My next project

[Jenise]

The Wine Society Christmas dinner.

My team is going to make the appetizers, salad and soup course. The main, by another team, will be smoked prime rib of pork with various accoutrements.

The soup will be a cold vichysoisse topped with caviar. More like an amuse bouche than an actual first course, it's full of advantages: can be made ahead. Can be stored outside in a big pot at this time of year. Can be served to the tables while the guests are milling about with the champagnes and appies, with no damage from warming up or cooling off. Frees us up to plate the salad that's coming next.

The appetizers are what have me stymied. Each has to be good but also, with this size a crowd, strategic in terms of our ability to set up and move out on trays. Only one of them can require baking, therefore. They can't be too messy, can't have bones, and be pretty much spill-proof. At least one should be something that doesn't require last-minute assembly.

It dawns on me that it could be cool to wrap a stuffed mushroom in phyllo, beggar's purse style. OH, forgot to mention, that the theme is A Dickens Christmas. So 'beggar' takes on more meaning than usual. Maybe the stuffing would be a smoked cheddar, breadcrumb and green onion mix. Deliberately vegetarian.

I've been obsessed with doing things that would have playful names. Like something where we'd smash peas with olive oil and garlic and call them "mushy peas". Maybe with a marinated prawn or chunk of grilled lobster for luxury and elegance. On crostini? I like that we can leave the seafood off a few for the vegetarians. Yes, I've got a vegetarian--whose married to a non-vegetarian but who is Jewish and doesn't eat pork or bottom-feeding seafood. And they're on my planning committee, so making sure they have something to eat is imperative.

While thinking about the smoke flavors like the cheddar and pork, it dawns on me that this is actually pretty appropriate considering all the smoke from coal-burning fires in Olde England, which made me think of smoked trout that I saw at Trader Joe's and that made me wonder how that would work in a brandade. The potato part has some significance too, as in Great Potato Famine. Would have to be loaded onto crostini, of course, so there's one last-minute item and now crostini isn't available for the mushy peas. Maybe we buy those little pastry cups for the peas.

But all three require a carb delivery vehicle. Not thrilled about that, but it's hard to get away from. Thoughts? HELP!

Could repeat the smoked theme by stuffing a stuffed mushroom in phyllo and bake it off as a beggar's purse. OH, forgot to mention, that the theme is A Dickens Christmas. So 'beggar' takes on more meaning than usual. Maybe the stuffing would be a smoked mozzarella, breadcrumb and green onion mix.

I'm making myself crazy.

Sounds like fun! (One of these days, I want to come up and work on one of your teams,)

I like the mushy peas idea a lot. That's very English but not so obscure that people won't know what you're referring to. It ought to work well on crostini if you get the consistency of the peas right, and that shouldn't be too hard. The brandade also sounds good. Instead of crostini, could you just form the potato-trout mix into balls and fry them? I would think that a little ball of fried mashed potato with the trout and maybe some chives or green onion would be very tasty. Another option would be to cook and dice up some sausage in the potato mix and call them "bangers and mash". I guess one possible issue is that they'd follow the potato soup and maybe precede a potato-based side dish with the pork (which doesn't seem unlikely). That's a lot of potato.

The mushrooms also sound good. You could dispense with the wrapper if you really want to avoid a third carb-dish, but the phyllo is a different sort of carb from the other two and may not come across as too much.

[Jenise]

Sounds like fun! (One of these days, I want to come up and work on one of your teams,)

Mike, it would be a blast to have you.

I bought the groceries last night while in town (hey, I went to see Michael Moore's new movie "Trumpland" and after the film we got Michael on Skype and had an hour-long live conversation with him, right in the theater--what a sweetheart of a man he is) to start playing with both the pea and trout things.

I love the fried potato idea. How to pull that off for 180 servings, though. [scared look] But you just gave me an idea. Instead of loading the brandade on crostini, I could load a bite on the tip of a strip of oven-crisped wonton. They're crunchy, and they STAY crunchy, without being a mouthful. OH OH OH--I could deem the wonton crisp a chip and call the dish "fish and chips"!!!! Doesn't get more Brit than that, does it? Then I'd top each piece with a sliver of the trout (very golden color, pretty) and a dill sprig maybe so that I can use green onion in the mushroom thing.

I love the bangers and mash idea. I was thinking in that direction the other day and it was the 'mash' part that suggested the brandade. But you're right, my main course planners are thinking roasted red potatoes with the smoked pork roasts, so that precludes me using potato in any form that isn't severely blended (like the soup, or the brandade).

The mushrooms also sound good. You could dispense with the wrapper if you really want to avoid a third carb-dish, but the phyllo is a different sort of carb from the other two and may not come across as too much.

Trouble is, if we dispense with the wrapper then it's not a beggar's purse any more (remember, this is about Dickens England) and it's just a stuffed mushroom. Which everybody does. It's the wrap that makes it special. Or would--this is all conjecture on my part, I've not done this exactly before.

Thanks so much for playing with me--I get tied up in the knots of my own thinking and fresh eyeballs help SO much.

Yeah, the beggar's purse would fit better than stuffed mushrooms.

The fish and chips idea is a great one!

[Jenise]

Yeah, the beggar's purse would fit better than stuffed mushrooms.

The fish and chips idea is a great one!

New thought: line the Fish & Chips platter with newspaper.