CincyEats

One of the most coveted seats amongst our friends is a seat at Christmas dinner. This year we hosted our 4th annual. I can’t tell you how special an event this has become for us. The night is always fun and festive.  Sometimes it is even filled with surprises, Jess proposed during dessert 2 years ago.  I would love to say that the menu is a surprise, but I have the biggest mouth in America.

Whenever I am planning a big meal I always come up with a concept. I really wanted to do small plate comfort food, but I couldn’t get chicken pot pie to fit in the menu. If there was not going to be chicken pot pie, there was not going to be small plate comfort food.  I normal set a menu pretty far in advance, but this year was just kind of funky. A week before the menu finally hit me, breakfast to dinner.

Lets take a little picture journey through Christmas dinner

Baked eggs have become my new favorite breakfast. They are so simple to make, yet taste so elegant.  The egg (only one egg was used because of the amount for food that was still coming) was served with a homemade biscuit and a simple salad of mixed green with olive oil and lemon juice.

This was that hardest course for me.  I had come up blank for a while until my sister suggested apples. Apparently some people eat fruit in the morning.  I started looking for savory fruit recipes when I came across this orange black pepper marmalade recipe, I knew I had hit the jackpot!

Who doesn’t love a grilled cheese sandwich with a soup to dip it in?  We used manchego for it’s nutty flavor but good melting ability. The soup had a little heat on the back end from a roasted ploblano pepper.

By far this was the easiest course that we made, but also one of the most popular. We didn’t have any leftovers!

The lamb was braised with carrots, onions, and celery with wine and homemade veal stock.   We served the lamb atop cheddar grits with roasted parsnips.

Nothing like a throw back to your childhood! Only now, we are allowed to drink alcohol. I highly recommend trying this at home. A very easy dessert with a big bang.   From the left we have a hefeweizen with cranberry orange sorbetto, lambic kriek with mexican vanilla gelato and stone imperial russian stout with vietnamese coffee gelato. All of our gelato came from Dojo gelato, which I will generously call them best in the city.

We finished off our meal with a lovely cheese plate. Unfortunately no picture was taken, but you can imagine. Jess always picks out a soft, semi soft and then a hard cheese. The perfect ending to any meal.

I promise not to leave you hanging and will post recipes.  If you are more curious about one recipe over another, post a comment. I will post that recipe first…for now, if you click on the picture and they will take you to a bigger version.