Betsy and Ali's Christmas Dinner Tasting Menu

For Christmas 2011, Mom and I decided to make a tasting menu since it was just the two of us.  We selected ten dishes that we wanted to make from recipes that we'd found and had been meaning to try.  For Christmas, Mom got me a set of tasting plates, tasting bowls and tasting silverware so that we could serve our tasting meal properly!  The tasting set matches David and my everyday plates, which is perfect. As you'll see from the photos, our grade for presentation went up as the meal went on.  We took it slow and started cooking around 1pm and finished eating around 9pm, taking breaks during the day to relax or read.

We planned our menu over Christmas Eve dinner (roast beef, yorkshire pudding and sautéed spinach) but then had to modify the order because we got too hungry to wait!

We started with our Warm Goat Cheese Salad with Arugula and Fig Spread and Toasted Baguette Slices.  We heated the goat cheese medallions on the stove quickly and warmed the fig spread (from Whole Foods) for 10 seconds in the microwave so that it was the right temperature.  We determined that was not the best way to warm goat cheese but weren't sure what the alternative was.  Suggestions are welcome.  It tasted delicious but lost the "medallion" shape quickly. We also toasted some baguette to use as "pushers." As I mentioned, we were pretty hungry, so we had a full sized serving of this.  While we were eating, Mom remembered that as child, she'd been given a pusher to help her eat by herself, but, to Grandmother and Grandfather's frustration, she would eat the pusher before the meal was over.

Next up was Asparagus Gratin.  Mom found this recipe in Cooks Illustrated.  It was delicious, but the cheese sauce was, well, very cheesy!  We'd added some extra cheese since we loooove cheese, but decided we probably should have stuck to the recipe to get the correct consistency.  The presentation left something to be desired, but we had a good laugh over it.  It also tasted fantastic, which is what really matters!

We decided to combine the third and fourth course thinking they would complement each other nicely.  They did!  We had Gaspacho accompanied by Toasted Baguette with Chive Caper Remoulade Topped with Roast Beef and a Garnish of Red Onion and Cucumber.  The Gaspacho recipe was one Mom had found in the Wall Street Journal and the Chive Caper Remoulade was a Martha Stewart recipe.  We used cold roast beef from our Christmas Eve dinner.  We served our dishes on a serving platter that David and I had gotten from our wedding registry.  We gave ourselves high marks for presentation on this one.

Next up, we decided to do a palette cleanser of Raspberry Sorbet with Fresh Mint and a Dark Chocolate Morsel.  We used Haagen-Daas sorbet and a Theo dark mint chocolate bar we'd gotten at Whole Foods.

We also decided to combine the sixth and seventh courses.  We had Baked Winter Squash and Sautéed Brussel Sprouts.  They also complemented each other very well and made for a nice, light combination.  We added bites of gruyere to add a hint of sharpness to each bite.

Our eighth course was also a vegetable dish.  The Spinach and Feta Cheese Bake was a hearty dish that we paired with toasted baguette drizzled with Betsy's famous vinaigrette salad dressing.

For our ninth course, we had Chicken Wraps with Hoisin Mayonnaise, Scallions and Cucumbers.  This was like Peking Duck except with rotisserie chicken.  We used tortillas for the wraps but decided it would also work nicely with crepes if you didn't have fresh tortillas.  The tortillas in South Texas are an outstanding local speciality and are made fresh in the grocery store. The hoisin mayonnaise was from Real Simple.

Of course, we had to end our meal with dessert.  My friend, Kimberly, had given us a container of her Sel du Caramel spread so we drizzled that on a warm double chocolate muffin (store bought) and topped it with mint leaves.  It was superb.  We served it in bowls so it had a brownie bowl feel.

By the end of the meal, we had managed to use almost all the tasting plates but had surprisingly few dishes to do.  We decided that the big thing we'll do for next time will be to prep in advance (perhaps the day before) by doing the chopping and measuring.  Once we'd done the prep for this meal, it was really easy to make all the dishes and not very time consuming.  We also learned that we should not wait until we were ready for lunch to start cooking!  Having the large salad saved the day, but if we were doing it again, we'd have a snack and then start cooking.

Overall, we had a delicious and successful meal and are looking forward to the next one!