My friends and I love the "Harry Potter" series, so we decided to have a fun Christmas party around food that they might serve in the Great Hall at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. We were thwarted from making chocolate frogs (molds in storage) and treacle tart (treacle being largely unavailable in the U.S.), but we made lots of delicious things anyway.
- Deviled eggs
- Veggie platter
- Sugared ham
- Mustard potato salad (already blogged here)
- Vegetable tian
- Brownie tart
Deviled eggs
This wasn't the first thing we made, but it's an appetizer, so I'll list it first. Diane loves my deviled eggs, and they do have a good reputation, so we decided to boil up some eggs. Unfortunately, despite the fact that we are fairly accomplished home cooks, we really have no idea how to boil eggs. I always have to look up the recipe online at some site like this one, so that's what we did.
Diane said she didn't have my recipe, and that's right, because no one really does. My mom and I kind of made it up, but the basic ingredients are these:
- Hard-boiled eggs
- Mayonnaise
- Yellow mustard
- Dijon mustard
- Dry ground mustard
- Paprika
Mmm! I love them.
Sugared ham
Diane bought a huge gourmet ham and baked it in the oven until it was nice and pink. Then she added a brown sugar glaze and cloves. (If Diane wants to post the recipe for the glaze in the comments section, she is more than welcome to!)
Ohhhh man. Just seeing it like that made me hungry, and we had to smell it baking while we were making other things.
This dish is one that Diane and I have been drooling over for some time. It's potatoes, zucchini, and tomatoes, all cut up and arranged over cooked onions and olive oil. Did I mention the oodles of fresh parsley?
It sort of reminded me of the dish that the rat makes in "Ratatouille." Halfway through baking it gets even more delicious with a layer of gruyere cheese on top. It looked and smelled amazing, and it baked up so soft. Here's the cooked tian with the ham:
How's that for amazing. And if that wasn't decadent enough, there was dessert waiting for us...
Diane made this lovely brownie tart for us, which involved copious amounts of chocolate and other evil things.
Look at that thing. Pure evil. Diane cut it up into slices and we enjoyed it long after dinner. The inside was warm and semi-gooey and the outside was crunchy, and, of course, the whole thing was chocolatey. At one point, when I was eyeing it suspiciously, I asked Diane what were the chocolate flecks in the tart, and she told me that it was filled with chocolate chips. Mmm.
Another awesome meal from Val and Diane - here's to more in the new year!
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