A BIG hello to my new friend!

I am very sorry to report that there is no Insta-Party post this Wednesday. I was too busy having a fantastic time visiting my friend Jess this past weekend to work one up! However, she did make me a terrific new dip that will be making an appearance shortly. I did pick up this lovely gentleman pictured above during my visit, though. His name is Door McHandlebar. He’s quite charming, and obviously dapper. He did spend the first day of our acquaintance stuck to the side of the husband’s Jeep, but I think he is better suited to this new location. Wishing you a splendid Wednesday!

Insta-Party: Crispy Fried Tofu and Beet-nik Cocktail

You probably think I’ve lost my mind, right? Tofu and beet juice? Who’s idea of a party is that?? I promise I’m not going all health-foody on you. I just happened to have a half block of tofu in the fridge the same week Trader Joe’s Fearless Flyer was promoting beet and purple carrot juice. So I thought, what the heck? I did fry the tofu and that vitamin-filled beet juice has plenty of booze swishing around in it. So this insta-party is really all about how to make health food unhealthy (and delicious).

My friend Megan ordered crispy tofu one day at lunch years ago. I was fascinated that bland, squishy tofu magically transformed into a lovely brown crunchy bite when fried. I’ve been hooked on it ever since. The great thing about tofu is it’s blank-slate quality. It has such a neutral flavor you can use almost any kind of seasoning or sauce with it. I stuck with some traditional Asian flavorings this time, but it’s also yummy with a dusting of sesame seeds and a lemon sauce.

Crispy Fried Tofu, serves 2

1/2 block extra firm tofu, drained

garlic salt to taste

ground red pepper to taste

1 Tablespoon vegetable oil

1 Tablespoon soy sauce, for dipping

green onion, for garnish

Place tofu block on a plate lined with several thicknesses of paper towel. Place some more folded paper towels over the top of the tofu. Place another plate on top and weight with a soup can.  Let drain about 5 minutes. This will squeeze some of the liquid from the tofu and cut down on the splatters when frying.

Cut tofu into 4 even squares. Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan over medium high heat. Dust tofu squares with garlic salt and ground red pepper and place in hot pan. Fry until golden brown and crunchy, about 5 minutes, then flip and fry the other side until it’s golden brown and crunchy. Garnish with fine strips green onion and dip in soy sauce. Eat while still hot.

Until last weekend, I was a beet juice virgin. But it sounded interesting in the flyer and once I saw it in real life, I had to try it. I’m pretty sure this must be the stuff they drink out of those True Blood bottles in Bon Temps. It actually tastes pretty good, earthy but sweet, and strangely like tomato juice (but my tastebuds could have been biased from the color). Amped up with some soy sauce and vodka,  I could *almost* be convinced to do one of those juice fasts. Also, the husband gets credit for this cocktail’s name. Somehow ‘beet juice cocktail’ just wasn’t doing it for me.

Beet-nik Cocktail, serves 1

2 ounces Trader Joe’s Beet and Purple Carrot Juice

2 ounces vodka

1/2 teaspoon soy sauce

Combine all ingredients, stirring thoroughly to combine. Pour into an ice filled rocks glass and enjoy!

Party On! Valentine’s No-Recipe Dinner

It’s February, so that means another addition of my Party, On! series, in which I debunk excuses for NOT partying. Since Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, I figured this was a good time to address the issue of ‘It’s too hard to cook for just two people.’ To that I say, NU-UH! All you need to do is either adapt a recipe or cook without following a recipe. (GASP!)

There are a lot of recipes that can be reduced down to two servings. If a recipe says it serves 4, then prove math teachers everywhere right and use some real life division to cut the ingredient amounts in half. You will inevitably run into issues with this, though. For example, it’s nearly impossible to measure 1/16 of a teaspoon of something. You can also get stuck with a lot of extra amounts of ingredients that you won’t use up.

In our house, most nights it’s just the husband and me for dinner. And most nights, I cook without following a recipe. I know that’s kind of a scary idea. A recipe feels safe because someone has made this before and liked it. It’s tried and true! Without a recipe, how do you know that things will taste good together? Well, I wager that you have been eating food for the majority of your life. Through all these years of eating, you already know what tastes good together. To cook without a recipe, just pull on those tastes that you already know are delicious.That’s how I came up with the menu for this meal.

Now, I am going to contradict myself and outline recipes for the following dishes. But I hope that you’ll use these as a starting point and venture into unknown cooking territory!

Cream Cheese Stuffed Peppadews I’m easing you into no-recipe terrain here. It’s the stuffing technique that’s important, not the precise ingredients

Peppadew peppers from the olive bar at the grocery store, or drained from a jar

Cream cheese

Stuff about a 1/2 a teaspoon cream cheese into each pepper. Drizzle olive oil over peppers and salt and pepper to taste. Don’t like peppers? Stuff some gigantic olives or mushrooms instead. Don’t like cream cheese, substitute any cheese of your choice.

Blood Orange Salad with Feta and Black Olives This is just one example of a sweet, salty, savory salad. Try any combination of fruit, cheese, and acid/salt

1 blood orange per person, peeled and cut into 1/8″ thick round slices

feta cheese

salt-cured black olives, chopped

Place orange slices on plate. Top with cheese and olives.

Pepper-Crusted Tuna over Bitter Greens with Lemon Butter Sauce Fish over something is the technique this recipe demonstrates. The something could also be a starch like pasta or rice, or a cold bed of salad greens, if you’re not a fan of bitter greens.

1 tuna steak per person

fresh ground pepper and salt

vegetable oil

1 head bitter greens (curly endive, escarole, chicory, or frisee), well washed and chopped

Butter

juice from 1/2 lemon

Salt both sides of the tuna then press pepper all over tuna steak. Heat oil in frying pan over high heat. Sear tuna until crusty and done as much as you like (I did two minutes per side because I like my tuna very rare). Remove tuna from pan and set aside. In same pan, add a little more oil and lower heat to medium. Add all of the greens and stir until wilted. Place greens on plates and tuna on top of greens. In same pan again, add 1 Tablespoon butter and lemon juice. Cook until slightly browned and drizzle over tuna and greens.

With a little practice, you can be cooking without a recipe all the time! If you want to read a great book about the no-recipe philosophy, I highly recommend How to Cook Without a Book by Pam Anderson. Instead of jostling for position at the hostess stand with every other couple in the entire world on Valentine’s eve, why not stay home and whip up a delicious, intimate, custom dinner for two? With or without recipes.

Insta-Party: Blood Orange Mimosas and Mediterranean Hummus Rolls

It’s blood orange season! I squealed with delight when I found them in the store last week. Despite the fact that they’re used to creepy effect in the opening credits of Dexter, I adore the unexpected deep color hiding beneath their skins. They don’t taste very different from a regular orange, it’s that blood red hue that makes them so special. We had mimosas beach side a few weeks ago while celebrating my cousin’s 30th birthday, so that sparkling citrus concoction was fresh in my memory. Made rosy with the blood orange juice, these mimosas taste even cheerier. Or maybe that’s just me?

Blood Orange Mimosa, makes 1 drink

Juice from 1 blood orange

Champagne or other sparkling wine

Add blood orange juice to a champagne flute. Top with sparkling wine. Garnish with a ruby red slice of orange.

I will admit, I sometimes purchase ingredients especially for use in an Insta-Party. But not this week. These yummy bites were made from ingredients that were already in my fridge.

Mediterranean Hummus Rolls, 1 tortilla will made about 6 rolls

1 8″ flour tortilla

3 Tablespoons hummus

1 Tablespoon chopped green olives

1 Tablespoon chopped sun dried tomatoes

Lay tortilla flat and spread hummus all over. Sprinkle olives and tomatoes over hummus. Roll up tortilla and cut into rolls about 1″ long. Serve immediately.

Broiled Feta with Grown-Up Gin and Juice

Did we ever have some gloomy weather last weekend! Cold, disgusting rain for 4 days straight with nary a sunbeam to be seen. I can’t complain too much since we tend to have winter pretty easy here in the South, but all that dampness still had me longing for some place warm. I put together this Insta-Party with bright summery flavors so at least my tastebuds could travel to a sunnier locale.  Plus, I needed and excuse to break out the new floral cocktail napkins I got for Christmas. (Thanks, Mom!)

Some cheeses just stand up to heat better than others. Feta is one of them. The trick is making sure to cut thick slices that won’t fall apart. Dusted with a little flour, they can even be fried. It’s a lot easier to broil them, though. You may or may not want a cracker or slice of bread for this. I enjoyed the hot cheese with a cracker, but the husband ate it straight up. A dish of olives would also play nicely with this hot cheese number.

Broiled Feta, serves 2

4 ounces light feta cheese in a block, cut into 2 thick slices

1 teaspoon olive oil

zest from 1/4 lemon

pepper

Pre-heat broiler. Put feta slices in a small oven proof dish. Broil as close to heat as possible about 4-5 minutes, checking often to make sure cheese doesn’t burn. When cheese starts to brown, remove from broiler and top with olive oil, lemon zest, and pepper. Serve hot.

The grown-up gin and juice is really a salty dog with gin substituted for vodka. Don’t ask me why, but the gin makes the grapefruit juice taste grapefruitier. I know that’s not a real word, but I feel strongly that it should be.

Grown-Up Gin and Juice, serves 1

Juice from 1/2 pink grapefruit, juiced rind reserved

2 ounces gin

large grain salt

Pour salt onto a saucer or small plate big enough to fit the rim of the martini glass. Rip off a piece of the grapefruit rind with some pulp left on it and run pulpy/juicy side around the glass to leave a thin line of stickiness around the rim. Dip glass rim into salt.  Combine juice and gin in a cocktail shaker with plenty of ice and {say it with me} shake 100 times. Pour into prepared martini glass and enjoy the frosty salty, sweet, bitter yumminess.

Party, On! – Fondue

I’ve been thinking a lot about this blog and what I’m trying to do/say with it. What it boils down to is I want to encourage and inspire YOU to throw a party! So, in 2012, each month I’ll be sharing a Party, On! post where I breakdown an objection I have heard that prevents someone from stepping up to the hostess plate. This month I’m tackling the number one reason I hear from people in my generation (I’m looking at you 20 to 30 somethings) – I can’t cook. Friends, welcome to the fondue party, where your guests do all the cooking! If you can wield a knife without severing a finger and manage to stir with a spoon, you CAN do this party!

Fondue and I go back a long way. In high school, my friend Rachel and I discovered her parents had not one, but two fondue sets, complete with lazy susans and tiny bowls for sauces. Harnessing my budding hostess yearnings, we set out to coordinate the finest fondue party Reston, Virginia had seen since 1973. Armed with a small budget (from several evenings of babysitting) and the original cookbook for one of the fondue sets, we gathered our ingredients and got to work.

Now, being 16, neither of us were accomplished cooks, but that was the major draw of the fondue party, we didn’t have to be! Now, I’m not going to lie and tell you a fondue party takes no effort. It actually takes quite a bit of prep work, but none of it is difficult. At our tender ages, we were still well equipped to stir together sauces and chop vegetables and meat.

If you have ever been to a Melting Pot restaurant, you already know the proper format for a fondue party: Cheese, Salad, Meat, Chocolate. You also know that 4 guests is a magic number for fondue. Any more, and there is major fork confusion. Any less, and it hardly seems worth the effort! If you’re not lucky enough to own a fondue pot, ask around and someone will gladly lend you theirs. Now, don’t freak out, but the shopping lists and instructions for each course is below.

Cream Cheese Fondue – this is NO FAIL easy-peasy cheese fondue. Plus, it’s delicious. Serves 4.

1 Tablespoon olive oil

1 shallot, finely chopped

1 Tablespoon sherry or white wine

1 cup half and half

8 ounces cream cheese (light is OK)

1/2 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

1 cup shredded Swiss cheese

1 teaspoon lemon juice

1 baguette, cut into 1″ cubes

1 Granny Smith apple. cut into 1″ cubes

In fondue pot, heat oil over medium heat. Add shallots and saute 2-3 minutes until softened. Add sherry/wine and allow to almost evaporate, 1-2 minutes. Add half and half, reduce heat to low. Cut cream cheese into slices and add to pot. Stir until melted. Add Parmesan and Swiss cheeses, stir until melted. Add lemon juice, stir well. Fork those bread cubes and apples and dig in. When all the cheese is consumed, clean the fondue pot.

Salad, nothing special, just to clean the palate for the meat

One bag’o salad

Vinaigrette of your choice

Toss salad and vinaigrette. Serve.

Meat and Mushroom Fondue

1-1/2 pounds meat of your choice, chicken, steak, shrimp, fish cut into 1″ cubes

8 ounces button mushrooms, cleaned and stems removed

4 cups chicken broth

Sauces (recipes below)

Heat chicken broth in fondue pot to boiling. Stab meat and cook in hot broth. Eat with sauces.

No we’re getting to the interesting part of a fondue party – the sauces. Here are a few that I really like, but feel free to try out others.

Sweet, Sour, and Spicy Fondue Sauce

1/8 cup hot pepper preserves

2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar

1 Tablespoon soy sauce

Combine all ingredients and serve. Best with chicken and shrimp

Dijon Dill Sauce

1/8 cup sour cream

1/8 cup mayonnaise

1 Tablespoon Dijon mustard

1 teaspoon dried dill

Combine all ingredients and serve. Best with chicken and mushrooms.

Green Goddess Sauce

1/8 cup sour cream

1/2 cup mayonnaise

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

2 Tablespoons chopped green onions

1 teaspoon white vinegar

Combine all ingredients and serve. Good with pretty much everything.

Chocolate Fondue

Well, I thought I had a recipe saved, but darn if I can put my hands on it. This one from Michael Chiarello seems pretty close to what I normally do, and it’s a lot easier to link to him than go through my decade of recipe notes!

Yes, I know it’s a lot of ingredients and prep, but there really is nothing too hard about putting together a fantastic fondue party. No cooking skills required! I hope if you’ll give it a try and let me know how it goes!

Insta-Party: Whiskey Sours with Endive, Roast Beef, and Blue Cheese

I hear it’s a no-no to talk too much about work on your blog. So, I’ll just say I’m involved in a fun, big, time-consuming project that is zapping a lot of my creative energy. But not in a bad way, just in an ‘I’m way too exhausted to blog after work’ kind of way. Case in point, I shot this Insta-Party two weekends ago, but am only just now getting around to the write up. Once my work project goes live, I’ll clue you in about my part in it and hopefully you’ll forgive me for not starting 2012 with a bang here at the Ready, Set, Party blog!

Onto the party. How do you feel about Belgian endive? It’s a winter vegetable, so you may have seen it in little baskets in the produce aisle. It’s kind of alien looking, being all pale and kind of pointy. Then there’s the added difficulty with pronunciation because inevitably your cashier will have no idea what this tiny weird lettuce thing is. I usually spit out the Americanized EN-DIVE (just like it’s written! Easy to find on that rolling wheel of produce). But sometimes, if caught off-guard, my inner Francophile emerges and I say ON-DEEVE. Then I get a blank stare and a pointed ‘How do you spell that?’

Anyway, don’t let those obstacles stop you. Belgian endive leaves are a terrific vehicle for any dip or filling. And, they’re practically calorie free, for any of you still on the New Years bandwagon.

Endive, Roast Beef, Blue Cheese, serves 4

2 Belgian endives, separated into leaves and well washed

4 thin slices roast beef from the deli counter

2 ounces blue cheese

Drizzle of any old vianegrette

Pull the slices of roast beef into smaller pieces and stuff a bit into each Belgian endive leaf. Crumble the blue cheese and put a little on top of the roast beef. Drizzle each leaf with a little dressing and serve.

The whiskey sour is an easy classic. You can get all fancy like with homemade simple syrups and fresh squeezed citrus, or you can combine one part whiskey with two parts bottled sour mix and be ready to drink in a quarter of the time. Add a cherry if you want to amp up the fancy!

Insta-Party: Dirty Martini and Olive Cheese Sticks

Whew. Was that ever a crazy holiday season! I got to spend a lot of good quality family time, cooked A LOT, and laughed even more. If you also had guests for the holidays, do you end up with a fridge of random leftovers, too? This year, we had lots of cheese and several open jars of olives living in the fridge after we hugged our last guest good bye. Not wanting them to go to waste, they made their way into this Insta-Party!

The dirty martini holds a special place in my heart. It was my drink of choice in 2003, back when ‘going out’ still required extremely tall footwear and somehow every night ended with singing ‘To the window…to the wall’ in the street. Fun times. My friend Matt used to bar tend in those days and would make me filthy dirty martinis. Now I like them slightly less dirty, but feel free to amp up the amount of olive juice and sing Lil Jon songs till your heart’s content.

Dirty Martini, makes 1 drink

Splash of dry vermouth

3 ounces reasonably good vodka

1 teaspoon olive juice

1 olive

Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker over ice. Shake 100 times and pour into a martini glass. Garnish with the olive and enjoy right away.

I’m sort of in love with these because they look so very cool and took so very little effort. If you can spear an olive on a toothpick, you can make these cute bites. They’re a little retro, but tasty. Also, shout out to my mom for giving me these awesome patterned serving papers. Thanks, mom!

Olive and Cheese Sticks, makes 6 sticks

12 green olives

1 slice Swiss cheese, cut into 6 long strips

Roasted sunflower seeds for garnish

Take a toothpick. Poke through one end of the Swiss cheese. Poke an olive next on the stick and wrap the cheese around the side of the olive and poke the cheese again. (This is sounding like bad romance instructions, sorry!) Repeat with a second olive, wrapping the cheese around it as well. End by poking the cheese with the stick. Repeat process with the remaining olives and cheese strips. Spread a thin layer of sunflower seeds on a serving dish and arrange olive and cheese sticks over the seeds. Can be made in advance, covered, and chilled in the fridge.

Holiday Open House…The Food (And how to make sugar coated cranberries!)

We had such a great time at our open house this year. So much fun, in fact, that these are the only pictures I took! About 25 of our dearest friends joined us this year. The house was pretty packed at times, but full of love and laughter and spiced cider. We started at 7:30 PM, so I went ‘light’ on the food. In the past, we’ve had heavier options (ham, homemade brined turkey breast, sandwiches), but I went strictly with finger food this year. But, we’ll start with the sweets because life is short and dessert should come first. The glorious cake above is a Barb Moore cake. It’s my mother’s signature cake, and therefore is named after her. I believe the original name was Irish Cream Cake, so you can imagine why it’s popular.

This, my friends, is mid-west heaven on a plate. My new boss gave each of us (several) pecan kringles. It’s dense and gooey and still flaky and so, so very good. I’m gaining 5 pounds just thinking about it.

I garnished both the kringle and Barb Moore cake with sugar coated cranberries. They were stupid easy to make, extremely pretty, and even tasted good! Do as follows to make your own: Combine 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup sugar in a pot. Heat, stirring continuously until sugar dissolves. Do not allow to boil. Remove from heat and dump in 1 cup fresh and washed cranberries. Stick the pot in the fridge to cool. After an hour, drain cranberries and reserve. Get a big bowl and put some sugar in it. Toss cranberries in small batches in sugar and set on a wax paper lined tray to dry. They’ll harden up and be sparkly and delicious. I’m thinking they would be yummy dropped in some champagne, too!

The rest of the spread was really simple. Pesto pinwheels: Buy puff pastry. Thaw puff pastry. Spread all over with pesto and roll up. Cut into 1/4″ slices, brush with egg whites, bake at 400 for 10 minutes. SIMPLE, but yummy!

Cheese: Buy cheese. Cut cheese. Arrange on platter with grapes. Garnish with an adorable mouse knife given to you by your fabulous gay friend (optional).

Pickled mini-peppers stuffed with mozzarella: Drain and de-seed a jar of sweet mini-peppers and stuff with fresh mozzarella. Ok, these sound easy, until you know I pickled those baby peppers with my bare hands this summer. They are truly a labor of love. I bought so many pints of fresh, sweet, mini-peppers that the FARMER asked me what I was going to do with them! Answer, a delicious pickle. (He’d never even pickled them!) IF you don’t have it in you to pre-plan and pickle your own mini-peppers from Farmer Rosemary Pete, buy a jar of peppadews and stuff them with bits of  mozzarella. If you don’t live in the South and can’t find peppadews, well, try those cute little Spanish Piquillo peppers.

I’m going to have a houseful of guests from now through Christmas and then I am traveling to my grandparents’ for New Year’s, so this is the last post until 2012. I hope you all have a terrific Christmas (if you celebrate) and a wonderful New Year! Thanks for all your comments, support, tweets, pins, emails, and such. I am so lucky and looking forward to a wonderful next year here at Ready, Set, Party! Kisses!

Insta-Party Galore at Serious Eats

No original Insta-Party from me today, folks. I was too busy with a full-fledged party last weekend to get around to it, drat. Luckily, the folks over at Serious Eats have compiled a HUGE list of 60 appetizers that can be thrown together in 20 minutes or less, just in time for the holidays. Hop on over and take a look. I’d say more than half could be done in under 5 minutes if you have the ingredients on hand. Don’t look too closely, though, I noticed some of my favorites I already had in store for future Insta-Parties made an appearance on the Serious Eats list!

Tomorrow, glorious food porn shots of this weekend’s holiday open house spread. No people or decorations, though, I was too distracted by my guests and a baby (not mine! one of my best friend’s). Hope your holiday season is coming together!