Happy Friendsgiving!

Friendsgiving came and went, but the memories will last forever yet again. I'd like to start by giving Sara and Rachel a heartfelt shout out for hosting such a fine evening of wine and Thanksgiving-style cuisine. Our third annual Friendsgiving took place this past Wednesday and certainly lived up to all the hype and anticipation!  I brought scallops topped with bacon and a home made pear and bourbon reduction chutney for an appetizer as well as a side of asparagus for the feasting.  In addition, I also threw in a bottle of Suisun Valley's Scholium Project Syrah, which is quite tasty!

Sara and Rachel set up a couple old Third Row tables in their living room to give us enough dining space for the 16+ guests that showed up for Friendsgiving.  They did a fabulous job setting the table to dazzle the diners both before we sat down and after!

Friendsgiving Dinner Table Before and After We Were Seated

We served the food buffet style and then took our seats at the table.  I was fortunate enough to grab the end of the table with a little extra elbow room!  Our end of the table was certainly the "classy side" as I was joined by Eric, Teal, Hunter, Rachel Smith, and Chris. 

My First Plate at the Freindsgiving Feast of 2009

I'm going to attempt to go around the plate in order and give credit where I can and where it is due.  Starting on the bottom center we have Teal's cornbread dressing with shrimp and crab meat.  It is a great place to start because it was delicious!  I'm not sure I'lve ever had cornbread dressing that had such a perfect combination of moistness and flavor.  Well done, Teal!  Moving clockwise to the left sits the sweet potato casserole topped with candied pecans.  Money!  Next is a special tradition from Hunter Brown: mashed potatoes and gravy from Popeyes Famous Chicken and Biscuits!  It is hard to do better, so why try, right HB?  To the far left there is part of a roll.  Above that there is a great green bean casserole that was made by my sister, Dana.  The beans were moist and tender and covered in crispy onion strings.  The casserole impressed me, but not as much as Dana's other dish, the macaroni and cheese.  All the way at the top of the plate sits Dana's mac 'n' cheese which used multiple cheese varieties and some penne pasta noodles.  Way to go, sister!  Next, we have the turkey.  Eric made the turkey again this year and did another marvelous job with the large bird.  It came out of the oven about as tender and moist as one could ask for with plenty of flavor.  I'm a big fan of the dark meat, so my plate contained mostly leg and thigh meat with some home made cranberry sauce.  There is some ham that Rachel Stich cooked under there somewhere too.  To finish the plate off there are a couple asparagus spears that I cooked under there somewhere and another cornbread dressing at the bottom right of the picture.  Whew!  I got through all that.  How did I go back for another round?  I must be a machine.  Just call me Jaybert Dujols,  the Albert "The Machine" Pujols of feasting. 

Three Home Made Ice Cream Flavors from Sara

There were plenty of desserts at Friendsgiving but ice cream was the only thing I still had room for.  Fortunately Sara had three flavors of home made ice cream to choose from.  On the right is the brown sugar and bacon ice cream!  The bacon flavor shined in the cream while not leaving too much of the taste in your mouth afterwards.  My only complaint would be that there were actually chunks of bacon mixed in the ice cream that tasted fine but messed up the texture of the creamy goodness.  On the top left there is a coffee flavored ice cream which had a good taste that was not overpowering.  Beneath the darker brown coffee ice cream is the orange pumpkin ice cream.  It won my award for best ice cream of the night and I could definitely eat it again.  The ice cream had a smooth, rich flavor with the pumpkin and spices that make pumpkin pie so good... but in an ice cream.  Thanks Sara! How cool would it be to serve coffee ice cream in photo mugs with our favorite group pictures?

Happy Friendsgiving, everyone!  Eat, drink, and be merry!  'Tis the season, afterall.

Sea Scallops Topped with Bacon and a Pear and Bourbon Reduction Chutney

Friendsgiving is a pot-luck, family-style dining event brought to our group of friends by the organizers of our weekly dinner club, Sara and Rachel. The hosts instructed each attendee to bring at least one dish and a bottle of wine for the festivities. I graciously took the assignment of an appetizer because I felt like it gave me the most flexibility to shy away from traditional Thanksgiving fare and think outside the box a little bit.

I made a Pear and Bourbon Reduction Chutney the day before to pair with some sea scallops and bacon.  My idea was to make bacon wrapped scallops, but that didn't work out so well.  Fortunately, as you'll see, I was able to improvise!  The preparation on this day began with a couple pounds worth of fresh, thickly sliced bacon strips from a local butcher shop. 

Mmm... bacon!!

I first boiled the bacon because I wanted it to stay flexible in order for me to wrap it around the scallops.  It turned out that the thick bacon was really too large to properly wrap my smaller-sized scallops, so I abandoned that plan.  I removed the bacon from the water and fried it to a crisp in a cast iron skillet.  Crispy bacon is ways better anyway!
 
The next part of the appetizer involved me searing some sea scallops.  I cooked the scallops in the same skillet that I used for the bacon, leaving a little of the liquified bacon fat to give them a nice golden brown sear on the outside. 

Half of My Scallops Searing in a Cast Iron Skillet

The scallops finished their searing, the bacon remained crispy and warm, and the chutney chilled in the fridge, awaiting the dinner party and Friendsgiving!  Upon arrival at dinner club I set up shop on the table.  The scallops were spread out on a steel chaffing dish.  Each delightful scallop was then topped with the savory, crispy, meaty portion of a thick-cut bacon slice.  Using a spoon, I then placed a portion of pear and bourbon chutney on each strip of bacon to round out the flavors and wrap up the finger food dish. 

Seared Sea Scallops topped with Bacon and a Pear and Bourbon Reduction Chutney

My opinion probably shouldn't count as much because I made the appetizer and in my experience the chef or creator will be the harshest critic of his/her own work. The bacon and chutney stood out to me as being really delicious, but this was the first time I've ever seared scallops and they didn't come out all that great to me. I thought they were okay, but nothing exceptional. I can do better. In all reality, I think if they were a little fresher and would have been eaten when they were hotter off the skillet, everything would have been fine.  Everybody at the party sure seemed to enjoy them though, and that is what really counts!  I got quite a few compliments about the creativity, presentation, and taste of the dish as whole.

If I may take a step back to the drawing board for a second, Chrystal and Amir with The Duo Dishes asked that I incorporate asparagus into the dish when I pitched the idea of scallops and a pear-bourbon sauce.  Thinking that maybe I could spear the scallops with asparagus, I purchased some of the green stalks during my trip to Southside Produce when I bought the pears.  Unfortunately, the scallops were too small and the asparagus was too giant to actually do any spearing, so once again I was forced to improvise. 

Fresh Asparagus Stalks Awaiting an Olive Oil and Slap Ya Mama Bath

I generously coated the asparagus in olive oil and sprinkled in some Slap Ya Mama white pepper blend since it was my popular seasoning choice of the night.  The asparagus was then covered in foil and placed in a 400 degree oven for a while.  I can't actually tell you how long because I never set a timer or watched a clock.  I base my cooking on judgement, texture, and taste rather than measurement and time.  Good thing I don't try to bake too often!  I checked the vegetables a couple times before I decided the texture was right for consumption, then pulled it out of the oven and brought it over to Friendsgiving along with the scallop, bacon, and chutney appetizer.

Italian Olive Oil and Slap Ya Mama Cajun Seasoning used for the Asparagus

My dishes were ready and so was I!  Friendsgiving had finally arrived.  All that was left to do now was eat, drink, and be merry!  I'll make sure to tell you all about the wine, dinner, and homemade ice cream on the next edition of Bite and Booze!

  

Pear and Bourbon Reduction Chutney

This week a group of friends and I celebrated our Third Annual Friendsgiving.  Friendsgiving is a dinner club meeting where we eat a pot-luck, family-style, Thanksgiving-themed feast during the week before Turkey Day.  It is typically our largest dinner club gathering of the year, and it has been extremely memorable on every occasion.  There will be another post about Friendsgiving, but for now I wanted to share the pear and bourbon reduction chutney that I created to top the bacon and scallops that I cooked for a Friendsgiving appetizer!

I began my culinary creativity at Southside Produce where I came across a delicious display of fresh pears.  Not knowing which variety of pear to choose, I went with one of each!  I'm pretty happy with that decision.

Red Pears, Bosc Pears, and D'Anjou Pears at Southside Produce

After doing a little more shopping I returned home to begin the cooking process.  Like a lot of good dishes, I started with a little olive oil in a nice, thick bottomed skillet.  I'm not much of a measurer, so I just eyeballed what I thought would be enough and put it over medium heat.  I know this doesn't help for perfectly recreating the dish, but what's the fun in that anyway!?

My Olive Oil Heating Up

Next, I diced a few shallots to create a base for the sauce.  Shallots are an interesting vegetable and one that I don't use very often.  I typically go with a full white or yellow onion, but this occasion seemed too special for that.  I needed the mild nature of the shallot to give a little flavor to the chutney without being overpowering.

Sliced Shallots Getting Ready to be Diced

Once I had the shallots finely diced I transferred them to the pan with the olive oil and let them sauté for a few minutes until the little pieces of shallot were turning clear. 

Shallots Sautéing in Olive Oil

As soon as the shallots were cooked down enough, it was time to add the fun stuff!  I momentariy removed the pan from the heat while I added a generous portion of Knob Creek Kentucky Straight Bourbon.  Knob Creek is one of my favorite mass-produced and widely available bourbons on the market. 

After adding the bourbon to the pan I placed it back on the heat and then added about two-thirds of a can of Swanson chicken broth (that's about how much bourbon I used as well).  I left those ingredients over the medium heat of the burner and allowed a little time for the mixture to heat back up.  I then sprinkled in some of my absolute favorite Cajun seasoning, Slap Ya Mama!  Thanks to the recommendation from Luna to include white pepper in the sauce, I used Slap Ya Mama's white pepper blend, which is fantastic and simple.  For those that can't get it in your local supermarket, you can order it online!  The white pepper blend contains four ingredients with no preservatives or other filler: red pepper, white pepper, salt, and garlic.  The Cajun spices were followed by a fair amount of pear infused vinegar, a sizeable portion of brown sugar, and about a third to half of that small bottle of honey.  All of the ingredients were stirred together and brought to a slight boil before I added the fruit.

Knob Creek Bourbon, Swanson Chicken Broth, Slap Ya Mama White Pepper Blend, Pear Infused Vinegar, Brown Sugar, and Honey

With everything above fusing in the pot, the time had come to turn my attention to the glorius pears that I selected from Southside Produce.  I took my knife to the fantastic fruits, carving out their stems and seeds while leaving the juicy flesh on the cutting board.  The wedges of pear were then diced into small morsels and added to the pot of simmering sauce.  I actually only used about half of each pear in the chutney with the rest going straight to my belly!

Red Pear, D'Anjou Pear, and Bosc Pear

With all of the ingredients now in the pot, all I had to do was wait and stir every once in a while.  I put the burner on low heat and let the flavors combine with each other while the sauce reduced to a chutney consistency.  I let the mixture simmer for what was probably a full hour or more before I removed it from the heat and let it cool.

Pear and Bourbon Reduction Chutney Simmering on the Stove

I created this chutney to go over some bacon wrapped scallops that I cooked the next day for our Friendsgiving feast.  For that recipe and to see the finished product with the chutney on top, you'll have to check back for the next post.  As much as I like to eat, sometime I forget how much I also like to cook every now and then.  If I only I had somebody to do the damn dirty dishes for me!