Happy Holidays!

Well bourgies, I'm off! I'll be taking a vacation from blogging for a bit. Enjoy the holidays, I will be back soon with more recipes for you all to try. And remember, don't eat anything that I wouldn't eat!

Power to the Palmier

Let's contribute to over-eating, carbo-loading, and the consumption of butter by the pound, by giving our guests another starchy yet scrumptious hors d'oeuvres, Roasted Sundried Tomato-Pesto Palmiers. It's another super simple crowd pleaser that is sure to be gone by the end of the evening.

I adapted this recipe from that rolly-polly, queen of butter and all delightful things, Ina Garten. (If you're offended by the previous description just substitute the word "jolly.") By blending together a few choice ingredients, obtaining a pesto to your liking, then carefully rolling the entire concoction in store-bought puff pastry (because who has the time to make the fresh), slicing and baking this log of goodness, you will have a stunning and delicious supplement to any holiday party.

I made a bourgie pesto by combining walnuts (much cheaper than pine nuts), basil, a bit of raw garlic, sundried tomatoes in their oil, parmesan cheese, and olive oil. Remember to season well with salt and pepper, as this will be a filling for a fairly neutral dough. Mix all the ingredients but the oilve oil in a food processor. When you have the ingredients blended, add the olive oil. You just want the pesto to come together, but still remain fairly coarse. You are not making a pesto for pasta sauce, which would be much smoother and runnier. Once the pesto is to your liking, it's time to roll away.

Take a thawed sheet of puff pastry, and roll out to 12 inches square. Spread a generous layer of pesto on top, covering to the edge. Now for folding the palmiers: take half of the dough, and fold to the center; repeat on the other side; now take folded half, and fold toward the center; repeat on the other side. You should have a rectangle of dough, with two folds on each side. Now close the palmier by folding one half of the dough on top of the other. Cut each roll into 3/8 inch slices, place on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet, brush with an egg wash and bake for 6-8 minutes a side at 400 degrees.

The puff pastry will puff and expand. Your house will smell wonderful, of garlic and pesto. And your guests will be thrilled that they are not eating yet another baked brie. This recipe could be made and filled with a variety of spreads: basic pesto, a tapenade of olives, or simply a basic cheese. The palmiers also freeze beautifully, simply place, uncut in the freezer. When you are ready to eat the palmiers, thaw slightly, slice, and follow the same directions for baking.

Jacket Required

For all you bourgies who have holidays parties that you are attending, or throwing yourself, I thought I would do a few posts on easy and tasty party foods to have. If you are tired of those mini cubes of cheese, and if you see one more deli meat platter you just might scream, try something simple and delicious instead.

Mini Jacketed Potatoes are adorable, perfectly diminutive lined up in an op art fashion. I don't know why everything is more desirable shrunken into bite sizes, but it is surely the case with this hors d'oeuvres. Served at room temperature this snack offers the perfect bite of buttery starch. Jacketed potatoes are super easy to make, and require simply a few embellishments to make this appetizer into your basic bourgie fare.

I use an assortment of small, new potatoes for this dish, Yukon Golds, White Creamers, and Reds. I find the difference in flavor of each potato to be subtle, yet the skins, toasted a lovely golden brown, look beautiful lined up next to another. Roast the potatoes whole, tossed with olive oil, and salt and pepper, at 400 degrees. This can take anywhere from 40 minutes to one hour; simply pierce with a fork to test for doneness. When finished roasting, cool the potatoes until just warm to the touch.

Slice the potatoes lengthwise, placing halves on a serving platter. I topped each potato with a mixture of creme fraiche for thickness, and sour cream for tang. Then sprinkle the platter and the potatoes with finely minced green onion, a sprinkling of coarse salt, and a grinding of fresh black pepper. I opted for a traditional topping, but go ahead and get creative with smoked salmon, or blue cheese, the possibilities are endless. Simple to prepare, beautifully presented, and delightful to eat.

Bring Back Bearnaise!

I have never been one for sauces. I usually prefer my meat to be unadorned, placed glowing and alone on my supper plate. That's not to say I don't marinate, or love a good braising liquid, but sauces themselves can often be overpowering. But not bearnaise!

I was just a wee one when I first tasted that smooth, delightfully creamy sauce. I had gone out to a swank, old fashioned steak house with my family. When my steak arrived, there was a sunny blob of a buttery substance languishing over the steak. I asked my mother what it was, and she replied, "That's bearnaise sauce; try it, I'm sure that you will like it." It was delicious, smooth, delicate almost, the perfect pairing to a robust steak.

It had been too many years since I last tasted bearnaise, so I decided to mix up a batch to be served with steak at our old skool dinner. Now granted, bearnaise sauce is not on the list of healthy accoutrements, with a stick of butter and egg yolks, some would even say it is a heart attack in a bowl. But for special occasions, it simply can't be beat. Heart attack? Schmeart attack. It's butteriness in a bowl, and really what goes better with steak than butter. So I say go ahead, bring back the bearnaise. And don't forget to roast some potatoes to sop up any of the remaining juices!

Old Skool

Sometimes you have to return to the classics for dinner, or in this case dessert. Buried beneath a sumptuous layer of rich vanilla pudding are the very pieces of fruit that are so everyday yet so scrumptious-- bananas. A little bit of a surprise for eager diners, it is the banana that brings this dessert from basic to bourgie.

I had never made pudding before; custards, bread pudding, creme brulee, sure, but good ol' classic pudding had never bounded off of my stove. Making pudding yourself is so simple that I'm not sure if I will ever have to use a Jello Cook and Serve again. Rich, smooth and sinful, yet delicate and not overly sweet, this pudding was vanilla, flavored with pure vanilla bean seeds that flecked the surface of the pudding and imparted a wonderful, perfumey flavor.

And the bananas, the very fruit that turned this pudding from ordinary vanilla, into Banana Cream Pudding. Half hidden parfait, half pudding, the bananas were sliced super thin, and then laid on top of the first half of hot, not-quite-set vanilla pudding. After the slices were carefully placed on the surface, more pudding was added. The pudding then rested and set in the refrigerator. The warm pudding cooked the bananas ever so slightly, infusing the dessert with a gentle hint of fruit.

After a few hours of refrigeration, the pudding was topped with a bit of decadent, stiffly beaten whipped cream, and crowned with just a few shavings of toasted coconut. Eating this pudding, I felt like I was in 1955, without the icky Salisbury Steaks. If you have a desire to be back in yesteryear, you can get the recipe for Banana Cream Pudding on the Daily Specials page.

Ricotta Creme on Anything

The perfect weeknight meal. A detox from holiday Americana, but being a bourgie, still luxurious and never ascetic. Pennete pasta with pesto and petite green beans, and the crowning adornment, Ricotta Creme. Aahhh.

During the week, if you are anything like me, sometimes the most you can do is boil some water for a light pasta dinner. But you can enrich a typical pasta meal by the addition of a sumptuous Ricotta Creme with just a few ingredients. Lighten up the ricotta by starting out with a few tablespoons of whipped cream, beaten to stiff peaks. Add the ricotta, and a handful of freshly grated parmesan cheese. Blended until well mixed, with a little salt and pepper to liven up the mix, and now you have an accoutrement to make even the most bourgie proud.

This ricotta creme is light yet luscious, and need not only be saved for a pesto pasta meal. This shock of white creme may be used instead of the traditional parmesan on any plain style pasta: marinara, a la vodka, etc. If the pasta that you serve it on is piping hot, the creme will begin to languish over the pasta, melting soothingly into the main dish. It may not be the most traditionally Italian, but it is wonderful. One try of this creme on pasta, and you'll be wondering what else you can put this delightful mixture on.