Georgian Dinner Party

We had a dinner party featuring Georgian food. This is Sarah's brainchild and while I am not entirely sure what inspired it (though it was probably Nigella Lawson or Christina Nichol's Lucky Peach blog), it was a fun way to try some new foods I probably never would have found and made on my own. We had at least one vegetarian in attendance and we planned it so that almost all of the food (except the chicken, of course) was vegetarian friendly.

RECIPES

• Georgian Stuffed Chicken -- we cooked a separate batch of the rice stuffing in a glass dish so vegetarians could enjoy it.
• Beet Latkes with Horseradish Cream
• Badrijani Nigvzit (Walnut Stuffed Eggplant Rolls) -- these were my favorite food from the meal! A little labor intensive but really delicious and absolutely worth the work.
• Hachapuri (Cheese Stuffed Bread)
• Muhammara (Red Pepper Walnut Dip) -- I'm not sure of the exact recipe Sarah used to make the one served at our dinner, but I have made the one at this link several times and I love it.
• Dark Grape Pelamushi (Grape Juice Pudding) -- I made this since I had a lot of grapes given to me by our farm share. It turned out more brown than purple, and I am not sure how well executed it was since I had never had it before, but it was fun to try to make something so different. It had a nice sourness from the grape skins and grapey flavor since the grapes had seeds (waaaay different from most American table grapes, which barely have any grape flavor and are mostly just sweet). If I ever make it again I will probably try this recipe instead.

Other things we served that we did not prepare:

• Sartori MontAmore cheese (heart eyes emoji here)
• Olives
• Pita bread
• Khortytsa, a Ukrainian vodka (we couldn't find any Georgian spirits locally to buy)
• Red wine
• Our favorite beers

Dirt Cake

Dirt cake is one of our family dessert staples. Imagine cookies 'n cream ice cream but not quite as cold so you can taste all the delicious flavors. I'm not sure when I first had it, but my mom has been making it all my life. It is a favorite birthday cake of my oldest brother, who was born in January, but we also made it in the summer. My mom still makes it whenever more than one of us comes home to visit. Imagine my surprise at hearing it was my boyfriend's favorite birthday cake too! It is not the only reason I married him but it certainly didn't hurt. He requested it again this year, and we shared this one pictured above at his birthday party.

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RECIPE:

Dirt Cake
from my mom, original source unknown
serves 12-20

20 oz Oreo cookies, crushed
¼ cup (½ stick) butter or margarine, softened
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
3 ½ cups milk
2 small packages (3.4 oz each) Jello instant French vanilla pudding mix
12 oz Cool Whip, thawed

Put Oreo cookies in a zippered plastic bag and crush into small pieces with a rolling pin. Set aside. Beat butter, cream cheese, and powdered sugar together in a large bowl until thoroughly combined. Set aside. In another large bowl, combine milk and pudding mix with a whisk until completely mixed. Let stand 5 minutes until thickened. Fold in Cool Whip to milk and pudding mixture. Mix pudding mixture into butter mixture until well combined. Layer 1/3 crushed Oreos, ½ cream mixture, 1/3 Oreos, ½ cream mixture, 1/3 Oreos in 9x13 inch rectangular pan. Refrigerate 1-2 hours or until flavors have blended. Store covered in refrigerator.

Notes:

• This recipe was written when standard packages of Oreo cookies were 20 oz. They are now over 25% smaller at 14.3 oz (booooo). You can still make it with one package of cookies but if you really like a lot of cookie crumbs in your dirt cake, consider buying more than one and having some leftovers, or buy another, smaller package.
• If you can't get Oreos where you live, you can substitute a different kind of chocolate sandwich cookie with vanilla cream filling (like Hydrox? Are those still a thing?)
• Do not use non-dairy milk. The pudding will not set.
• You can make this in individual servings too! Instead of putting the whole thing in a 9x13 pan, put a little bit of cookie crumbs in the bottom of a clear plastic cup, top with a few spoonfuls of the cream mixture, then sprinkle more cookie crumbs on top. This will make anywhere from 12-18 servings depending on how much you put in each cup.
• I recommend serving gummy worms/candies on the side if you have the urge to put them in at all. I have discovered I'm a dirt cake purist: no flavored cream (especially chocolate because it competes with the chocolate cookies) and absolutely no gummy worms or candies in it WTF gross. Something about mixing gummy and creamy textures is just really revolting to me and I can't be the only one who feels this way. Plus I imagine children would love the idea of putting their own worms in their dirt cake.

The Green Monk, a matcha green tea cocktail

As I was putting together the menu for a summer tea party, I wanted to make a cocktail with matcha (powdered green tea) in it and came across the Green Monk by (now-defunct) One Cocktail. I ended up not serving it at the party because it looked like a lot of work and I had a lot of other foods to prepare for the party, but I did make it later because I was very curious about how it tasted.

Substitutions:

• Instead of Chartreuse I used Libertine 72 because I already had it and I was not likely to notice the difference with the small amount in the recipe (plus I'm not really into absinthe).
• I used a regular orange instead of a Meyer lemon since I couldn't find Meyer lemons to buy where I live in July.

Verdict: Due to the tremendous amount of work (making your own ginger honey syrup and brewed matcha) and expensive/hard to find ingredients (matcha powder, Chartreuse, vanilla bean, Meyer lemons) for such a small amount I will probably not make it again but I'm glad I tried it because it was quite good. The tiny splash of absinthe really elevates it.

RECIPE: Green Monk

Lavender Lemonade

Continuing on my new obsession with lavender in food, I made Pastry Affair's lavender lemonade. Posting the recipe here because the Wayback Machine link isn't playing nice.

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RECIPE:

Lavender Lemonade
Adapted from Pastry Affair
Makes about 6 cups

5 cups water, divided
3 tbsp culinary lavender buds, dried
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups fresh lemon juice, from 6-8 lemons
Lemon slices for garnish (optional)

Boil 1 cup of the water in a small saucepan. Remove from heat and stir in the culinary lavender. Put a lid on the saucepan and let stand for 30 minutes. Strain the mixture with a fine mesh strainer or tea strainer, reserving the liquid. Discard lavender. Allow lavender infusion to cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

Place remaining water (4 cups) and sugar in a second saucepan over high heat, stirring frequently, until all the sugar is dissolved. Remove pan from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

Stir lavender infusion, sugar water, and lemon juice together in a 2-quart pitcher until combined. Allow to cool completely. Store in the refrigerator. Serve with a slice of lemon in each glass.

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This was definitely not pink as the photos on the original recipe make it appear, more pale yellow with a brown-purple tinge. I don't know if this has something to do with the lavender I used. However, it did taste good. The lavender flavor was pleasantly strong, enough to hold its own against the lemon but not overpowering.

To make a simple cocktail I mixed it with citrus flavored vodka, though I imagine plain vodka or gin would also taste nice.

Verdict: I would make this again but probably only for a party or if I had someone around who likes lavender to help me drink it.

Tea Parties Vol. 1: A Birthday Party, and Being Unapologetically Yourself

One of my other hobbies besides cooking is dressing up in an alternative street fashion. One of the things groups of people who are interested in this fashion do is go to tea services while dressed to the nines in fancy, frilly clothes. I had recently left my local community because I felt weird being almost 30 and hanging out with a bunch of high schoolers I wasn't sure I'd ever have crossed paths or be friends with otherwise, and was lamenting the fact that I really wanted to host an event at my house, but wasn't comfortable inviting these people into my home and also felt weird asking my actual friends to come over where I was all dressed up in strange clothes.

Cue Sarah finding out about my fashion hobby and giving me one of the greatest pep talks of my adult life. Indeed she is right. The people who like you already aren't going to abandon you over your taste in clothing, and even if they're not into it personally, they will be happy for you that you're enjoying yourself. I'd read something to this effect and agreed with it before, but I guess I needed someone to say it, out loud, to me specifically.

I then told her about this tea party idea and since we like to cook together, she offered to help me cook for this party. I decided my birthday was a good excuse for the party so I invited my friends and took care of the scheduling and communication, and made drinks and cupcakes and hosted. Sarah made and brought the soup, sablés, gougères and nectarine bars. It was a lovely afternoon.

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RECIPES

• Roasted Corn Gazpacho with Cilantro Crema (from Tara O'Brady's cookbook Seven Spoons)
• Cheddar Cheese Sablés (originally from Chad Robertson's cookbook Tartine Book No. 3; the recipe linked from Scratchin' It is very similar but not the same as the one Sarah made)
• Rye-Cocoa Gougères (originally from Chad Robertson's cookbook Tartine Book No. 3)
• Mocha Cupcakes with Espresso Buttercream Frosting (from Brown Eyed Baker; I additionally topped each one with a chocolate covered espresso bean and chocolate jimmies)
• Nectarine Frangipane Bars (from Smitten Kitchen; Sarah used nectarines instead of rhubarb)
• Matcha Green Tea Mojito
• Spiked Lemonade Iced Tea
• Bonus: Kentucky Tea Julep (from Elmwood Inn; I tested it with a neutral store brand black tea which was probably orange pekoe, and I liked it but we did not end up making them for the party because we had plenty of other drinks)

Other things we served that were not made from scratch:

• Various fancy cheeses
• Wine

Matcha Green Tea Mojito

For our inaugural tea party menu, we looked for summery cocktails that contained tea since they sounded a lot more refreshing than hot tea in the middle of July. I wanted one with black tea and one with green tea, and I chose this one for the green tea drink!

Notes:

• The original recipe calls for 1.5-2 fl oz of the green tea syrup. I used 1.5 fl oz and even then it tasted quite sweet to me, so I recommend 1.5 oz. You can add more if you like it sweeter.
• I like a strong green tea taste so I doubled the amount of matcha from the original recipe.
• The original recipe says to muddle the mint, but people have a wide variety of ideas as to how muddling should be done. The goal of muddling is so that the mint releases its flavor, but what most people want and find pleasant to taste is the sweet, cool aromatic compounds in the oil just below the surface of the leaf, and not the bitter vegetal flavors you might get in addition from tearing or mashing the leaves. Clapping the mint between my hands has been the most successful way for me to achieve the sweet, cool mint flavor I am looking for in my drinks, so I recommend doing that instead, especially if you don't have a proper muddler or professional bartender training. (Plus, it makes your hands smell good.)

Verdict: Mojitos are not something I have often because they require simple syrup and fresh mint (neither of which I generally have on hand) and I don't think I've ever made or had one that really knocked my socks off. That said, this was my favorite attempt yet. I found this refreshing and would definitely have it again.

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RECIPE:

Matcha Green Tea Mojito
adapted from 40 Aprons
Serves 1

For each drink:
5 fresh mint leaves, rinsed and dried, plus extra if desired for garnish
1.5 fl oz (45 ml) matcha simple syrup, recipe follows
2 fl oz (60 ml) white rum
1 fl oz (30 ml) plain vodka
About 3/4-1 cup crushed ice
Club soda or plain sparkling water
Green tea bag tags (optional, for garnish)

Matcha simple syrup (makes enough for 2 drink servings):
1/3 cup (67 g) sugar
1/3 cup (80 ml) water
1 tsp matcha

Make the matcha simple syrup: Place sugar and water in a small saucepan over high heat on the stove, and stir until the sugar is completely dissolved. Remove from heat. Measure matcha into a small heatproof bowl. Add about 2 tsp of the sugar syrup to the matcha and stir to make a paste, making sure it is thoroughly blended (matcha will not dissolve). Repeat with another small amount of sugar syrup. Whisk in the remaining sugar syrup until thoroughly combined, then let cool completely. If not using immediately, store in the refrigerator in a clean glass jar.

Prepare the drink: Clap the mint leaves between your hands to release their aroma, then place in the bottom of a collins glass. Add matcha syrup, rum, and vodka, and stir until combined. Fill glass about 2/3 full with coarsely crushed ice, then top with club soda or sparkling water. Garnish with a sprig of mint and/or tea bag tag. Serve immediately.

Spiked Lemonade Iced Tea

For our inaugural tea party menu, we looked for summery cocktails that contained tea since they sounded a lot more refreshing than hot tea in the middle of July. I wanted one with black tea and one with green tea, and Sarah chose this one for the black tea drink! If you like the combination of black tea and lemon, you'll almost certainly love this.

Notes:

• I used New Amsterdam citrus vodka.
• For further variation, you could try a different fruit flavored vodka or a fruit flavored black tea that goes well with citrus and tea (berry flavors in particular sound nice).
• I made the tea concentrate part ahead (this is especially convenient if you have limited fridge space so you don't have to store a whole pitcher) and finished making the lemonade the next day, right before the gathering at which I served it.
• You will want to let the ice cubes melt a bit to water it down, otherwise it's going to be VERY strong. Alternatively, you could add less vodka if you want a less boozy beverage.

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RECIPE:

Spiked Lemonade Iced Tea
adapted from Tea & Candles and inspired by The Lemon Bowl
Serves 6

4 neutral flavored black tea bags, or about 3 tbsp loose leaf black tea
3/4 cup (6 fl oz, about 175 ml) boiling water
1/3 cup granulated sugar or honey
1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice
1 1/2 cups (12 fl oz, 350 ml) citrus flavored or plain vodka
Ice

In a small heatproof bowl, steep tea in boiling water for 5-7 minutes, or up to 10 minutes if you like strong tea. Remove or strain out and discard tea bags/leaves. Add sugar or honey and stir until dissolved. Let cool until the bowl is cool enough to handle, then refrigerate until chilled. Transfer the tea mixture to a pitcher. Add lemon juice and vodka and stir to combine. Add about a tray's worth of ice cubes (~14 cubes) and mix to combine. Serve immediately.