New year's eve dinner

The three of us (me with two of my closed friends) created a honest, vegetarian, home-cooked, nine course winter dinner for six. Food made with lots of love and laughter, and you could taste it.

We started with a sweet pear and brie melt, served with a walnut. Very simple to do, just peel and slice the pear, decorate the pear with a small piece of brie, place in the oven until the brie is melted and add the walnut. (Sorry, I forgot to take a picture.)

The cold appetizer was a buckwheat blini served with a caviar of red beets. For the blini's mix 140 gr of buckwheat with 1,5 dl of milk, a spoon of sugar, a spoon of salt, 7 gr of yeast and two egg yolks. Let it rise for an hour. Beat the egg whites and stir with a spoonful of sour cream trough the mixture. Bake the blini's. For the caviar, puree 250 gr of beets (boiled), finely chop 50 gr of walnuts, 2 cloves of garlic and 5 plums (which has been seasoned with 3 tablespoons of cognac). Mix all and add the juice of half a lemon to taste. Serve with a blob of sour cream and a sprig of dill.

For a soup, we made a pumpkin soup with ginger, served in a small wine glass. Originally the recipe called for a butternut squash, which was nowhere to be found so we used a piece of pumpkin instead. First, you saute on medium onion and 2 cloves of garlic in butter or oil for 5 minutes, without browning. Add the pumpkin (about 700 gram), ginger juice (about 10 ml), nutmeg and a little seasoning. Cover and continue to cook for a further 10 minutes stirring occasionally to prevent browning. Add 900 ml of vegetable stock, bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes or until the pumpkin is tender. Puree the soup. Garnish with a blob of creme fraiche.

Next was a small goatscheese tart with cranberry's and thyme. Cut circles (7,5 cm) out of puff pastry, and draw smaller circles (5 cm) to make sure you get a nice edge of pastry on your tart. In the small circle, place a spoonful of cranberry compote, a slice of goatscheese and some fresh thyme. Bake for 5 minutes in a hot oven (200 degrees), let it cool for a couple of minutes and serve with rucola.

The intermezzo was a granite made of (a good) red wine, with rosemary and sea salt. The combination is an explosion on the tongue, so don't serve more than three spoonfuls per person.

Although it does take some time to make, it's very easy. Heat 250 ml of red wine (in our case a gato negro), with 4 tablespoons of sugar and 1/4 tablespoon of sea salt. When the sugar is resolved, add a tablespoon of orange juice and a finely chopped sprig of rosemary. Freeze the mixture for 2 hours and stir with a fork to brake the cristals-to-be. Freeze again and stir every hour until the wanted consistency (takes about six hours in total). Serve with little sprigs of rosemary.

The main course was a bit of a challenge, as it's a dish usually served in our favourite restaurant (Groenland). (Not the simplest thing to try.) But using their recipe we recreated it at home: a parfait of parsnips, served with a gravy of cantharel, a rosti of sweet potato and a ravioli of lentils. Honestly, their chef did a better job for the eyes, but our taste buts didn't notice a difference!

For dessert we made a trio of chocolate: a creme brulee of white chocolate, sorbet icecream of milk chocolate served with a coulis of red fruit and a mocca tart with dark chocolate (also known as "black brick".) The combination of small quantities of white, milk and dark chocolate all with different structures (a velvet creme brulee, a cold tinkling sorbet and a heavy tart) creates an orgasm of the taste buts.

But it's a whole lot of work... first the sorbet and the coulis. Melt 100 gr of suger in 700 ml water and melt 100 gr of milk chocolate au-bain-marie. Mix these two together, cool and pour in a ice machine for 30 minutes. Freeze until dinner. For the coulis, warm red fruit with a bit of sugar. Strain through a fine sive and cool. Second, the mocca tart with dark chocolate: mix 175 gr of flower, 1/2 spoon of baking powder, 50 gr cacao powder, 50 gr of sugar, 140 gr of butter and 3 egg yolks until you have a dough. This dough has to be blind baked (?), with beans and cling film, to prevent burning (180 degrees, 15 minutes). Now you can make the filling, melt 175 gr of dark chocolate au-bain-marie and cool. Mix 100 gr of butter and 100 gr of sugar, add 2 eggs, an egg yolk, 25 gr of flower, 2 spoons of espresso and (last!) the chocolate. Bake for 25 minutes on 150 degrees. Finally the creme brulee: heat 5,5 dl cream, 100 gr of white chocolate and 1 spoon of vanilla extract au-bain-marie until chocolate is melted. Cool. Mix 6 egg yolks and 2 tabelspoons of brown sugar. When the mixtures have the same temperature (!), stir together. Strain through a sive and pour in ramekins. Put the ramekins in something oven-proof (a roasting pan) and pour hot water around the ramekins. Bake for 15 minutes on 140 degrees until the creme brulee is just set, but still trembling in the middle. Cool for at least four hours. Remove the creme brulee from the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes prior to serving, spread a spoonful of sugar evenly on every top, using a torch, melt the sugar. Allow to cool to form a crispy top.

You can't serve a full course dinner without cheese, so we had a small selection of good Dutch cheeses (an old cheese, a young one with nettle, a leftover from christmas and a blue one) served with home-made fig-jam.

We ended with an espresso (or cappucino) and still room for one of the 15 oliebollen, 30 applebeignets, 16 bananabeignets or 8 pineapplebeignets...

Eet smakelijk!

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