Round 3: Wednesday, December 30
Featured cooking team = the Horbal/Pennings aka Andrew & Marion aka Andy & Mep aka Mandy
Your Guest Blogger today: Liz/Mema/DOM/Ma
Welcome to Day 3 of the 5th Annual Steele/Horbal/Frederick/Raftery/Penning Christmas Cooking Competition! Today's team is the Baltimore-based, dual-citizened, world-traveling Horbal-Penning household, whose theme is Twists on International Foods We Love. This day is shaping up to be both delicious and educational for all of us.
After an exhaustingly patriotic 4th of July in December celebration, we all needed a relaxation respite on our rooftop deck before our segue into world cuisine.
The on-deck team leapt into action with their preparations as soon as they were dried off, despite Kevin's insistence that their day didn't start until midnight so neither should their prep.
A spontaneous and spirited bout of Greco-Roman dog wrestling broke out during the preparations, but didn't appear to deter the cooks in the least
I think a bunch of them stayed up to watch some sporting event or other, but who the hell knows, I fell asleep sitting up and had to excuse myself to my sleeping chamber.
Morning came early for the cooks du jour, and we all woke up to a beautiful table and the delicious smell of baking bread. Immediate points from me for the aroma.
We were treated to a Turkish Kahvalti (breakfast) similar to those Marion experienced in her year and a half of teaching ESL in Turkey. We enjoyed kahve ve cay (coffee and tea - unbelievably good tea, may I say,) Borek (a spinach pastry similar to a spanikopita,) Ekmek (bread) with Beyaz Peynir and Kasar (cheeses,) Hellim (fried cheese,) and Kaymak ve bal (clotted cream and honey,) Kati yumurta (hard boiled eggs,) Domates ve salatalik (tomatoes and cucumber salad,) and Zeytin (olives.) Beautifully presented AND delicious.
Of course, we also had our obligatory palate test, and this one was a dilly, since most of us haven't experienced the world the way these two have. (Okay, none of the rest of us have ever been anywhere.) They gave us all six of their mystery tastes before breakfast, and none of us fared particularly well but we did grow exponentially in our tasting experience so it's all good. Kip was a stellar 0 for 6 with his now-traditional guesses of "disgusting" and "the worst thing I've ever tasted," although I have to admit that my own answers were a bit vague as well
I doubt that I will ever get over not knowing lavender, after growing and smelling it for years. STUPID!
The final palate test tally is as follows:
Andrew and Marion finish #1 and #2 and GG is convinced the fix is in. The rest of us ignore him, as usual, and take it like grownups.
The preparations continued throughout the morning with the tireless cooks impressing us all with their knife skills and stamina
and only a little mess.
The rest of us entertained ourselves in various ways: Mema helped Jude take a bath (but of course we cannot have those photos on this family site,) the boys stared at the TV, and Mom worked all day but reappeared in the evening, much to our delight.
It was an especially exhausting day for the dogs.
We had a little ugly weather through the day but luckily Kevin kindled us a fine roaring electric fire.
We had not one but two afternoon meals, an early offering of artichokes with a kefir-lime-leaf infused lemon butter - even Pete agreed it was delicious.
For our cocktail hour a few hours later we had some sweets and treats: bread with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, oregano, basil, and black pepper dipping sauce, scallion pancakes with a sesame oil, soy sauce, and rice wine vinegar dipping sauce (and a hot version with some chilis added) and some yummy cookies and pastries. Our featured cocktail was a Sen Dog, invented by Andrew in an attempt to make something both he (classic cocktail aficionado) and I (girly drink lover) could enjoy. It worked! It was a delicious concoction of homemade limoncello, mandarin orange vodka, amaretto, lemon, egg white, and a five-spice-powder-sugar rim.
And then on to the dinner preparations.
(Note to our faithful readers: if you're thinking "This seems like a crapload of work these people are doing," you are absodamnlutely right. It's exhausting. I am sympathizing with Andrew and Marion as I sit here comfortably writing this.)
Another lovely table setting for dinner, with what looks like exciting
surprises included!
And, oh yes, there WILL be homemade pasta.
Dinner was an assortment of Italian/Asian fusion dishes to represent the combined travels of our host couple to Europe and Asia. First course, a delicious minestrone soup with Asian influences:
The broth included parmesan, red chili paste, miso, and curry leaf (had to go to Norfolk for those damned curry leaves, by the way) with Asian vegetables (cabbage, turnip ["turnip for what?" say my drunken son & son in law], lotus root, bok choy,) and udon noodles, topped with a thai basil and peanut pesto.
Next, our (homemade) pasta course:
A cracked pepper semolina pappardelle with Umeboshi Chicken (pasta by Marion - Italy and chicken by Andrew - Japan) with a cilantro-parmesan-olive oil topper.
And finally, the main event: Arista (Italian name for pork loin) with persimmons and mustard greens with a plum wine pan sauce. Just lovely.
We had a white wine with the first courses and a delicious red with the main
Our dinnertime entertainment was the fine Penning (British) tradition of Christmas Crackers - little popping bundles of excitement
And we got crowns, too.
Once again the dogs are exhausted.
Our last meal of the contest was a tamarind-lime ice cream with a curry leaf/buddha's hand shortbread cookie, and a red bean paste cannoli cream cannoli (homemade cannoli paste, shells from a famed Baltimore establishment.) Our aperatif was Turkish Raka with espresso beans, a take on Italian Sambuca alla Mosca. We all liked the dessert; the drink - not so much. So Andrew and Marion drank them all for us.
All in all, it has been a grand taste extravaganza, which quite unintentionally has taken us from Virginia to the USA to the world, in that order!
All of our guest bloggers will now have a final word:
Andrew says: Woozle wozzle!
Greg says: We win. USA,USA
And finally, your original blogger (who has done jack nada on this blog this year) Meghan says: No, can't (quoting her son.)
(Disclaimer: All of the bloggers may or may not have had a little bit to drink tonight. Except the pregnant one, she's just crabby.)
Now it's your turn. One last vote for all the marbles. Thanks for watching, it's been fun for us, hope it has for you too.
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