If you love Champagne and other bubbly libations, then you won’t be done with them when the holiday season and New Year’s Eve 2018 are over.
Kick-start the New Year with a brunch on Jan. 1 that sparkles with a Champagne bar — complete with a dazzling array of fixings for your friends and family to have fun with.
Even if guests have indulged the night before, this Champagne bar offers non-alcoholic bubbly as well as lighter Italian Prosecco and Spanish Cava. And if you’d like to celebrate with American bubbly, be sure to include a couple of Wisconsin sparkling wines, such as Parallel 44’s white Bubbler and rosé Sparkler, both semi-dry selections.
The idea for a Champagne bar came from a museum opening exhibit I attended not long ago. The glamorous bar with its tantalizing spread of accompaniments was a huge hit, judging by the flocks of sippers gathered around it. Small dishes of berries, sprigs of mint, lemon slices, gold sugar and a few fruit juices to mix with the fizzy stuff highlighted the beverage display.
The bar is so simple to set up and lots of fun to dip into. If you’ve ever noticed when you drop a berry or a bit of sugar into the bubbly, it’s just like a party in a glass — bubbles galore. (Those bubbles, by the way, are carbon dioxide gas releasing from the wine when uncorked).
Changing the color to gold or sky-blue (the color I choose for my own set-up) with some sparkly decorators’ sugar and watching the bubbles explode is briefly enchanting. But beware, the complex and carefully wrought taste of sparkling wine and Champagne may be overpowered if you add more than one or two flavor enhancements to your glass, so choose carefully. More zest in this case is not necessarily better.
All you need to add to the vivacious drinks are some delicious nibbles — and you really don’t have to fuss too much. For this New Year’s Day gathering, a hearty pot of spicy chicken chili will be perfect to warm up guests on a wintry day. Toss ingredients in a slow cooker the day of your festivities and forget about it until your guests dig in. Keep paper cups instead of china bowls nearby — they’ll make for the most casual and easy way to serve the chili.
Monte Cristo finger-shaped sandwiches right off the skillet are the ideal accompaniment for the hot cups of chili. This recipe is from longtime Snowmass Colorado ski resort restaurant Gwyn’s High Alpine. The restaurant has been feeding hungry and thirsty skiers for more than 38 years and is well-known for its creative and fabulous menus. They remodeled two years ago and are always upping their cuisine game.
Instead of using regular bread loaf as the recipe calls for, I chose a rather dense and short ciabatta bread to make these into long finger sandwiches, easy to just pick up and tuck into from a buffet. The cinnamon-flavored batter that the sandwiches are dipped in before frying makes for a decadently mouthwatering bite. Both the sandwiches and chili will warm up visitors right when they walk in the door.
For the sweet treat on your table, start the New Year off right with cake! Choose a favorite cake of yours or, if you’ve got a January birthday celebrant on the guest list, choose the guest’s favorite cake.
For my gathering and in honor of a guest’s January birthday, his favorite — carrot cake — was a must. And leave it to the Beekman Boys, in the Winter chapter of their “1802 Heirloom Cookbook,” to come up with an exotic twist to the classic carrot cake: Indian spices and roasted cashews.
You just can’t beat chili, sandwiches, cake and bubbly to kick off a brand new year. Cheers!
Amy DeWall Dadmun is a Milwaukee area food and garden writer. Email her at amydadmun@gmail.com.
New Year’s Champagne Bar Menu
Champagne, sparkling wine and accompaniments
Hearty Chicken Chili
Monte Cristo Mexicalis
Spiced Carrot Cake
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Know your sparklers
Champagne: France reserves the right to have only sparkling wine made from its 84,000 acres of Champagne vineyards to be called by the revered name. As far back as 1843, Champagne producers have been territorial. That fierce proprietary stance has endured all the way to recent times, when Yves St. Laurent’s “Champagne” perfume was banned (1993), and Apple lost its bid (2013) to call a new color iPhone “Champagne” because of a threatened lawsuit.
Besides terroir, the name Champagne brings with it a guarantee of certain strict production requirements, referred to as méthode Champenoise.
Cava: The profile of this Spanish sparkling wine is earthier than Champagne, coming mostly from the northeastern Catalonia region. Foodandwine.com says Cava “undergoes the exact same production process as Champagne. However, the Spanish process is known as traditionelle, instead of méthode Champenoise,” which is reserved for Champagne vintners.
Prosecco: Sweeter than Champagne or Cava, Prosecco hails from Italy’s Veneto district. Its production differs from both, as the secondary fermentation is accomplished in tanks rather than bottles.
Many other sparkling wines are produced worldwide besides these three popular ones, including French Crémant, German Sekt, Italian Spumante and luscious American sparklers from California and Oregon to Vermont and Wisconsin.
A year ago, Parallel 44 Vineyard from Kewaunee won a best in show award (at the first ever “Wine is Wisconsin” event in Madison) for its bubbly rosé Sparkler. And Algoma’s Von Stiehl Winery boasts a “textured and aromatic” 2017 Columbia Valley Sparkling Viognier and Chenin Blanc.
Winefolly.com has a very detailed explanation with illustrations of sparkling wine and Champagne production. On the same site, you can also find descriptions of the sweetness scale and caloric content of those magical sparklers.
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RECIPES
Hand your guests a cup of this salsa, pepper Jack cheese, and spiced chicken chili and they’ll warm up right away.
Hearty Chicken Chili
Recipe tested by Amy DeWall Dadmun
Makes 12 to 14 servings
- 4 large chicken breasts, cooked and shredded
- 48 ounces white Northern beans, drained
- 16 ounces fresh salsa, mild or medium hot
- 3 cups chicken broth
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 1 to 2 garlic cloves, minced
- 1 tablespoon ground cumin
- 4 ounces chopped green chiles
- 8 to 10 ounces pepper jack cheese, cut into small cubes
- 1 tablespoon butter or olive oil
Sauté onion and garlic in butter or olive oil until translucent. Add all ingredients together into a slow cooker and cook on low 4 to 6 hours or on high 2 to 3 hours, stirring occasionally.
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This recipe comes from Snowmass, Colorado’s Gwyn Knowlton, who with her family runs the popular Gwyn’s High Alpine Restaurant in the ski resort town. Her recipe is for full-size sandwiches, but it’s adapted here into smaller finger-shaped ones for a buffet.
Monte Cristo Mexicalis
Recipe tested by Amy DeWall Dadmun
Makes 8 servings
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons sugar
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ cup milk
- 1 ½ cups flour
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 2 tablespoons butter, melted
- 1 loaf dense and short ciabatta bread, sliced into 16 pieces
- ¼ pound cheddar cheese, sliced thinly
- 1 large tomato, sliced thinly
- ½ pound smoked ham, sliced
- ¼ pound Monterey jack cheese, sliced thinly
- Vegetable oil for frying
Beat together eggs, sugar, vanilla and milk. In a separate bowl, mix flour, salt, cinnamon and baking powder together. Make a well in center of dry ingredients and quickly mix in wet ingredients. Blend in the butter.
For the sandwich, layer cheddar, tomatoes, ham and jack cheese (in that order) between two bread slices. Secure with toothpicks.
Heat oil at least 3 inches deep to 360 degrees. Dip sandwiches into batter. Fry in oil 2 minutes. Turn when golden brown and cook on the other side. Remove toothpicks before serving.
Note: If the sandwiches are cut in half, the recipe will serve 16 for smaller bites.
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Rich, exotic, flavorful and yes, decadent, this carrot cake comes from the Beekman Brothers and their “1802 Heirloom Cookbook.” The recipe does not contain the traditional raisins, but of course, feel free to add them.
Spiced Carrot Cake
Recipe tested by Amy DeWall Dadmun
Makes 12 servings
Cake:
- 2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon ground cardamom
- 1 teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground allspice
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- 4 large eggs
- 3 cups grated carrots
- 2/3 cup roasted, salted cashews, coarsely chopped
Frosting:
- 2 packages (8 ounces each) cream cheese, room temperature
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
- ¾ cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Make cake: Preheat oven to 350 degrees with racks in upper and lower thirds. Butter and flour two 8-inch round cake pans. Line bottoms with parchment paper; butter and flour the parchment.
In a small bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, salt and allspice. In a large bowl, using a mixer, beat melted butter and sugar until well-combined. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold in the flour mixture. Fold in carrots and cashews.
Divide batter evenly between the pans, tapping them on the counter to get rid of any air bubbles. Bake in preheated oven 30 minutes, switching pans from top to bottom halfway through, until toothpick inserted into center comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes in pans, then invert cakes onto a rack to cool completely.
Make frosting: Beat cream cheese and butter until light, fluffy and smooth. Beat in powdered sugar and vanilla until well-combined.
Place one cake layer on cake plate. Frost bottom layer (top and side), top with another layer and frost top only. (Or, if desired, frost the entire cake.)
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Bubbles and New Year’s go together like hot chocolate and marshmallows. You can have as much fun setting up this bubbly bar as your guests will sipping the effervescent wines. Add other fruits besides berries if you’d like, such as mandarin orange or peach slices.
Champagne Bar
About 2 to 3 bottles each of Champagne, Spanish cava, prosecco and sparkling non-alcoholic juice
1 to 2 bottles each of orange juice, cranberry juice, pomegranate juice or whatever you prefer for mimosas or other fizzy cocktails
Bubbly fixings: small dishes filled with fresh raspberries, blackberries, sliced strawberries, lemon twists, gold or other colored sugar, sprigs of mint.
Figure about 1 to 2 glasses per person for a daytime open house, with or without mixers.
Use your imagination for other creative essences to drop or pour into glasses.
Note: Wilton makes gold pearlized sugar sprinkles that you can find on Amazon or at Michaels. Other colored sugars can be found where baking decorations are sold.
Read Again https://www.jsonline.com/story/life/food/2018/12/21/new-years-day-chili-sandwich-cake-spread-anchored-champagne-bar/2244180002/Bagikan Berita Ini
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