Cookie Cornucopia

So for Christmas, I was invited to a Cookie Party.  I am not a good baker, so rather than baking cookies I opted for making a couple of drinks.  One was Alton Brown's Eggnog, which I made an entire gallon of.  Even though it was very delicious it was a bit excessive.  The other thing I went ahead and made was a Hot Toddy.  My recipe was extremely easy to make and was done in a crock pot overnight.  It was the more popular of the two beverages and was completely gone by the night was over.

The party was a good idea and everyone bought a different type of cookie. This cornucopia of cookies was a child’s dream.  There was even a spot for decorating cookies.  I used my awesome artistic ability to make two cookies that were just a giant glob of yellow.  I did very well if I do say so myself.  We also had  a fun time with a bit of Christmas Karaoke.  It was a brilliant idea.  I had no idea that you could do Karaoke on YouTube.  It makes good sense and you can do karaoke very cheaply using it.

Anyway  here’s the recipe:

Hot Toddy

Ingredients:

1 Gallon Apple Juice (I used Simply Apple)

10 3 inch Cinnamon Sticks

4 Star Anise Pods

¼ Cup Sugar

2 Vanilla Beans

250 mL Ameretto

1 Liter Whiskey (I use 750mL Crown Royal and 250mL Southern Comfort, just what I had available)

125 mL Goldshlagger

Method:

Combine the first five ingredients in a crock pot.  Slice the vanilla beans in half and scrape the seeds out with a knife before adding the beans and seeds to the mix.

Let the thing go on low overnight.

Just before serving remove the anise, vanilla beans, cinnamon sticks, and add the booze, serve at your party with the crockpot set to warm.

Here's the Crock pot that I used:

After a pretty fun game of Scategories, we ended up going out for Mexican food.  The location, Los Comales.  The food was actually very straight forward and pretty tasty.  I ended up getting a chicharone (Pork Belly) gordita as well as a Steak Hurrache.  The food there was pretty good and came out pretty fast.  They even had a variety of vegetarian options. It is a good place that I say would deserve a stop if you’re ever in Pilsen.

Happy Holidays. 

Chipotle Soup with Sweet Potato Gnocchi

I made this soup as a use up for everything in my fridge, and I had red beans already at home.  It would probably be better with black beans.  Still it came out pretty tasty.  I really have been on food blogs a lot and it inspired me to spend some of my time off not going out to eat but sitting at home and really cooking.  I have been making a lot of vegetarian/vegan dishes because I've been hanging around with a lot of those types lately which is kind of a bummer but it is awesome when I make a dish that is satisfying without including meat.  This soup probably wasn't vegetarian though because I don't label my stock before putting it in the freezer, and I don't know if it was chicken or vegetable.  I had to buy some sharpie markers right away.

Ingredients:
For the Soup:
1.5 Cups Dried Red Beans
1 Quart Vegetable Stock
2 Chipolte peppers in Adobo sauce
3 Tablespoons Adobo
1 Cup dry white wine
1.5 lbs Zucchini
2  Bay Leaves

For the Gnocchi
2 lb Sweet Potatoes
2.5 cups flour
2 Eggs
4 Tablespoons Cilantro
2 Tablespoons Salt
8 oz Cotija Cheese
1 Tablespoon Adobo

For the Green Onion Sauce:
1/2 Bunch of Green Onions
1 Poblano Chilie
1/2 cup Olive Oil
Juice of two limes

To Prepare the Soup:

1. Cook the red beans in the veg stock until tender (for this I used my slow cooker on low the entire time I was at work, roughly ten hours.  You could of course use canned beans instead.
2. Finley chop the chipotle peppers and add to the soup with all of the remaining ingredients but the zucchini and simmer for 30 minutes.
3. Add the zucchini and simmer until desired tenderness (about 10 minutes for my taste).

To Prepare the Gnocchi:

1. Peel and dice the sweet potatoes and add them to cold water.  Bring the water to a boil and boil until tender.
2. Mash the potatoes (I use my KitchenAid Stand Mixer to accomplish this task by going on speed 3 for a few minutes you can just use a masher the old fashioned way though).
3. At this point I add the cilantro salt and adobo and mix until it is incorporated and give the potatoes a bit of time to cool.
4. I mix in the eggs and flour until you basically get one big dough ball.
5. Then  I scoop out the dough and make very unevenly sized balls of the potato dough and stuff them with the cotija cheese, which I diced in to also very uneven 1/4-1/8 inch cubes.  A little extra flour keeps things from getting too sticky.
6. I added them to well salted boiling water and cooked until they floated. Stirring the pot after they were in for about 30 seconds because they do stick.
7. (Bonus Step)  To add in a bit more flavor, I brought a tablespoon each of Butter and Olive oil over medium heat to just caramelize the sides of the gnocchi.

For the Green Chilie Sauce:

1. Remove the stem and seeds from the chilie. Put everything in a blender and blend until relatively smooth.  (I can't really make it much simpler than that).

Bonus Recipe:  Champagne Granita

This is a awesome frozen dessert I made using a bottle of cheap sparkling wine (Come on people you actually think I have enough money to just go making desserts with bottles of Champagne, I mean I wish but no).  To make the dessert I combined a bottle of Champagne with Naked Berry Blast.  I was going to juice my own strawberries for this but I was kind of over the idea with all of the work I had to do with the Gnocchi.  I garnished with fresh mint.  To make it you basically combine the bottle of Champagne with a 16 oz bottle of the juice and a couple of tablespoons of honey.  put it in the freezer, and come back in a while when it's part way frozen, mix it up with a fork and do that again every few hours until you basically have like a grown up snow cone.