Nibbles & Sips

Fun with food and beverages: recipes and opinions about what, how, and why we eat.

Character Cocktail has a Fan Page!

Sips

Did you think you needed to, like, be a state or something to inspire a cocktail?

I know I’ve mentioned in passing that I do custom cocktail creation and I’ve had a few tasty nibbles, now it’s time to take this up a step. I’ve created a fan page on facebook for the Character Cocktail–the drink recipe based on your personality that comes with it’s own art–and get this, you can actually order a cocktail of your very own right from the fan page!

I’ve even got a few samples of the last 2 I’ve done posted in the gallery over there and will be profiling the drinks over here in the near future.

But for now, if you would be so kind, head over to the fan page and click the “like” button! My immediate goal is to get 25 fans so that I can get the page a user-friendly username rather than the long string of numbers and symbols it currently takes to get there.

UPDATE: Yay! Took a weekend but we did it! You can now go straight to http://www.facebook.com/charactercocktail to place orders on the “Shop Now” page.

Kitchen Fun!

Nibbles

During a manicure at the Nail Bar (literally a nail place that does your manicure at a wood-and-tile bar while you sip wine or cocktails) I offered to let a friend come over one Saturday and we’d spend the day in the kitchen, preparing awesome food and then have a small dinner party with our significant others. And lots of wine.

After many reschedules, we finally had our kitchen day.

Dinner is Served

Dinner is Served!

The Menu

Bacon-Wrapped Artichoke Hearts

Individual Beef Wellingtons with Onion Marmalade and Goat Cheese
Garlic Green Beans
Oven-Roasted Red Potatoes

Crullers with Vanilla Ice Cream

Q arrived just after 2pm and we donned our matching aprons and got to work.

Desserts were first (as they should be) since they needed to be prepped, piped and chilled before being fried. And then they could sit.

This was one of the Q’s requests, as the light and airy cruller is her favorite and she really wanted to learn how to make them herself. It’s a testament to our friendship that I agreed as I really don’t like to fry things and these are basically fried cream puffs, unfilled but topped with a glaze. We used Gale Gand’s recipe (via Food Network Online) which says it yields 12 (but I think a single batch will give more than that, based on our own yield). Well, we figured since it was early and we’d want to snack test them for quality we’d increase it by half and make sure we still had plenty for after dinner.

Crullers, pre-frying

There's a definite learning-curve with piping the dough.

To pipe the crullers you need a pastry bag and a large star tip, which gives you the traditional “tractor tire” ridges. Trace a 3″ circle while keeping even pressure applied to the bag and the same distance from the parchment-lined sheet pan (about half a inch). When you get back to the beginning, stop the pressure but continue to follow the circle around so that the tail hides in the rest of the grooves.

While those chilled, we got started on the next long project: the onion marmalade. Usually a wellington is topped with either pâté or a duxelles (minced mushrooms, etc. cooked down to a pâté-like consistency). Since neither of our guys are big mushroom fans, I decided it would be fun to try something new. A quick search yielded a recipe that seemed promising. It was also time-consuming, taking up most of the afternoon waiting for the liquid to reduce. It did give us time to start frying the crullers, though, and glaze them (tip: for all that’s good and flavorful, add some good vanilla to the glaze.)

frying crullers

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!

I want to try the onion recipe again because it’s truly delicious but almost too sweet (yes, I know, I can hardly believe I typed those words, myself) and I want to make it slightly quicker. Not instant, just quicker.

Meanwhile, we pre-cooked the fillets for the wellingtons according to this recipe. In the past I’ve always baked it just the once and been a little apprehensive about getting the meat done enough while not overcooking the pastry. This method of baking the meat til rare, cooling, assembling and then baking just long enough to heat everything and brown the pastry worked so well I’ve adopted it as my new favorite method.

The side dishes are the epitome of simple: steamed green beans sauteed with garlic, olive oil and a last minute addition of the bacon leftover from the marmalade. The potatoes are steamed first, then tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, sage and rosemary with just a dash of chili powder before going into the oven to get nice and golden-brown.

The last thing to be started was the appetizer: bacon-wrapped artichokes are, truly, as simple as they sound. Wrap half an artichoke heart with half a slice of bacon, place on a foil-lined pan and broil until crispy.

Let's Eat

Let's Eat

Glaze Upon Pastry Perfection

Dinner was lovely. It took us about 4 hours to cook and the meal lasted close to 3. Q & I had finished off a bottle of Arbor Mist Blackberry Merlot while we cooked, served a bottle of my favorite Pinot Evil during dinner and then had coffee and Blackberry Wine from Chautauqua Winery with the crullers and ice cream (did you know Breyers has a Lactose Free version? I’m officially in heaven!).

Eclairs and lamb have already been requested for the next Kitchen Day.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gale-gand/crullers-recipe/index.html

50 Shots of America–Indiana

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The Hoosier State became the 19th state of the Union on December 11, 1816. It was in their constitution that the first state-funded public schools were called for, even if it took over 30 years to follow through with the plan.

What is a Hoosier? I still don’t know, I’ve read so many possible explanations. But Abraham Lincoln (moved there when he was 7), James Dean and David Letterman are examples of famous ones.

When I think Indiana, I think Indianapolis and the Indy 500. It’s the largest single-day sporting event in the world and just underscores the state’s place as the “Crossroads of America.” Cars, highways (more per square mile than any other state) and manufacturing that has fared better in these times of auto-industry downturns and upsets due to specialized skill centers in smaller towns are all part of what keep Indiana moving fast.

Hence….

The Quick Shot

1/2 oz Gin
1/2 oz Melon Liqueur
1/2 oz Sweet Vermouth
Tonic Water

Combine gin, liqueur and vermouth over ice and shake like your rushing down a court towards witness a beautiful 3-point shot. Strain into a cordial glass and top with tonic water.

Melons and grapes are two of the state’s top crops (behind feed-corn and soybeans) but as much as I wanted to use Pepper Vodka to give the drink some speed it was just too harsh so we went with a gin base–it’s got its own version of pep. The tonic water helps bring out the different flavors the same way salt enhances a sauce.

Best Of: Grilling Tales

Nibbles

Later today I’ll be announcing the winner of the What’s New, Cupcake? book giveaways over at Circle of Food (hope you entered when you had the chance). Since it’s a holiday and my schedule always gets a little screwy on these long weekends I thought I’d pull this post from last year on grilling to share.

However you choose to spend the day, I hope it’s a good one. We’ll be grilling brats and hot dogs and having Mom & Molly over for dinner.

* * *

Ah, yes, weather permitting (and even sometimes not), thousands (millions?) of grills across the country will be fired up to char something with family and friends.

My first tip for the grilling-minded is for barbecue chicken and it comes from Mom. She takes leg quarters and marinates them in Italian dressing (straight from the bottle into a large baggie and if you can let it sit overnight in the fridge, even better), to start, and then pre-cooks them a bit in the microwave. Now, don’t shriek, it’s actually an excellent idea since it’s SO tough to get the chicken to cook evenly on the grill without one part getting over cooked or it taking forty forevers. So you par-cook the legs in the microwave and THEN put them on the grill to finish cooking and get that lovely caramelized finish and a good brush with the barbecue sauce of choice.

Did you know that chicken should be cooked to an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees? Now you do. Get out those meat thermometers and make sure the fleshiest bit is up to temperature before serving yourself or your guests. Pork should also always be cooked fully (no pink!) to reduce the risk of trichinosis. Beef and lamb can be cooked anywhere from 140 (rare) to 170 (well done) without too much worry (though why you’d want well-done lamb is beyond me!).

Most recipes suggest throwing out the marinade once it’s been used but you can actually use it for a sauce IF you bring it to a boil and keep it boiling for several minutes (5 is a good number) to “cook” any of the raw meat juices that are in there.

Finally, a true tale of grilling no matter what. It was my high school graduation party and the house was pretty full of guests. The plan had been to grill but the weather was atrocious: rainy and grey. But, the show must go on so Mom changed into her swimsuit and shorts and went outside with an umbrella to tend the grill as needed. Of course, if you’ve got the grill lid in one hand and tongs in the other, how are you going to hold the umbrella? In your cleavage, of course.

So don’t let a little water dampen your party this Memorial Day weekend.

50 Shots of America–Ohio

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Ohio is the 17th state admitted to the Union but it wasn’t quite so simple as it sounds. It wasn’t until 1953 that they were official declared the 17th state retroactively.

As part of the Northwest Territory, an area became eligible for statehood once it reached a population of 60,000. In 1953 the realized there had been no formal Congressional resolution to admit the state into the Union even though President Jefferson signed the act that set Ohio’s borders in February of 1803. 153 years later it would be Eisenhower who declared the date of statehood as March 1, 1803.

That’s some serious bureaucratic back-log!

Despite having a state beverage of tomato juice (at least it’s not milk!) I couldn’t ignore the more obvious theme for this state. Ohioans are considered Buckeyes and most of us have encountered–on holiday cookie swap or another–the confection of the same name. Little balls of sweetened peanut butter dipped in chocolate but leaving a bit of the filling exposed to mimic the seeds they get their name from.

Now, to my knowledge there’s not a peanut liqueur (not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily) but we do have some other nut liqueurs to work with. And since there are two drinks already with the name Buckeye (one a gin-dry vermouth martini, the other a variation on the Irish Car Bomb) I’ve decided to call this week’s drink

the Buck-Shot

3/4 oz hazelnut liqueur
3/4 oz chocolate liqueur
1/2 oz vanilla vodka
1/4 oz butterscotch schnapps

Combine over ice in a petite shaker and shake it colder than lake-effect snow. Strain into a chilled cordial glass.

While I dearly love amaretto, it tends to overpower even in small amounts in these small drinks. Frangelico turned out to be perfect for the taste and, with the addition of the Butterschnapps you can almost fool yourself that it’s a peanut butter ball and not something more akin to Nutella.