Now. Normally I pride myself on making absolutely everything from scratch when I entertain. But there are exceptions.
Look, gentle readers, the holiday party I had on Sunday turned out to be quite the freaking production, let me tell you. I made like 6 trips to the Key Foods, formed and froze dozens of meatballs and phyllo triangles, shoehorned some compound butter into a star-shaped cookie cutter … and on and on and on. No rest for the wicked—you might say I was trying to stave off the prospect of getting coal in my stocking.
The menu, which yielded shockingly few leftovers, was as follows:
An 8-pound ham glazed with molasses and studded with pineapples, with sriracha mayo and horseradish sour cream accoutrements.
Two roast chickens, stuffed with orange wedges and leeks for flavor and (dubious) presentation.
An embarrassment of quiches (mushroom-leek, tomato-arugula, and bacon-arugula, all with Swiss cheese).
A tricolor penne salad with goat cheese, roasted tomatoes, and olives.
Scallion-cilantro potato salad.
Purple cabbage slaw with red onions and hoisin sauce.
Jalapeno meatballs.
Spinach triangles (recipe forthcoming) and curried-chicken triangles, because I had leftover chicken from the last roast chickens (see link above).
Homemade Fronch bread with compound butter.
Dill bread.
A crudité plate with a trio of dips: hummus, roasted red pepper, and one I like to call green godd-ish.
Cupcakes, because I found a package of stocking-shaped cupcake decorations when I was organizing my kitchen.
Aaaaand finally ... the titular cherry-persimmon pie consisting of a can of sugar-and-preservative-laden filling dumped into a pie shell—and some diced fuyu persimmons, to cut the sweetness of the cherry filling and make the pie seem more pretentious.
Listen, this is how I look at it: I made every single other freaking thing for this party from scratch, and even if cherries were in season in December, which they’re not, they would cost a ridiculous ton of money, and it would be a huge freaking pain in the ass to pit them, so screw that, I bought a goddamn can of filling, because YOLO.
Plus, technically it’s a locally sourced ingredient, because the Key Foods is only like two blocks away.
I did make the pie crust from scratch: The dough recipe is Martha Stewart’s (and my) go-to pate brisee, which I also employed for the quiches, as it’s sweet/savory-agnostic. So I feel like that’s enough. Come on, I’m only one woman—it’s not like I’m Chaka Khan, for Chrissakes. Look, I don’t have to justify myself to you, gentle reader!
Anyway, it was pretty good.
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