Christmas Dinner

[petermarcus]

Christmas dinner, pics and description below:



Every year I usually do a light theme. One year it was "wrapped" foods (the main course being sauteed buffalo and wild mushrooms wrapped in crepes), last next year it was Christmas Red and Green (main course was ostrich with pistachios). This year, it was a castaway theme. Loose, but enough to tie things somewhat together.

Pics didn't turn out as well as I would have liked, but then I had my hands a little full cooking for seven :)

First course:


Baked buttered filo around cold smoked salmon and cream cheese. Red caviar garnish. The idea was the filo would represent the SOS note the castaway wanted to send.

Second course:


Sushi rice wrapped around prosciutto ham, on a bed of prosciutto, with a sweet lime dipping sauce. The idea is the sushi rice and prosciutto represents the bottle with the note in it.

Third (main) course:


Chicken broth risotto mixed with celery and a bit of coconut, alongside lightly spiced pan-seared Chilean sea bass. A sweet lemon sauce was also included, but seems to be missing from the picture. The idea is the risotto with celery represents the island the castaway is on, waiting for his rescue.

Fourth (dessert) course:


Frozen orange mousse, layered over crushed chocolate, with a chocolate coating. There was a little paper sail garnish that didn't come out in the pic too well, but represented the castaway's rescue.

Comments

[sunshine-two.livejournal.com]

"Baked buttered filo around cold smoked salmon and cream cheese. Red caviar garnish."

Sounds luscious.

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

It wasn't bad :) Very light for something that looked so big.

[sunshine-two.livejournal.com]

I'd imagine you wouldn't need much smoked salmon for it to be flavourful. Plain cream cheese? Or did you add some dill? Chives?

Let me know if you want to try some westcoast salmon. I'll mail you down a slab ;) (Don't worry, they vacuum pack the stuff so it lasts for centuries ;) It's actually quite good. Various Law firms give us packages of it every Christmas....lol

Re:

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

Plain cheese. I think the salmon and caviar was seasoning enough.

I've had that Northwest vacuum salmon, very good!

[hisbeauty.livejournal.com]

Beautiful Dinner :)

You can cook for me anytime!

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the four course thing usually only happens at Christmas. A lot of things to juggle :)

[wyld-west.livejournal.com]

I would have been thrilled over the Red and Green theme for Christmas, thinking of Italian or Mexican food... *smack* But ostrich?!?

Beautiful dinner. There is a wonderful intricacy in the things you do.

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

Ostrich is great! It's a red meat, and you cook it medium rare like steak (no salmonella with ostrich). It tastes mostly like beef, not chicken. Yet it has the fat content and calories of turkey. I love it!

[sherahi.livejournal.com]

We all know you got the 'wrapped'/'presents' theme from Martha Stewart's first cook book called 'Entertaining'...its infamous. :)

HOWEVER your interpretation of the castaway theme was VERY original and adorable and unique! How neat! But it looked DELICIOUS! *clap clap clap* well done! Well done! VERY impressive. WOW. :9

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

Heh, I'm not much of a Martha fan. I actually got the "wrapped" idea from a FoodTV episode about a chef cooking for a friend's wedding. Ironically, the recipe that grabbed me was cream cheese and caviar wrapped in smoked salmon and tied with a blanched leek, but I ended up not using that one then. But, two years later, I kinda resurrected most of the ingredients for my first course :)

Re:

[sherahi.livejournal.com]

And where do you think that chef got HIS idea from, eh? Eh? :)

I don't think I've ever had cavier. I should do that sometime.

Re:

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

It's good, but it's very salty and very fishy. Your penguins would love it ;-P

Re:

[sherahi.livejournal.com]

Oh 'my' penguins have eaten salmon caviar and smelt caviar on occasion...that stuff is a huge mess to clean up. sticks on everything.

[teaser.livejournal.com]

I love ostrich too. It's quite readily available in South Africa in all forms...fillets, steaks, mince, kebabs etc. A nice red meat alternative for the cholestrol conscious.

Re:

[petermarcus.livejournal.com]

There's a restaurant down the road from me in Atlanta: 10 Degrees South, that serves South African food, along with some cuisine from the rest of the continent. One of my favorite places. They serve ostrich (wonderfully!) as well as these hugehuge prawns that I melt over :)

What part of ZA are you from? My grandmother's family was from Capetown.

[teaser.livejournal.com]

I live in Johannesburg, which is sort of north/east and inland.

Cape Town is coastal south/west. A very beautiful part of the country.

You should try and make a stop over here on your world travels. The exchange rate is very favourable for people with dollars. I think for $1 you get about ZAR13. A beer costs ZAR6 in a restaurant...that's $0.50.