Food I like

This winter season I find myself turning more and more to filling comfortable food. One of my recent go-to snacks is something that I used to have a lot between the ages of twelve to sixteen and then completely forgot about: Eggs in a hole.



I can't think of a breakfast more satisfying than a well cooked egg in the middle of a golden, buttery piece of brioche, the yolk running when you cut into it. I made myself one of these for breakfast yesterday morning adding truffle butter instead of regular butter and it was fantastic. Now I need to figure out a way to add on to this so I can serve it at a dinner party.

Ideas

I haven't thrown a large scale dinner party in a while so I figure I'm just about due for an epic one. With that in mind, I'm probably having my biggest one yet on November 10th and am currently in the process of developing ideas for food and drinks.

I've come up with a good amount but I find that when I think up half of these things, I'm not buy a computer and sort of lose track of my thoughts.

I also have so many option in terms of food for this dinner that I'm having a hard time narrowing them down. So, in the spirit of making this an interactive dinner party in terms of guests and eating, I'm going to post my thoughts and e-mail them out and let the guests vote to determine the menu.

Here's my current list of ideas minus several that have entered and left my thoughts over the past few days. (This is in very rough form)





lightly cured hamachi crusted with black sesame ginger scallion sake puree

ceviche cured in tangerine juice red onion, peach

fennel crusted halibut, pesto, sweet corn

maple marinated flounder pecans, pomegranates

lamb chops, Israeli couscous, crispy mint and savory, roasted Japanese eggplant

short ribs potato beet puree pea greens

cod, pea shoots, golden raisins, pine nuts

bacon and apple skewers, maple syrup

duck, hazelnuts, squash, sage, truffle honey

scallops, apples, chorizo parmesan vinaigrette

ricotta cavatelli blistered peppers, garlic rock shrimp, spicy orange

herb gnocchi, brown butter, fried sweetbreads

scallop ceviche horseradish mango puree edamame

pork belly and 30 minute scrambled eggs

pork belly, brioche toast, fried quail egg

apple cider donuts, pralines, maple ice cream

fried pound cake, frangelico strawberries, espresso ganache

Chocolates

Roasted mushroom salad

Goat cheese and acorn squash cigars

Potato goat cheese fritters, fall vegetables

Apple crumb cake, calvados ice cream, toasted almonds

Champagne granite, raspberries, white chocolate

Greenmarketing

Shopping at the Union Square Greenmarket recently has been more fun than ever. I started seriously cooking about a year ago and for the most part didn’t really know what I was doing. Since then however my knowledge of food has grown by leaps and bounds and now, I can actually think of ways to use many of the Greenmarket ingredients that I see. I don’t even have to go in with a plan or shopping list anymore. I feel like a kid in a toy store if the toy store had lots of perfect food products that can be eaten.

I guess I’m writing about the Greenmarket because I actually found myself there twice this weekend and I might even go again on Monday morning. I went on Friday because this past Thursday night I made the impromptu decision to have people over for dinner on Friday night. I wanted to make something with mostly Greenmarket ingredients that would be light and simple—its starting to get too warm for multi-course tastings.

I came up with these—


This is a salad of mixed greens, frisee and sorrel with toasted hazelnuts, honey chevre croutons (The honey chevre people are there on Fridays and the honey chevre is extraordinarily good) and a raspberry/mustard vinaigrette.



This is Sea Bass with caramelized lemon served over sugar snaps, baby carrots, and red and green tomatoes all tossed with lemon oil and Muscat vinegar.




We then finished the meal eating wild strawberries dipped in chocolate sauce and leftover calvados ice cream.