Anya's Old New Year Party

Hello everyone!  Hope you all had a nice month of January and good start to 2011.  I've been just super busy with my day job and can't say too much fun. I've not even been up to the mountains for snow boarding and it's already Feb. 


Russians have a tradition and celebrate what's called Old New Year on January 14th.  My Russian friend Anya had a party at her house for this occassion.  She cooked up storm and made these amazing dishes.

Beef Roulade

Chicken Roulade

Potatoe Gratin

Orzo Pesto Salad

Tomatoes with Mushroom Risotto

Carrot Salad

Roasted Red Pepper

Parsley Drizzle Sauce

Marinated Olives

White Bean SpreadHomemade Crackers

Fresh Cut Fruit

Coconut Macaroons

She even made these cute little table signs to tell what the dishes were. Seriously, how cute is that.  It was a fun night of friends and great food!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2011 my dear friends and thank you for paying attention to my little world of food!  It's such a passion of mine and I love very minute of it.  This holiday season has been so wonderful baking and spending time with all the people I care about. 


I expect 2011 to be another tremendous year of food for me.  I hope to grow in my food techniques, expand my creativity and design of food, and make it more serious then the hobby it has been.  Expect more goodies my friends.  I will be eating more healthy but it shouldn't stop my baking.  :)


New year's eve was a great start!  My friends Hamed and Pascale hosted a night of fabulous food, friends, and good times.  I made the desserts for the night of Red Velvet Cupcakes and Pecan Cranberry Bars.   Other folks brought some delicious food and of course Hamed cooked some mean meat and had the drinks flowing.


Red Velvet Cupcakes

Pecan Cranberry Bars

Veggie Crudites and Dip

Caesar Salad

Caprese Salad
I love the little cheese.  Always find the cheese is a bit much in this salad so the mini ones were perfect

Spanikopeta
I always buy these frozen so was good to try some home made ones.

Chicken Wings

Taziki Yogurt Sauce

Lamb
Sometimes I wish I could eat meat.

Veggies
Always thinking of of us veggies and vegans.

Steamed Rice

Oatmeal Cookies

Hamed the gracious host cooking away!

Thanksgiving Dinner

Each Thanksgiving and also for Christmas dinner, my siblings and I go to my parent's house.  My mom usually makes the Turkey or a Ham as main entree, and my bro, sis and I make all the sides, appetizers, and dessert.  


My contribution to the Thanksgiving dinner this year was appetizers of Chicken and Tofu skewers with Miso glaze, Mashed Potatoes, Pecan/Cranberry Pie, and Thanksgiving Green Velvet cake (more on this later), and some roasted garlic for the rolls.


Chicken and Tofu Skewers with Lemon Miso Glaze
I usually make a brie, mushroom, puff pastry baked appetizer, and a spinach dip, but this year since my sister was vegan and I had some frozen chicken to use up, I made these for appetizers.  People always love eating meat on a stick so you can't go wrong. Plus our friends Mike and Bia joined us for dinner this year and Mike loves anything lemon so this was good.

Mashed Potatoes
I didn't take a picture of this but it was sooo good when I first made it. I added buttermilk and cream cheese to freshly boiled mashed potatoes, along with a stick of butter and salt.


Roasted Garlic
This is so good on hot rolls out of the oven, spread on top of butter.  Just tossed some peeled garlic cloves drizzled with olive oil and salt, then bake in oven until golden.

Pecan Cranberry Pie
I make this dessert each year because I LOVE this pie.  I add 1 cup of fresh cranberries because the tartness really cuts the richness of the sweet heavy pie.  I also love the jewel colors of cranberries which always brings a festive mood.  I also added some orange zest and orange extract because I love the orange and cranberry combo.

3 Eggs
1 cup of corn syrup
1/2 cup of dark brown sugar
1/2 cup of sugar
3 tbs of butter melted
1/2 tsp of vanilla
2 tsp of orange extract or fresh squeezed juice
2 cups of pecan halves
1 cup of fresh cranberries
Zest of 1 orange
1 Unbaked of your favorite pie crust or use store bought


There is really no dry mix here, all contribute to wet mix.  
Mix eggs, corn syrup, both sugars, butter, vanilla, and orange extract.  
Stir in pecans, then cranberries, and then orange zest.

Roll out your pie crust into a pie pan and shape your edges.  
Pour the wet mixture into the pie crust.
Cover the pie edge with foil so your outer crust don't over bake.
Put into a oven and bake for 40 min.  
Remove the foil and bake for 10 more min.
Cool for 1 hour.  Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.


Thanksgiving Green Velvet Cake
I made a second dessert of a cake.  It was green because I ran out of red food coloring.  A good friend of mine drove 50 miles to get me the Urth Cafe's Hazelnut Chocolate cake last weekend while she is on a trip to LA.  I wanted to give her something nice so I made a Red Velvet Cake for her Thanksgiving dessert.  I wanted to make an extra cake but only had yellow, blue, and green food colors left so I made a green one.  It's not that pretty but fun.

Our family dinner has some traditions that won't change such as the pecan pie.  We also always have what we call the white trash jello salad mixed with Cool whip, we also always have 2 kinds of stuffing, the traditional bread kind, but also my mom makes a rice stuffing that fills up the turkey and is baked.  Soung is vegan so she made a green salad and some risotto rice cakes.    All were green so my cake fitted right in.  :)


Thanksgiving dinner is so much easier when you split up the dishes.  Focusing on a few dishes for the day is easy on the clean up and you don't cook all day. 


Hope you all had a great celebration and eating!

Catering with St Cloud-The Grill

A few weekends ago, I got to help St. Cloud with catering again.  This time the event was for 3 graduating law students.  Boy, it was the hippest party I've attended as part of catering team and any party.  Everyone was dressed freshly out of a hip magazine party.  There was also reality show sighting too.  Ash Fulk from last season's Top Chef was there.  I played it cool and didn't bother him but of course wanted to ask him all kind of questions.  


My job that day was to grill.  I am a veggie so I don't grill that much and when they asked me if I could do it, I said of course!  Well, I had to figure out quick.  I've grilled mostlt on charcoal but not much from propane gas grill.   Well...let me say, it was an experience.  Eventually I got the hang of it and grilled the Chicken Skewers, and then made the Mini Sliders.  It brought me memories of making hamburgers at Dairy Queen when I was a teenager.


Here is the menu:

• Lemongrass Shrimp Skewers
• Asian Marinated Chicken Skewers with Peanut Sauce
• Rosemary and Shallot Spiced Nuts
• Stuffed Mushrooms with Spinach Fontina, Carmaelized Onion and Pinenuts
• Cruite Platter of Lightly Steamed broccoli, cauliflfower, carrots, asparagus, and red/yellow peppers
• Carmaelized Onion and Grilled Pear and Goat Cheese Bruschetta
• Vietnamese Style Avacado Spring Roll Slice on Crispy Wonton with Wasabi Mayo
• House Smoked Columbia River Stellhead Sekwers with Orange Citronette
• Mini Sliders with Secret Sauce
• Mini Open-faced Beef Tenderloin Sandwiches with Watercress Mayo and Roasted Red Peppers

Sorry I didn't get any pics. The food was beautifully plated and served.  Good news is that John Platt, the owner of St. Cloud gave me the okay to bring camera and take pic, as well as post on this blog so next time I help them, I will get great pics.

"Lost" Dinner Party

Well, for you LOST fans out there...we've been anticipating this for six year now.  The final episode!  Anya and Robert hosted a great dinner and to watch this episode with a few of other LOST fans.  

I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed by the finale.  I won't go into that here, plus I still have a bunch of LOST blogs to read.  However, I have to say, THANK God we had some great food!

Appetizers were pretty amazing!  

Caprese Salad

Salmon Cakes

Roasted Eggplant with Balsamic Reduction

White Bean and Rosemary Spread

Roasted Garlic

This is Chia Hui who made the salad from the veggies from her garden.  She grows amazing organic produce. Last summer, I got lots of lettuce, rhubarb, and colorful carrots from her.

Rest of the dinner and appetizer was made my Anya here.

Dinner was Grilled Marinated Chicken

She made me Grilled Tofu with a Barbeque Sauce from Richard's family recipe.

Side Dishes were...
Israel Couscous Salad

Grilled Asparagus and Carrots

I made the dessert of the Orange Spice Bundt Cake with Orange Sauce again.

We ate so much that night.  LOST event was like six hours or something.  Chia-Hui and Robert brought more snacks of chip, Japanese Mochi and Redbean Cake.  At least great food made up for the so so show.


The LOST fans... Anya, Richard, Robert, Chia-Hui, and me taking the pic.  :)