I’m going to go ahead and tell you all the things that didn’t come out quite right – by my lights, not the diners – on the New year’s day brunch menu. First I somehow went brain dead, and instead of pilaf-ing the Hoppin’ John – that is transferring the rice and beans and liquid to a casserole, and baking it in the oven, I put everything back into my big soup pot and boiled it on the stove. So the rice was a bit too soft and clumpy – didn’t have that nice baked rice consistency. And it was a little too rice-y, not bean-y enough. But the dish had great flavor – I cooked the black-eyed peas with leeks and onion and garlic and a jalapeño, and bay leafs and a rosemary sprig, and added two flavors of veggie broth.
Lora Brody rugelach, mini carrot cupcakes, and hazelnut truffles for dessert – I mis-cut the truffles, somehow … I used a half batch of my standard carrot cake recipe, but I didn’t cook the grated carrot – didn’t seem worth it for 3/4 cup carrot, but I think it threw the carrot to cake ratio off. Personally, I didn’t like the cupcakes all that much, but the kids, as I anticipated, liked them a lot.
The grapes all fell off their stems so I had to serve them in a bowl, instead of artful little bunches arranged around the satsumas and clementines. So, I took some bananas to augment the fruit selection, and no one ate them – and I dropped one, and I think I got that particular one as my breakfast banana today, because it was squishy inside.
I made one long rise almost no knead whole wheat loaf with beer, and a white loaf with white wine – figuring that since one of my favorite focaccia recipes, from Carol Field, focaccia from Liguria, has white wine, it’d be good in the bread. The white loaf came out kind of dense, while the ww one rose much better. People still ate up the white faster, though.
I shouldn’t have brewed the last pot of coffee, nor mixed the last can of orange juice – we’re still drinking both of them today.
The shirred eggs, on the other hand, we just about perfect – I put a piece of butter into the bottom of each ramekin and heated them – and then broke in the eggs and poured in the cream and topped them with the grated Parm. So the eggs didn’t stick and ramekins were easy to clean. John, Megan, Mark and I had egg & bacon breakfast sammiches today, and there was even a half left for a Al, that he snarfed within 5 minutes of coming home.
