every year Marcela and i have a Christmas Dinner with Bart and his family. we have decided to go on a three year cycle, switching amongst eating at Bart's house, followed by our house and then the third year we go out to eat. it was our turn to host the dinner and so i anxiously started planning this dinner only seconds after swallowing my last bit of turkey from thanksgiving!
this was my second time around with cooking a dinner for the Smith's. i was fairly satisfied with my first dinner, which might even be posted in this blog..., but i have come a long way since three years ago and i really wanted this one to be good. i had used the theme of color, specifically Christmas colors (green and red) for my first dinner and thought i'd stick with that for this one.
i began prepping on thursday night and thought even though i was going to take care of Camilo for the better part of friday, i'd be fine for timing. friday morning we woke up to find both Camilo and Marcela sick. i felt bad for Marcela, but it ended up being a blessing as she was able to tend to Camilo and i was able to get on my cooking. now i have made plenty of multi-course dinner's before and i know that they always take longer than expected, but i didn't realize that even with thursday night's prepping, i would still need the whole day on friday to get it done in time! so here's the menu for the dinner.

the first course is from my amature foray into the world of molecular gastronomy. it is a sweat pea "pasta-less" ravioli. basically you just add sodium alginate to a liquid and then drop it into a bath of calcium chloride. the calcium chloride and sodium alginate react to form a "skin" around the liquid, holding into place until you break the skin in your mouth, releasing the contents.

the second course is a roasted red pepper soup which i chose for two reasons. one, it's red, and two, it's a soup and i just love soup's during the winter months. i think it's a nice way to officially start the dinner too. i wanted to use fresh red peppers and roast them myself, but i'm glad i chose the jarred version as i would definitely not been done on time! this was good, but actually might have been the weakest of my courses.

the third course was something i read about somewhere, internet most likely, and wasn't sure how well it'd turn out and/or be received. what's funny is that it actually turned out great and i'm gonna make it again for Christmas eve with Marcela's family! we had a jar of a mustard vinaigrette that some friends gave us for a Christmas gift and so i just blanched and peeled some cherry tomato's, marinating them overnight in olive oil, garlic and thyme and stacked everything up on a kabab skewer and drizzled with the dressing. it was really fun to eat as you could pull everything off the skewer and mix together to make a traditional salad, or, as i did, just eat it like a kabab, right off the skewer!

the entree course was something i was really looking forward to making. i really wanted to do beef as it's just so good and would allow for easy preparation. i followed a recipe by Tom Colocchio off top chef and his craft restaurant's fame. it called for marinating short ribs overnight in a vegetable wine bath. then, a few hours before serving, i cooked them for a bit on the range before putting them in the oven to braise for a couple hours. i served the short ribs over a carrot ginger puree (not necessarily following my color theme!), fried potato rectangles and some pan fried string beans. i drizzled a cherry port sauce around the perimeter of the plate for an added flavor, which was probably not necessary, but provided a nice aesthetic touch.

dessert was going to be the toughest for me as i am just not good with desserts. Bart had mentioned that Marisa, his daughter, loved apple crisp. so, i thought i'd try and get fancy by (somewhat) deconstructing an apple crisp. the two different parts here are frozen apple mousse and an apple crisp cookie. to give some more color and a little presentation touch, i experimented again with science and food! by adding lecithin to a liquid and then whipping it with an immersion blender, you can get an air or foam to formalize on top of the liquid. left setting for a couple minutes, it holds it's form and can be applied by whisking it off the top and dropping it on a plate. i chose cranberries as they fit the season and i had a bag of them meant to go in a bowl to decorate the table. i guess we got rid of the glass bowls i thought we had so all that was left to do with them was to eat them!

so, i have to say that this was my best dinner to date. the reasons for it were that everyone really enjoyed it and i actually was able to finish everything on time and without any omissions. i really owe a lot to Marcela for taking care of Camilo all day friday, especially while being sick, so that i could spend the whole time in the kitchen preparing this fun dinner. of course i owe her for much more than that, but you get the point!
Merry Christmas everyone!