mom made this and she's definitely perfected her recipe. She uses ground pork with some water chestnuts, carrots, and seasoning, and wraps them in spring roll wrapper. These are extremely labor-intensive, but they taste sooo good that they're really worth it. She made these in advance too so all we had to do was deep-fry them. They were so good the vegetarians actually ate (and liked) them!

Foreground: crab puffs, background: lumpia

Foie gras terrine - I usually prefer seared foie gras, but that's just too complicated to prepare for a large party, given that you have to sear each serving one at a time. Because this was a larger party, I did a terrine, using the recipe from my foie gras source in Sonoma. The terrine can freeze for months, I actually made this a few weeks earlier when I bought the foie, and just defrosted it for the party. While we were in Sonoma, we picked up some fig spread, which actually went really well with the foie.



Caviar torte - This is another recipe I "stole" from someone else's party. Brian and Rita made this great torte at their champagne party, and I just had to have it again since it goes so well with champagne. We just used the "cheapo" lumpfish caviar from Ikea for this one, saving the good stuff just to eat by itself. I think the stronger, more salty flavor of the lumpfish can stand up to the rest of the torte, Osetra would just be too subtle for this dish.


Cheese platter - but of course, what's an Arlene party without some queso! We had five different cheeses that had very different characters, but all paired well with champagne. For soft cheeses, we had Brillat-Savarin with cranberries (perfect for the holiday), La Corte (similar to La Tur, this is an Italian soft cheese made with cow/sheep/goat's milk), fresh Chèvre (goat cheese), some English Cheddar, and Aged Gouda. To go with the cheese, we had some marcona almonds, honey, baguette, and cranberry-walnut bread.



We had a few different desserts to satisfy the sweet tooth (this way we can keep going back and forth between sweet and savory dishes)!


Bacon brittle - I tried a couple different recipes, the first one was too sticky though, so I wound up going back to my regular peanut brittle recipe and using bacon and pecans instead. I was worried it would be gross, but it wound up great! I guess everything is definitely better with bacon!

White chocolate bark - I made these for Uly since he doesn't like either chocolate or brittle. These are really great for the holidays since they're so festive and colorful. I used El Ray bulk white chocolate this time which turned out great!

And of course, the piece de resistance...a chocolate fountain! I've always wanted one of these, and New Year's Eve seemed like a great excuse to get one. I pretty much went store-bought for most of the dippers since I already had so many other dishes to make, but they turned out great. We had marshmallows, strawberries, pound cake (Sara Lee), cream puffs (from Costco), shortbread cookies (Leah made these), and pretzels. I only wish I set it up earlier so we had more time to enjoy the chocolatey goodness!

We wound up having 18 bottles of champagne/sparkling wine! It was a good thing we had a bunch of bubbly in stock, and a lot of people brought some more. We also had an assortment of nonalcoholic bubbly for the non-drinkers and designated drivers.

Left: Champagne/sparkling wine, right: nonalcoholic bubbly

From our cellar:
- Delamotte Brut NV (Champagne, France)
- Veuve Cliquot Ponsardin Brut NV (Champagne, France)
- Westport Rivers Westport Brut 2003 (sparkling wine, New England)
- Iron Horse Classic Vintage Brut 2004 (sparkling wine, California)
- Peller Estates Ice Cuvee NV (dosed with ice wine, Canada)
- Bugey-Cerdon (sparkling rosé wine, France)
- Roederer Estate Brut NV (sparkling wine, California)
- Schramsberg Mirabelle Brut (sparkling wine, California)
- Segura Viudas Brut Reserva NV (magnum, Cava, Spain)
- Lorina Sparkling Pink Lemonade (nonalcoholic sparkling soda, France)
- Sonoma Sparklers Raspberry (nonalcoholic sparkling soda, California)
- Sun Tropics Sparkling Calamansi (nonalcoholic sparkling soda, California)

From our guests:
- Veuve Cliquot Brut x 2 (Champagne, France)
- Moet et Chandon Imperial x 2 (Champagne, France)
- Robert Hunter Brut De Noirs 2000 (sparkling wine, California)
- Mumm Napa Brut Prestige NV (sparkling wine, California)
- Nicholas Feuillatte NV (Champagne, France)
- Schramsberg Blancs de blancs 2006 (sparkling wine, California)
- Korbel Brut Rosé Nonvintage (sparkling rosé wine, California)
- Martini & Rossi Asti Spumanti NV (sparkling wine, Italy)
- Martinelli Sparkling Cider (nonalcoholic cider, California)

We were cooking for about a day and a half (plus a lot of stuff I made way before), but we had a great time and it seemed like our guests did as well. Happy New Year everyone!