in which kate is completely insane
I'm about to do two insane things. One, I'm going to yammer on about the menu for my Christmas party, and it is barely October. Two, I'm going to post a recipe that I made up and have not cooked yet.

But it's going to be fucking amazing. Hear me out.

The theme for this year's Christmas menu is Creole/Cajun. This is because we are really poor (running a restaurant has a way of nickel-and-diming one to the grave) and Southern food is festive and terrible for you while necessarily being light on the pocketbook. So we are having crawfish remoulade in toast cups (toast cups are a wonderful trick: cut the crusts off packaged white bread, squish the slices flat with a rolling pin, cram into mini-muffin tins, brush with butter, bake until toasty), celeriac remoulade also in toast cups, Coca-Cola wings, pimento cheese, shrimp paste, faux dirty rice stuffing with cranberries and apples in endive "bowls" for the vegans, black-eyed pea fritters with hot-pepper sauce also for the goddamn vegans, blah blah.

And we are having oysters. Quality Seafood will sell one a hundred oysters for $35, which sounds like a fabulous deal until you consider that the oysters are uncleaned, unshucked, covered with seaweed and barnacles, and come in a gritty, stinky burlap sack that must be toted out of Quality Seafood on a hand cart. I adore raw oysters to such an extent that I am more than happy to contend with this, or, more accurately, blackmail the men in my life into contending with this. We did the raw-oyster thing for my birthday this year, and once every six months sounds about right.

I really wanted to do oysters Rockefeller for my Christmas party. However, even given my unfortunate tendency to do amazingly stupid things in the name of cuisine, I knew that producing oysters Rockefeller for 30+ guests is a terrible, terrible idea. BUT THEY ARE SO DELICIOUS. So I pondered: how to accomplish the Rockefeller effect without actually having to fuck around with rock salt and touch-and-go timing and the like? It took me some days of pondering before I had the germ of an idea: how about having the oysters part and the Rockefeller part be separate?

I was also in need of another vegetarian nibble. I was planning on making classic gougeres, because they are easy and fun as hell to produce. But then my little noggin started a-tickin' and I had this giant, wonderful inspiration.


Gougeres "Rockefeller"

For the gougeres:

* 1 cup water
* 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, diced
* 3/4 teaspoon salt
* 1 cup unbleached all purpose flour
* 4 large eggs, chilled
* 1 cup (packed) coarsely grated smoked Gouda cheese (this stands in for the bacon of the classic Rockefeller treatment)
* 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

This technique is classic and universally useful. Globs of unprepossessing grainy dough magically become beautiful cream puffs with hollow places in their middles, all ready for stuffing. Learn you some gougeres.

Position 1 rack in top third and 1 rack in bottom third of oven; preheat to 400°F. Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.

Bring 1 cup water, butter, and salt to simmer in heavy medium saucepan over medium heat, whisking until butter melts. Add flour; stir rapidly with wooden spoon until flour absorbs liquid and forms ball, pulling away from sides of pan. Stir vigorously until film forms on bottom of pan and dough is no longer sticky, 1 to 2 minutes longer. Remove pan from heat; cool dough 2 to 3 minutes. Using electric mixer, beat in eggs 1 at a time. Stir in cheese and pepper.

Drop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto baking sheets, spacing about 3 inches apart. Using damp fingertip, press down any peaks of dough.

Bake gougères until golden brown, about 30 minutes, reversing position of pans halfway through baking. Using small sharp knife, pry open 1 gougère to check for doneness (center should be slightly eggy and moist). Serve hot or warm.

For the filling:

* 1 garlic clove
* 2 cups loosely packed fresh spinach
* 1 bunch watercress, stems trimmed
* 1/2 cup chopped green onions
* 3/4 cup (11/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
* 1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
* 2 tablespoons Pernod or other anise-flavored liqueur
* 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, ground
* 1 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Saute greens and garlic until wilted, deglaze pan with Pernod and cook off alcohol, add other ingredients,remove from heat and allow to cool. Chop very fine. Mix with

* 1 cup Mornay sauce, made with Parmigiano-Reggiano

Bisect cooled gougeres with a serrated knife and pipe in a couple tablespoons of Rockefeller filling. Reassemble gougeres. Warm in 300-degree oven before serving.

I believe that this will be so incredible that nobody will notice I didn't make pig candy.