caro:
Happy 2011! So on New Year’s Eve I had a couple of people over to my apartment for a casual pre-revelry dinner, which while it may appear to be an excuse for Maya and me to pretend to be the Real Housewives of Brooklyn Heights and wear the aprons we got on sale at Anthropologie, was actually pretty delicious.
So delicious that we didn’t really have time to take pictures. But here’s what we ate:
Appetizer: butternut squash soup (recipe is from Real Simple, which you can nab pretty easily along with the ingredients on FreshDirect. I don’t own a blender so I borrowed one from Mr. Francis Kidder up the road. Hey Kidder, it’s all clean and ready for you to take back!
Main Course: venison stew with morels, out of a desire to cook something wintry yet decently classy. We ordered venison stew meat from D’Artagnan and it turned out super juicy and tender, which was a huge relief since multiple people had warned me that it’s really easy for venison to turn out terribly dry. We encouraged guests to bring either a zinfandel or a double bock for pairing.
Side: maple Brussels sprouts with bacon, a recipe which would’ve been better if we’d decided to break with the steps and roast the Brussels sprouts in the oven with olive oil and salt rather than chuck them in the microwave.
Dessert: Antarctic Scotch ice cream, which makes me very proud since it’s my first “original” flavor. I’ll share the recipe in a separate post for those of you who may be interested. What I’ll say now: This is the second time that I’ve made a liquor ice cream for a party only to have a guest discover the remains of the bottle of booze (which is most of it, because 2 quarts of ice cream typically doesn’t require more than a half a cup of whatever) and get mega sloppy. Thankfully, it wasn’t absinthe like last time, so no pillow battles ensued.
Reblogged from caro|11 notes