Subscribe Today

You are viewing the Family-Size Meals category

Culinary Tour 2010 • Puerto Rico

I’ve got a real treat for you. We’re having dinner in a private home on this stop of the Culinary Tour. As you may know, I’ve spent a lot of time in Puerto Rico. It was definitely my playground when I lived in New York. Less so now that I live in FL, but I still manage an annual trip and a reunion with my friends. I was actually in Puerto Rico for a few days during the period between the Argentina and Brazil stops on the Culinary Tour. It was a very food-centric experience from the highs of the trendy El San Juan Hotel restaurants…to road stands in the mountains…to a dinner party in a private home which I present here.

Continue Reading

Culinary Tour 2010 • Argentina

I’m a lot like Argentina. We are both the product of Spanish and Italian immigrants and we both have a decidedly Latin vibe coursing through our beings. It’s no wonder I’m planning my third visit to Buenos Aires in October. There’s a natural affinity.

Buenos Aires is a large, beautiful and complex city. I could never do it justice here with a few lines or paragraphs so I decided to do something different for this stop on the tour.

Continue Reading

Christmas 2009 in Photos (Some Words)

I’m in a semi-catatonic state today after several days of festivities (read: overeating and drinking). Aside from a few must-do things, I’ve had little oomph to do anything much more than tinker on my laptop so I made a few photo mosaics to share some of the special moments from this year’s Christmas holiday. Pictured here is the all-crystal tree in the lobby of the Fontainebleau Hotel, Miami Beach. I started the holiday season with a fabulous tasting dinner and wine pairing at Scott Conant’s ‘Scarpetta’ restaurant in the Fountainebleau. That dinner helped shape our Christmas Day menu — as did my recent trip to SF for the FoodBuzz Festival. Come see some merry photo mosaics…

Continue Reading

FoodBuzz 24, 24, 24: The Annual Holiday Boat Parade Party

toastygenericbeach2When we moved to Florida from New York 15 years ago, we quickly learned that cold weather and snow are not really the criteria for the holiday season…and we happily dropped that notion! Goodbye boots, hello flip-flops.

Now, it’s Christmas trees and palm trees, house lights and boat lights, and sandmen instead of a snowmen; but, most importantly, it’s family, friends, good wine…and great menus! It’s a joyous time of year wherever you are.

In celebration of the holiday season, various cities in FL that border the Intracoastal Waterway host boat parades. Led by a fireworks barge, festively-decorated boats make their way up or down the canal and residents line the docks and cheer the parade…and some, like us, use it as an excuse to party!  Who doesn’t love a party? Continue Reading

Foodbuzz 24, 24, 24: La Fiesta del Pavo Borracho (The Drunken Turkey Party)

drunken turkey illustrtionThe guests ‘may’ be sober, but the bird is definitely juiced! It arrives with a few cups of tequila and Grand Marnier in its belly.


Continue Reading

Mother’s Day: Mamma Mia x 3 + A Blueberry Citrus Tart

In our family of 17-around-the-table-for-holidays, there are only 4 cooks…me, my sister, my son and my niece. My son was busy when we started making plans for Mother’s Day so it was left to the 3 mothers to plan the dinner. (But he did step up for dessert and it was FABU!)
The senior mothers (my mom and aunt) retired from hosting family dinners a while back but, in deference to the occasion, we asked them what they’d like for Mother Day. It wasn’t brunch…it was a resounding “pasta” dinner. So the 3 chef-esses decided to do 3 different pastas. 

My niece who has the 2 smallest children decided to do a typical red sauce pasta with tiny meatballs (left). My sister made a delicious pesto pasta with fresh tomatoes and olives (right) and I did what I call a ‘Flavors of the Mediterranean’ pasta. I plan to publish the recipe in a special event pasta post I’m planning; but, meantime, here’s a teaser of the approximate 15 ingredients that go in before the pasta.


This time ‘save the best for last’ was a real truism…a citrus custard tart with fresh blueberries. I think Jim will be posting the recipe on his blog, Our Family Food Fight.



I hope you all…mothers, fathers, daughters, sons…had a nice day.

A Birthday Story of Fried Turkey and Sides

Back Story: For Christmas Day dinner, my son wanted a fried turkey and went out and purchased the fryer. But we had a rain-out. Fast thinking and successful surgery to de-bone the carcass to get it cooked quickly followed and we ate a very delicious (though not conventional) roast turkey.


Fast Forward: March 8 is my son’s birthday. In our family, the birthday person chooses the dinner…the person closest by blood ties does the cooking…and everyone else shows up to eat and celebrate.  My son was still hankering for that fried turkey so that was his dinner choice. Thankfully for me, because that also meant the party would be at his house and that he would be handling half the dinner which was a big help since we were going to be 21 people.

Cell phones in hand to dial 911, his cousins and friends stood a good distance behind him cheering/jeering(?) as Jim lowered the turkey into the boiling hot oil.
45-minutes or so later, he pulled out a beautifully golden 20+ lb. bird.

It didn’t take long after that for the birthday turkey to look like this:

For me dinners like this are all about the sides. However, not wanting to go the traditional Thanksgiving menu route since we were cooking outdoors, I made 4 side dishes that could be served at room temperature. Two had a decidedly Mediterranean theme and two had a Southwestern twist.
From my Spanish and Italian roots, I conjured up a pasta that was made with long-simmering garbanzos, chorizo, tomatoes, green olives and dressed with olive oil and lemon.

This was a rice salad made with sauteed spinach and artichokes to which I added toasted pignolis, feta cheese, a LOT of lemon, and olive oil.

A big hit with the kids was the roasted sweet potatoes that were dressed with a vinaigrette made from fresh lime juice and lots of zest, honey, a little olive oil and a little chipolte (ssh, don’t tell the kids).
Corn, avocado, cheddar cheese, black olives, capers, scallions dressed with fresh tomato salsa and extra squeezes of lemon.

It was supposed to be just these 4 sides but not wanting to waste all those gallons of hot oil, my son threw in a few pounds of sliced white potatoes after he removed the turkey. They don’t look so good but they were might tasty.
The party ended with Carvel ice cream cake…some traditions die hard!
Truth be told: (1) While the turkey was very moist, I prefer a roasted bird. (2) I’m not telling you how old my son was on March 8th. I’m not that truthful!

Christmas Recipes and A Hint of Things to Come in the New Year

Here’s the recipes I promised. They’re so worth trying.

Picadillo Stuffing may not be the most photogenic…but it’s definitely the most tasty! While I’m surely not the first person to make this, I didn’t follow anyone’s recipe — so here’s what I did (to the best of my recollection).


Ingredients: 4 lbs. ground meat (I used beef and pork), 2 links of chorizo minced small, 1 lb. corn bread stuffing. (Yes, this is definitely a meat lover’s stuffing with that ratio), onions, garlic, green pepper (all finely diced), yellow raisins and prunes soaked in 1 cup of red wine, 2 small cans of Goya tomato sauce, stuffed olives, capers, cumin, oregano, Sazon (or adobo seasoning), S&P, splash of sherry vinegar, splash hot sauce.

Method: Made 1 day in advance. Saute onion, garlic, pepper. Add chorizo and tomato sauce to create a sofrito (base to build on). Add ground meat breaking it up as it cooks down. Add raisins, prunes & wine, dry seasonings and cook over medium heat. Taste. This is supposed to have lots of flavor. Continue to adjust seasonings until the taste is BOLD. Splash sherry vinegar and hot sauce to taste.

The next day I brought the meat to room temperature and then blended it with a bag of cornbread stuffing and a little chicken broth to moisten it. Baked covered for about 30 minutes and uncovered for an additional 15 to toast top.

Chimichurri Sauce: 1 bunch of Italian parsley, 1 bunch of cilantro, garlic, olive oil, red pepper flakes, S&P, juice of 1 lemon, and a splash of red wine vinegar blended to desired consistency.


Note: (1) Leftover chimichurri is great as a marinade or topping with any poultry or meat or as a base condiment for a casserole. (2) It also makes a delicious vinaigrette. I took some sauce thinned it out a little, added a little sugar (well, a packet of Splenda…one has to watch one’s calories. What a joke during the holidays!) It was a great dressing for the avocado salad.


Pumpkin Flan with Praline Brittle: The recipe for the pumpkin flan was not ‘original’, but it was perfectly executed by Jim. Click here for recipe.

COMING IN 2009
• I got a ‘light tent’ and some new plates for food photos for Christmas. I’m being forced into upping my game and I’m exploring some new food art opportunities.

• Announcement of new event coming January ’09. Hint: You’ll need a passport.

A Christmas Story. Ours.

Traditions (Old, New, Still-Evolving), Photos…and Food!

About Tradition. When my sister and I began to raise our families and gradually take over holiday dinners from the generation before us, we also began to inject a more foodie approach to the menus. Being half-Spanish and half-Italian and 100% American, those 3 cuisines generally dominate for the special occasions. Yes, it’s still fish on Christmas Eve and a roast on Christmas Day, but you never know what specifically or how it will be presented. There’s no set menu year-after-year. While we like to think we pay homage to ‘tradition’, we define it loosely and are always recreating the formula. Our kids follow suit and are building on the experience. Some might classify us as hard-core celebrators because not only do we gather to celebrate the calendar holidays, we create additional reasons to get-together, even if it’s for leftovers the next day! I guess, truth be told, we’re more about the ‘merry’. (Stay with me until the end of this post for proof of that!)
December 20 • The Children’s Annual Show & Boat Parade
Tradition: Decades ago, my sister started this tradition with all the children in the family. It involved rehearsals, coupled with cookie bakes, and then the big night of the show for the entire family and friends. She did it all — the scripting, costuming, dealing with ‘opening night jitters’ and playing the donkey more than once! The show went on year-after-year, much to everyone’s delight, until the children started hitting their pre-teens…and were ‘over’ it. Now, grown up, some with children of their own, it is one of their fondest childhood memories. Several years ago, my niece with the assistance of my sister, started the tradition again. It’s my hope that it will continue for a few years more with this cast of ‘characters’ and that they, too, will remember it fondly and continue it with their children in the years to come. Here’s a taste: Play video clip from Frosty the Snowman.
A Florida tradition is the holiday boat parade down the Intercoastal Canal – fireworks and boats dressed up like Christmas trees. This year it was scheduled the same night as the children’s show and my sister’s clubhouse (the current theater of the children’s show) is on the canal so after the show and our traditional pizza party, we walked outside to see the fireworks and boat parade…a festive way to start the holiday festivities.
Fireworks & Boat Parade
December 23 • The Nutcracker at the Kravis Center
This year my son treated me, his daughter, and girlfriend to a pre-Christmas Eve special night out (perhaps starting a new tradition?). We went to a new/artsy/eclectic restaurant (I’ll review it another time) and to the Florida Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker at the Kravis Center in Palm Beach.
We had a great dinner, the show was magical, and it set the stage for what awaited us the following day at my niece’s house.



December 24 • Christmas Eve
Tradition: In the early years, my sister did an all fish dinner in the Italian tradition on Christmas Eve and I did Christmas Day. More recently it’s become a shared responsibility…she with her daughter, Teri, on the Eve and I with my son, Jim, on the day. 
Teri is not only a good cook, she is a hostess with the mostest! The Christmas decorations were as magical as The Nutcracker’s set design and the menu was fish-a-licous! A moment about gift-decoration. A while back at some other family dinner, my niece went around taking a ‘funny’ picture of everyone. “Make an ugly face”, said she. Well, those ugly faces appeared in large size on the gifts. There was no question  who each gift belonged to!


Menu: Assorted fish hors’ d’oeuvres, cheeses & crackers. First dish: shrimp & artichoke salad. Main course: Crabmeat Cannelloni and Spaghetti with shrimp, feta, black olives, followed by a ‘traditional’ fried fish and salad course. Dessert: A chocolate fountain.

December 25 • Christmas Day
This year I wanted to do a Latin-inspired Turkey dinner. When I mentioned ‘turkey’, my son immediately said that he’d been dying to try a fried turkey. He also wanted to make a pumpkin flan– so the division of responsibilities for the dinner became apparent. He’d buy the fryer and do the turkey and flan and I’d do everything in between. Side Story: A key trait for a good chef is being able to ‘think standing on one foot’; that is to say, things don’t always happen as planned. A fried 20-lb. turkey takes less than an hour but, obviously, it has to be done outside. Christmas morning was raining and it wasn’t letting up. At 10:30 we had to make the decision to abort the fryer plan, but we were now pushing it for a 2:00 dinner. Enter ingenuity. The turkey went into surgery for back bone removal and flattening, it was done on time, and was probably one of the juiciest turkeys I’ve ever had. (Jim had injected a mojo-citrus marinade into the flesh the day before.) 

Menu: Turkey, Picadillo Stuffing, Baked Stuffed Plantains with Chimichurri Sauce, 16-ingredient salad. Desserts: pumpkin flan with praline brittle, homemade biscotti, guava & cheese, Christmas layer cake (store-bought), and turron. 

Spanish-inspired pickies for the bar.

Baked Stuffed Plantain with Chimichurri Sauce

16-Ingredient Veggie/Salad Tray

Picadillo Stuffing

Pumpkin Flan with Praline Brittle

After dinner, the kids got the remaining gifts (half were given on the Eve) and then the adults played “Slaughter Santa”. For anyone who doesn’t know, Slaughter Santa is a hilarious game of stealing gifts. Each of us buys and wraps one gift. By a draw of numbers, we select our order of participation. My nephew made up some playing cards that accompanied each gift (like ‘trade with the second person to your left’ or ‘make 2 people exchange gifts’). So #1 picks a gift and opens it. Then #2 can either select a gift or steal #1′s…and so on. There was a lot of stealing, teaming up, and laughter — and, in the end, each adult went home with a nice gift.

December 27
Yes, they’re baaack. This time it’s for combined Christmas Eve and Christmas Day leftovers — and an evening of community theater. A presentation for the young…and the young of heart.

December 28
Peace and quiet. Rest. Clean house. Begin diet. …until January 4 when we gather again to celebrate my birthday.

Special Ending Notes
Note: Thanks to Laylita for the baked plantain recipe. It was the lynchpin for the dinner. The minute I saw it on her blog, I knew I had to build a meal around it. Recipes for picadillo stuffing, chimichurri sauce and pumpkin flan will be posted tomorrow. They’re just too delicious not to share.

And I leave you now with one of 3 videos – one made for each generation – that my son surprised us with. This was for the ‘senior’ set. Too funny! Tradition #??. Enjoy.

I wish you all a happy, healthy, warm, prosperous and yummy 2009!

Thanksgiving. In photos. Few Words.

Thanksgiving is celebrated at my sister’s house…she’s a good cook too and a great hostess. Yesterday we were, I think, 18 people. I was too busy photographing and eating the food so, sadly, I only managed to capture 4 people. 

The welcoming pig chef who announces the occasion.

Tablescape: Note the kiddie table covered with brown paper and crayons.

Some of the appetizers: pumpkin-pesto pizza pinwheel; guava paste, boursin cheese & almonds, and the star of the show a baked pumpkin cheese fondue.

Some of the sides: mashed potatoes, brussel sprouts & chestnuts, 
carrots, and fennel, arugula and pomegranate salad.

mmmm…stuffing and gravy

Deep dish apple pie by Jim; store bought pumpkin pie; 

pumpkin cookies by Teri; fruit salad by Carolyn.

And a few of the people we are thankful for:

Nina and Michael

Nico and Adriana

Hope you all had a wonderful day…don’t forget Blogger’s Aid which is fighting world famine.

« Previous Entries

Recipe Disclaimer

I'm more an improviser than a measurer...that's one of the reasons I don't bake. Rather than precise instructions, the "recipes" on this blog are offered as suggestions of food pairings and techniques to be experimented with - in your own kitchen to your own tastes and to your preferred portion sizes. Have fun!
FFF390w
Foodbuzz

Archives

CheckMate by Curtis Henson is licensed under Creative Commons.