Paper Chef: A Clean-Out-the-Fridge International Holiday Cocktail Party

Monday, December 5, 2005

Alright, so the first three Paper Chef ingredients this month were not so exciting for me. Carrots are cute and sweet, but in my opinion, the best thing about them is their color (I love orange) and their nutritional benefits. Rice is flexible at least, and offers the possibility for many adaptations. Anchovies, though?? I am no anchovy fan. Tiny fishes packed in oil: with the exception of a Puttanesca sauce I made once, anchovies have not had a place in my pantry. The last ingredient, however, I found intriguing: "Something from the other side of the world that helps make this dish a celebration for you." Hmmm...the other side of the world...celebration...maybe I can find a way to make this work.

So, here are the things I'm celebrating through my entry: 1. This holiday season. I love this time of year, and I love to throw a good party. This one will be my warm-up. 2. The sheer cultural variety of food traditions in the world, represented visibly by the lovely montage of culinary prowess I find in the international food blogging community. 3. People who contribute to this cultural variety in my personal life. 4. The opportunity to clean out my fridge and pantry. 5. The end of my first semester as a Ph.D. student, without the stress of which I'm sure I would not have enough pent-up creative energy to pull this off!!

How do I plan to celebrate these things, you ask? Why, through a Clean-Out-My-Fridge Holiday Cocktail Party, using the Paper Chef ingredients plus whatever I have on hand, including foods from around the world that remind me of people and cultural traditions I cherish, of course!

Actually, I had both rice and carrots already, so I picked up a tin of anchovies from the market and set about examining the culinary contents of my kitchen. Although it is possible to pinpoint the exact location of "around the world" from you, as my husband cleverly discovered, I chose to think of the term more broadly. The three places from around the world I wanted to make sure I represented are: India, as my lovely office-mate has recently arrived in the U.S. from Calcutta, and brings with her many of the country's delicious culinary traditions (which she has been kind enough to share!); Italy, where my husband and I first learned to love food and wine together (a long time ago!); and Australia, home of this month's distinguished Paper Chef judge, who always manages to produce some of the most unusual and creative food I've ever seen.

India would be easy: I usually keep basmati rice, Indian curry paste, and spices on hand. In fact, I recently bought some whole cardamom pods that were on sale at my grocer...maybe they could be of use.

Italy shouldn't be too hard either. I cook Italian food quite a bit, and I found just the thing: half a container of mascarpone cheese left from a sauce I made last week!

Australia: Hmmm. This would be trickier. After searching my pantry high and low and researching traditional Australian ingredients, I was pretty certain I'd have to go back to the store and forsake my self-made rules. Rats.

But wait! On the wine rack there...isn't that chardonnay made in...yes, Australia! Hooray--Yellow Tail to the rescue!

With the ingredients all in place and my party hat on, here is the menu I created:

Drunken Australian Rice Cakes with Carrot Coulis

Cardamom-Spiced Basmati Rice Pudding with Anchovy Butter

Wontons with Poblano-Mascarpone Filling

Orange Coconut Sticky Rice Brulèe

Each dish (except the dessert, which is sans anchovies) contains all three specified ingredients, plus at least one ingredient from another meaningful part of the world. For the first one, I took inspiration from my mom and dad, who make fried rice cakes with leftover rice that are very delicious. In my Aussie-infused version, I cooked the rice in the Australian chardonnay and mixed it up with carrots, green onions, an egg, and sautéed garlic and anchovies. After coating the tiny little cakes in bread crumbs, I pan-fried them until they turned brown. For the sauce, I pureed roasted carrots, lemon juice, and some leftover roasted garlic I found in the fridge, and thinned it with chicken broth. The wine imparted a nice, rich flavor to the rice, which created a welcome palate for the citrusy coulis. Crunchy on the outside, soft and warm on the inside, these little cakes would make a lovely first course at a holiday dinner party. They're probably a little too messy and too much trouble for a large cocktail party, but they taste good enough to make for an alternate occasion.

Ever since Stephen at Stephencooks posted about his little rice pudding islands, I have wanted to try a savory pudding. For my attempt here, I relied on my ingredient from India to provide flavor: cardamom. Instead of baking them in individual ramekins, I made one big one and cut it into tiny little rounds with an inverted spice jar. In an effort to find a way to appease my aversion to anchovies, I decided to try The Joy of Cooking's method for Anchovy Butter. With some extra lemon and cayenne pepper, I found a nice accompaniment for these puddings...and some form of anchovy I did not detest. It worked surprisingly well with the creamy, Indian-spiced pudding, offering a salty citrus counterpoint to the neutral sweetness of the carrot and cardamom. I'm not sure I would serve these alone, though; they were missing something it seemed...but they looked cute on their platter anyway. And I might actually spread that butter on a baguette later this week...who knows?

The next dish came about because I had extra rice and still not enough room in my fridge. I have had a package of wonton skins waiting to be used for quite some time now, so I decided to make a filling, tossing into the food processor whatever struck my fancy (besides rice, carrots, and anchovy butter), which turned out to be: a leftover roasted poblano pepper, the requisite Italian mascarpone, chile powder, cayenne, and cumin. These were so good. The poblano imparted a smoky heat to the whole dish that I loved, making them seem more like empanadas than wontons. These were my husband's favorite too. I don't know why you would ever grind up rice to put into a wonton filling, other than for the extra carbs, but who said Paper Chef entries were supposed to abide by conventional logic? (No recipe for these; they really were an exercise in throwing things from the fridge into the food processor--no measurements!)

Last but not least, how can you have a cocktail party without a little something sweet? (Okay, so probably you would never have a cocktail party and serve only rice. But who's to say?) I made a rice pudding of sorts with coconut milk a few years ago, and I loved the texture, but it was missing something. Inspired by one of Sam's contributions to the Vegan IMBB over at Becks & Posh, I decided to try little coconut rice brulèes with carrot. This would also allow me the chance to throw in my new favorite flavor combination (and a suggestion from the judges): orange and maple syrup. I know these don't have anchovies in them, but oh my goodness, they are good. This is by far my favorite thing I made, with an unplanned culinary nod to another of my favorite cuisines from around the world: Thai!

With the food, I served a Cranberry Wine Punch that made the whole occasion seem more festive. As a matter of fact, in between cooking and photographing, we put on Christmas music and decorated the house. Now, the lights are strung, the tree is adorned, and we are all ready for the holidays. Or at least in the mood for some serious celebrating!

Recipes

Note: All of these recipes make very small portions.

DRUNKEN AUSTRALIAN RICE CAKES WITH CARROT COULIS

1 cup white rice

1 3/4 cup chardonnay (preferably from Australia!)

1 egg, beaten

1 1/2 T. chopped green onion

1 T. grated carrot

2 T. olive oil

2 anchovy fillets

2 cloves garlic, minced

2 T. canola or vegetable oil

2 cups breadcrumbs

Cook rice according to directions, substituting wine for water. Cool thoroughly. Mix 1 cup of the cooked rice with the egg and green onions; set aside. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the anchovies, and stir until they dissolve. Sauté the garlic until golden. Add the garlic and all of the oil to the rice mixture. Return skillet to heat, and add 2 T. of canola or vegetable oil. Shape the rice into patties, coat in bread crumbs, and fry until brown, about 2-3 minutes per side (my cakes were very tiny). Serve with a dollop of carrot coulis.

For the Carrot Coulis:

2 T. roasted carrot puree

2 cloves roasted garlic

Juice of half a lemon

1/8 cup chicken stock

1 T. olive oil

Puree all in food processor. Add more chicken stock to thin if necessary.

CARDAMOM-SPICED BASMATI RICE PUDDINGS WITH ANCHOVY BUTTER

3/4 cup cooked basmati rice

1 cup milk

2 egg

10 cardamom pods

4 T. roasted carrot puree

Mix all ingredients together in a small soufflé dish. Refrigerate for a few hours or overnight to infuse the cardamom flavor. Fish out the pods (they'll be floating on the top). Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Place the souffle dish in a water bath that comes halfway up the sides. Bake for 45 minutes or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. Cut into tiny circles with a spice jar or small biscuit cutter (I'm sure there are better gadgets for this; the spice jar is the only thing I had on hand the right size. It worked fine, too.) Serve with a spread of anchovy butter.

For the Anchovy Butter:

4 anchovy fillets, packed in oil

4 T. butter

1/8 t. cayenne pepper

Juice of one lemon

Puree all in the food processor.

ORANGE COCONUT STICKY RICE BRULÈE

1/3 c. rice

1/2 c. coconut milk

1 T. brown sugar

Zest and juice of 1 orange

1 T. roasted carrot puree

2 T. mascarpone cheese

1 T. maple syrup

Sugar and orange zest for garnish

Cook the rice in the coconut milk until all the liquid is absorbed. Stir in the remaining ingredients and refrigerate for at least a few hours. The rice mixture should be very sticky. Preheat the broiler (if you have a torch, you can just use that). Cut the rice into rounds (again, I used the inverted spice jar) and sprinkle sugar on top. Heat under the broiler until the sugar melts and bubbles (I couldn't get mine to be crunchy because the orange zest started to char). Top with a heap of orange peel.

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