We spent another year at home on New Year’s eve…but that in no way means we didn’t celebrate. The nice thing is that you can spend more per person going out this one night than you would for 4 people if you stay home. And at home you can do whatever you want, eat whatever and whenever you want, and just otherwise enjoy yourself.
So what was on our menu?
To elaborate a bit more, we had:
A small portion of angel hair pasta (made with my fabulous pasta machine earlier in the day) with a bit of truffle oil and black truffle shavings.
The main dish was Surf & Turf which is always a favorite for us on New Year’s. Stefan coated the steaks with garlic pepper, lemon pepper, and a bit of olive oil right before putting them on the grill. Since they were from our butcher in Höchst, they turned out fantastic and you didn’t even need any sauce along with them. The Surf was marinated using this recipe we found. The tails turned out delicious and didn’t need any butter along with them either. It was accompanied by a fresh salad of baby greens, garnished with edible flowers. We tried out a new raspberry vinaigrette dressing recipe which turned out really well.
The dessert was rather light and quickly becoming a favorite around here. We had homemade mango sorbet in our fridge still so we decided to use that and make a batch of berry sorbet (per this recipe, without the cream) to accompany it. Then we cut up a mango, a Japanese pear (Nashi – which are SO tasty) and strawberries, then added a few fresh raspberries. This is actually really simple and you can cut the fruit up before your guests arrive, divide it into bowls and leave it in your fridge until you’re ready to eat it. We have an electric ice cream maker which is what we used to make the sorbet so it was a very simple process really.
And of course we had a complimenting wine menu, too.
Pearls & Roses is a sparkling wine from Garage Winery, located near Rüdesheim. Then we followed it up with another Garage Winery wine, a 2005 Chardonnnay which really goes down way too easy. The Erbacher Steinmorgen Auslese is a very sweet, fruity wine which we served with the desert. We picked up this bottle from F.B. Schönleber along with a few bottles of their sparkling wine for another occasion. And then of course a good champagne to ring in the New Year.
The first three wines we picked up right before Christmas when we took a trip down there with Stefan’s parents. We were at F.B. Schönleber in 2006 as well, when my mom came to visit, and just loved their Reisling sekt. This year we tried another sekt that we are definitely going to need to buy more of in the near future! Garage Winery was a new stop for us and somehow I wasn’t really feeling their wine when we were there…but thankfully we brought some home because here, it tasted fantastic.
Regarding our entertaining skills, we’re finding that we can make a lot of things ahead of time now and are trying to get better with our table decorating skills too (hence the little menu boards and the pigs for good luck which everyone got to take home with them). Maybe next year we’ll throw an even larger New Year’s party…but that would also require us to make some friends too!
Hope you all had a great start into 2008 and that it holds many great things for you and your loved ones!
