Happy 2007!

I think our apartment almost exploded last night. At the last second, we got a bunch of calls from people saying they'd decided to come to our NYE party. So we ballooned from 10 to 15 people overnight! There was plenty of food to go around, thankfully.

Champagne glasses, cleaned and labelled. We actually had to ask my sisters to bring more glasses from home, because we only own eight. But aren't the tags cute? Get it, bubbles for bubbly? I made them from scrap book paper.

No knead bread, with sauteed shallots and amazing bread flour from Surfas. The flour is extra fine and has a high gluten content. The dough was visibly more bouncy and silky from the get go.

Cheddar crackers with black and white sesame, and rosemary marjoram herbed crackers with sea salt. The green plate was actually made into an appetizer platter after I took this photo. There was olive spread, brie, prosciutto, and chorizo. Maybe I didn't photograh it because I didn't make any of that. If it's not homemade, who cares? Hehe, if any guests took a photo of the platter I'll post it later.

Small muchies included paprika dusted puff shells filled with dilled cream cheese and gravlax, steamed asparatus, and mini mushroom quiches topped with shrimp. I was especially proud of the quiche cups, which were flakey and slightly wheaty. J came up with the idea of putting a few tea lights under the quiche to keep them warm, and it totally worked! And the three-tiered plate holder is a fantastic space saver.

Garlic pepper marinated lamb is always popular. Portabellas and green onions were seared in the cast iron after the lamb was seared, which resulted in them getting some rave reviews. Um, meat flavored vegetables? Heck yeah.

Sadly, I forgot to photograph some crackly pork belly. It's okay, it wasn't very pretty. Just fatty and good.

J's pride and joy, a 3+ lb. rock cod he caught a few days ago when he went ocean fishing off Marina del Rey. We stuffed it with lemons and onions, wrapped in foil, and steamed it in the oven.

Potato bacon gratin with caramelized onions. Incredibly rich, but so good. I think I'm going to often be tempted to make variations of this in the future. I overdid the liquid a little, but I figured better too moist than too dry on my first go.

My first flan! I'm not sure how to make it more clean looking; bits just seemed to appear in the center. Any ideas? Next time I'd make it taller and smaller. But the flavor was really good--not too sweet, and a little bitter from the burnt sugar, and the texture silky.

And, last but not least, my sister's belated birthday cake. Chocolate all the way through, with almond slivers to break up the color a little. It's my first tall cake with piping! I think I'm going to go eat some leftovers right now. It's the only thing we had left at the end of the evening besides very random, suspicious looking scraps.