First of all I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas filled with family, friends, joy and tradition. As well I wish you all the best in the New Year, whether you are hoping for a new beginning, a continuation of a good year past, or just maybe you are hoping for a better year than the last one. In some ways I am hoping for all three.
We have just been through the busyness of Christmas and New Years. I have to admit with all the hub-bub at Christmas we barely had time to take a picture. So for this week’s blog, I wanted to start with a few moments from the holidays, and what should be a national holiday…. my birthday. A few culinary highlights for me were the bouche de noel, which was similar to a tiramisu, covered in chocolate ganache, that we made for boxing day.
We also did a lovely dinner roll wreath and of course one of my favorite after holiday dishes, Jamie Oliver’s turkey pot pie. And the bones were used to make a large vat of soup, which was a good thing, since we both ended up sick over New Years.
This is the first time in my life that I did not go home at Christmas, but at least we got to spend Christmas with family, we had a chance to catch up, and eat a whole bunch of turkey. Boxing day was another large family gathering, with Shawn’s family, and both ham and turkey. The next weekend was my birthday. Shawn was planning a little dinner party, but I insisted on making the cake. There was a cake I have been wanting to make, since seeing it on a cooking show. It’s based on a traditional French dessert, a 12 layer mocha cake.
This is similar to an opera cake. It has alternating layers of vanilla sponge, a layer that is similar to a chocolate soufflé, and meringue. In between there is a mocha buttercream and cappuccino frosting. I think this one is just over the top enough.
So those are a few of our adventures over the last few weeks, while taking a break from MondayNightDining. This week marks the start of rehearsals for our new show. We will be performing with the Kitchener Menno singers, to help celebrate their 60th anniversary. We will be performing in Kitchener and Toronto. The entire show will be acapella, and sung in English, German, Latin and Russian.
Over 3 years ago, MondayNightDining started with us inviting a friend over, who had had a loss in her life. This week our dining adventures allow us to continue that tradition, and offer food and fellowship to people who are going through challenges in their lives. Sometimes it’s nice to put your troubles aside for a few hours…. sometimes it’s better to share a little of those troubles with friends. So this week our trio gathered with Gabrielle and Trish.
Trish and Steph arrived quite close together, but Gabrielle seemed to be running late. We sent messages, but did not get a response. Finally we realized we could not hold the first course much longer, but as we were serving the appetizer, Gabrielle arrived. She could not see any numbers on the houses and had been wandering our neighborhood. I must admit the number on our building is tiny and the light only comes on, when you are already on the porch. Now we were back on track and could enjoy our twice baked cheese souffles.
This dish is a revelation. We always think of souffles and something difficult and finicky. These little gems are baked in their dariole moulds (you can also use ramekins), they are unmoulded and either chilled or frozen. When it comes time to serve, you can plate them, add a sauce with heavy cream and Gruyère, and a touch of breadcrumb on top, and bake. The souffles rise again. Imagine having souffles in your freezer, with the hard work already done, that can just be baked. We accompanied this with a light sparkling wine.
For our main we served chicken perigord, with purreed pommes and sautéed swiss chard.
We started with chicken supremes and stuffed them with a duxelles des champignons, a lovely reduction of porcini mushrooms, cream, breadcrumbs and herbs. The whole thing had a silky red wine sauce, that I just wanted to eat with a spoon. We had a Kim Crawford Sauvignon blanc, to round out this course.
I must now give credit to our friend Diane… she was the linchpin for this meal. While travelling in France she posted pictures of herself and her friends enjoying Galette de Rois. We need to know about this. It turns out galette de rois is a traditional French Epiphany dessert. Each galette is baked with a feve inside. This could be a bean, a whole almond, or more recently little ceramic figures. Whoever gets the feve, is king for the day. The cake traditionally comes with a paper crown for the king to wear. I do love these regional traditions, so we made our own Galette des Rois.
With layers of butter puff pastry, filled with almond cream, what’s not to like? We could not find a feve to put in the cake, so I finally used the Joseph figure from my second smallest nativity. Steph ended up being queen for the day, although the crown would not stay together…..
The evening was passing by far too quickly, as we caught up on life’s recent trials and joys. Sometimes you have to take a moment away from the hubbub of life with someone to find out how they are really doing. But we must head to rehearsal to start work on our final concert for the season. It’s a big stack of music and I have never tried to speak Russian, it will be an interesting challenge trying to sing it….
David, Happy New Year. Good to have a new issue of “Monday Night Dining” …..
What a gift….nothing like breaking bread to nurture a battered soul and provide a glimmer of light during a dark time. Blessings!
I got the fève! Means good luck for me right?
It means you are a Queen.
(BTW – The first time I posted this comment it got flagged as spam…. on my own blog)
OMG Dave and Shawn… this is absolutely beautiful!…great photography but more importantly, amazing food!… Can’t wait until Monday!