Holiday Party #4: Too Much White (Christmas) Food?

The December issue of Domino Magazine talks about how glamorous it can be to serve a whole meal with all white food. A white bean soup, a white entree, trees of egg white cookies. Maybe that's hot, but one of the first dinners was just that tone-on-tone, but I didn't mean to do it. I think it was pork, canned apple sauce and rice or maybe egg noodles?! White, white, white, and surely not glamorous. I was a junior in college, if I'm remembering right, and I didn't realize everything would be the same color until I got it all on the plate?

Everything I want to serve for the main course for the Christmas party is white. But I'm not going to do all white, since I don't think my all white food bufet would ever be as trendy as what Domino's serving up.

R* and I decided on bacon wraped maple pork loin (white) and chestnut and chipolata dressing (kinda white). I didn't think we needed to serve both mashed potatoes (white) and dressing for a standing-up buffet cocktail party? R* convinced me I could make both since dressing and the potatoes are easy to make ahead of time. I also wanted to serve roasted cauliflower (there's that white food again). Roasted cauliflower is my favorite in(ish)-season vegetable, but fearing an un-trendy white plate, I think I'll have to skip it.

CQ suggested we round it out with the salad we had a few years back. I clipped the recipe from Oprah's magazine: greens, stilton, dried cherries, tamari almonds. I'm not the world's biggest salad fan and it would mean another trip to Trader Joe's for tamari almonds, but that salad might be the way to un-whiten our Christmas plates.

I was thinking sweet potatoes, instead of the mashed potatoes, but I don't like them. I can eat them to be polite, but they aren't something I'd like to serve a gaggle of guests. Plus we were thinking butternut squash soup with Thai spices as the amuse bouche. There's something silly but fun about soup shooters.

R* gave me an authographed copy of Dorie Greenspan's new Baking book. CQ was paging through it tongiht, helping me come up with ideas for the citrus desserts. She found a recipe for Lenox Almond Biscotti, with a variation that calls for lemon. I think they'd go well with champagne or proscecco. As the very helpful margin note says, they can be made a week ahead and stored. I can make them next weekend and have them all taken care of before the party.

It's so cool that Mr. S made Nigella's clementine cake. I think my friend S in DC (who shares the same birthday, happy belated-birthday-cakes for us!) had plans to make it too. I put my clementines in a bowl with some peppermint candy. For now they are a great back drop for the three wise men.