More Cheese More Chocolate

I’m a few days late with this, but we made too much good food on New Year’s Day not to share.   Too much food in general, perhaps, but I can’t think of a better way to start the year.  There were waffles, bacon, gougères, filet mignon, lobster tails, and homemade blue cheese dressing. That’s about as far as one can take it and still live to see the following year, no?

For our first breakfast of 2012, we broke out the long longed-for waffle maker that I got for Christmas.  I made yeasted waffles for the inaugural batch, and even though I forgot to add the egg and baking soda to the batter in the morning, they still tasted great.  Should auld eggless waffles be forgot and never brought to mind?  Nah, but you can bet that the eggs will not be forgotten next time.  See what I did there?

Afternoon snack: black-eyed pea dip for luck in the new year (or something like that).

Then the evening came…  I made these gougères and swapped the cheddar for smoked gouda and the fennel for freshly cracked pepper.  So simple, so delicious, and so looking forward to the half of the batch that’s in the freezer and ready to be baked when the mood strikes.

Gougère as a vehicle for taste-testing homemade blue cheese dressing?  Don’t mind if I do.

Wedge salads = a way to eat puddles of blue cheese dressing without feel entirely guilty about it.

Another a good vehicle for getting blue cheese dressing into your mouth: potatoes roasted with generous amounts of parsley, chives, salt, pepper, and olive oil.  They’re also a great device for getting spiced lemon butter into your mouth when you run out of lobster, or so I would imagine…

Matt got all fancy with a couple of lobster tails, which he baked while he cooked the filets on the stove.  I drank wine and ate more gougères.

And then our feast came together and we ate really, really well.  It was the best homemade steak that I’ve ever eaten.  Everything was great, but it was the steak that did it for me.

After dinner I relaxed with my new Nook, looked up some detox-ish recipes, and savored every little bite of a salted caramel macaron courtesy of my friend, Lauren.  I like the way 2012 is going.