December 24, 2017 Christmas Eve Open House

December 24, 2017 Christmas Eve Open House

We started the morning by prepping the shrimp enchilada recipe from Paul Prudhomme’s Louisiana Kitchen Cookbook.

We sautéed tortillas in grape seed oil to soften them and then stuffed them with the filling and then covered them with sauce and grated cheese.

I realized I had forgotten to make the pouring custard for my chocolate dessert, so I made that next.  Here is the recipe:

Willy came by and started putting out the 240+ luminarias.  We save our luminarias year to year, so he did not need to make lots of new ones, but it still was a huge job


I made the mango and pineapple salad next with two or three mangoes, a pineapple, and ½ red onion finely chopped.  We needed chili’s, so I drove to El  Super.  The parking lot and store were full of folks doing their Christmas food shopping.  Serrano chilis were on sale for $.50/lb. so I bought five of them, which was about 3 oz.  I also bought black beans and more red onions.

When I returned home I finely minced two Serrano’s and completed the salsa.

Suzette made the corn chutney by boiling the 8 ears of corn, stripping the kernels, and adding minced red bell pepper.  Here is the recipe:

The syrup did not thicken, so we ended up with a bottle of simple syrup.  This and the inspiration for the Duck Posole and the New Age New Mexican themed menu came from John Sedler’s Modern Southwest Cuisine cookbook.  John used to own a restaurant in Manhattan a Beach, but a few years ago moved back to New Mexico and is now Executive Chef at Eloisa’s Restaurant in the Drury LaneHotel at the corner or Peralta and Palace.

We worked steadily but were not in a crunch.  I sliced the fruitcake and we demolded the chocolate desserts and placed them under glass canopies on the buffet.

I took a nap and then dressed and returned to the kitchen at 4:00.

I sliced and toasted bread slices for the cheese and pate’ and made the mulled wine by adding 4 cups of lemon juice and 4 1 ½ liter bottles of Concha y Toro Explotateur Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot Chilean red.

I then moved most of the spices from the negrus in the mulled wine to another pot to which I added apple cider to makes spiced apple cideR.
I put out cheeses.  This year the new cheeses were a Gesu de Alsacae, a hard aged cheese from Italy named Paradiso, and a Camembert from Normandy.

We filled the serving containers, most of which were wooden.  This year Suzette used her extensive
collection of monkey pod wood containers.

Here is Suzette spooning roasted vegetables into a ceramic covered casserole.

And here is a picture of the table.

   The dessert buffet                                                          Two Romanian wines Aaron brought. 

By 5:30 everything was ready.  About 6:00 Carole, Mark, and Rachel arrived with a crock pot in a heat proof bag full of BBQ brisket and vegetables and a plate full of homemade cookies

Then a steady stream of folks arrived, including Susan Feil and Jonnie Gillespie with gifts, Bill and Regina, Cynthia and Ricardo, Lynn and Michelle, Jill and Marty who brought an amazing platter with a beef pate’terrine, French seeded mustard, chopped onion, and capers, Barbara and Charlie, Peggy and Dick, Robert and Marilyn came bringing a can of sesame oil, and several others.  This year there were about an equal or greater number of Willy and Luke’s friends.  Drew brought his girlfriend Megan.  Rachel and Rosa brought the best gingerbread men I have eaten in years.  Rosa has just finished her masters in Florence on Renaissance female artist self portraits so she was interested in our art collection.  So the most fun I had at the party was showing the collection to Rosa and enjoying her knowledgeable comments.  She said they are opening a gallery in Denver this year.  Prettyinteresting.

The Simbanas came and I shared my Gravad Lax recipe with them as I cut more La


Ed showed up later and told me he was retired now and interested in a company recycling water in California.Will and Willy arrived around 4:30 and lit the luminarias.  It seemed like everyone knew and did their job to perfection so there was very little tension.

Around 9:30 Janis and Tom and their family came, about ten folks.

It was great fun seeing so many friends and sharing our new recipes.

The hit of the party was the foie gras that we served with the golden corn chutney and Mango and pineapple salsa on either warm taco sized tortillas or tostadas.

At 10:30 we went out to walk the neighborhood and wished the Rosales family a happy holiday, Ellie and Tyler, Jody and Loyda, and Jose were standing around the steel brazier with a fire going in front of the house.

We walked three blocks and saw a couple of thousand luminarias.  The neighborhood looked lovely, especially on Park Ave where the City had turned off the street lights and swept the street, thanks to Willy and the Neighborhood board’s discussions concerning turning Park Ave. into a pedestrian only walking street from 6:00 until 8:00.

There did not seem to be as many people out this year, ever though the weather was particularly balmy.  The temperature reached 60 degrees and there was no wind.

We returned around 11:30 and found the young folks had left for Drew’s house.   Everyone went home by 12:00.

We cleaned and put up food for an hour and went to bed.

Bon Appetit