Shoestring Gourmet: The Time of Annual Renewa |
As we untangle the last of the tinsel from our hair and sharpen our spreadsheets for this first month of tax season, the Shoestring Gourmet crew will celebrate with New Year food. Virtually every culture, whatever its calendar, marks its New Year with feasting and ceremonies of regeneration. This can take the form of special New Year food, like Japan’s mochi, rice pounded with a huge mortar and pestle until it turns into a sweet, gummy paste. In Cantonese cuisine there is a special raw fish salad, lo hei, served only at New Year. Germans roast goose to see the New Year in; for Tibetans, it’s a ceremonial soup designed to propitiate the gods while not unduly annoying the Chinese. It is the special New Year dishes that we want to concentrate on this month.
Our host for January will be Pat Hull, whose large home near 35th Avenue and Greenway is one of our favorite Shoestring venues. We get together on Saturday, January 9, at 6 p.m. Please call Pat at 863-4855 to reserve, no later than Thursday, January 7.
December’s Shoestring was our annual Christmas Around the World Sunday buffet. As we gathered to unwind from our busy weekend of Christmas preparations, Jim Morgan poured us our opening libation: Puerto Rico’s Christmas drink, coquito, a coconut variation on our rum and eggnog. Marilyn McDonald served a Welsh appetizer, small savory puffs flavored with leek and Stilton cheese. For our final appetizer, Joice and Chuck Braden prepared badam sandheko, or peanuts spiced and roasted in the Nepalese way.
Next, the Bradens served up Christmas red pepper soup from Mexico. Despite its origin, this combination of taco shards and a dash of avocado cream in a thick pepper stock base looked more like a Chinese painting. From Ray Pisar and Diana Toone came an enchanting "red, green and snow" seasonal combination of tomato, basil, and creme fraiche. George Miles dished out mixed vegetables with ‘loads and loads’ of garlic. Jane Khatiblou tossed us a light spring salad, after which Pat Hull presented her homegrown Swiss chard with bacon and onions. Ursula Gore started with a chopped beet accompaniment to salad course, then did the entrée heavy lifting with roast pork loin delicately topped by a dash of boursin, a French garlic-and-herb cheese, all on a light and flaky bed of filo dough. After many helpings of this, Ken Brown served picked herring to ease the way to dessert. There was just one dessert item this time, but it was a most substantial one: Jim and Marilyn’s English plum pudding with molasses, citron, raisins, with a butter-and-cream white sauce poured thick over it. With a Christmas feast like this, who needs relatives?