Inauguration Day Cocktails and Cheese Puffs

Our heads are still reeling from the rabid mobs swarming and wreaking havoc on the Capitol on the 6th and the fact that our president incited that riot. Ann and I are fed up with such shameful behavior and were so looking forward to the inauguration of a new president yesterday, that we decided to have cocktails and hors d'oeuvres to celebrate what hopefully will be a transition back to more sane behavior in the White House.

Cheese Puffs and Passion for Whiskey Cocktail

Earlier in the week, I had made chicken pot pie and had some leftover pie crust. I knew that I was going to use the pie crust to make an hors d'oeuvre for our little celebration. Then it dawned on me to convert that pie crust to a laminated pastry (puff pastry) with cheddar cheese to bake into cheese puffs to accompany our cocktails.

Cheese Puffs

Although I never went to culinary school, I taught myself everything (and a lot more) that these schools have to teach, including pastry basics. Throughout my chef career, I made a lot of puff pastry (though you can buy it frozen easily in the trade). There's not a whole lot of difference between my pie crust and puff pastry, except that the pie crust is not laminated.

Lamination is the key to puff pastry: folding and refolding it into layers upon layers as you can see in the photo above. Generally, you start with a basic pastry and seal that around a hunk of butter (the process called beurrage). Then you roll the dough out, trifold it, rotate it 90 degrees, roll it out, trifold it again, then let it rest in the refrigerator for 45 minutes to an hour. You do this once or twice more, building layers and layers.

I decided to put a mound of shredded cheddar cheese (rather than butter) in the middle of my pie crust and treat it just like puff pastry. I went through the rolling and folding process three times.

Final Sheet of Puff Pastry, Ready to Cut

I sliced the sheet of pastry down the center and then cut each half into fingers. I put the fingers on a sheet tray, spritzed them with pan spray, sprinkled on sel gris (French gray sea salt), and put them into a hot oven (425F) for 20 minutes.

Passion for Whiskey Cocktail

In addition to being known for a menu of local cuisine that changed nightly, my restaurant was way in the craft cocktail vanguard. I created all the cocktail recipes, using my chef's palate to ensure that they were refreshing and balanced. One huge customer favorite was a drink that I called Passion for Whiskey, basically a passionfruit whiskey sour. It's a great drink and what we had last night.

1 1/2 ounces bourbon

3/4 ounce St. Germain

3/4 ounce lemon juice

3/4 ounce passionfruit syrup

4 dashes old fashioned bitters

Swirl all ingredients in a shaker full of ice. Strain into a coupe or martini glass. Serve up with a wild cherry for garnish.

Nachos and Margaritas

I took my cue from Ann on Sunday. She was in the mood to eat bad and by bad I mean junk food. I suggested fully loaded nachos and margaritas. She agreed most enthusiastically and we headed out to FoodMaxx for supplies: blue corn Tostitos, hint of lime Tostitos, cilantro, green onions, queso quesadilla, refried pinto beans, jalapeños en escabeche, and chipotle salsa. At home, we had a jar of nopalitos to add to the mix. Once the nachos came out of the oven, we poured the chipotle salsa over the top. San Marcos makes a great salsa that is just blended chipotles and adobo. It's a winner.

Hot out of the Oven

Prepping the nachos was a tag-team effort. Ann put half the toppings on the chips and I put the other half on. Carter, hearing rustling of chip bags, made a hasty appearance and made a raid on the chips. He expressed concerned that we were making "Ed nachos," the derogatory teen term for "fancy" nachos, when he saw Ann putting jalapeños and nopalitos on the chips. But I notice that this did not stop him from eating the chips or coming back for seconds or thirds.

Nachos with Chipotle Salsa

I love FoodMaxx, but they don't have a good selection of gringo food there and I guess that frozen limeade concentrate is gringo food. I was surprised to find Tostitos there too; previously their selection of chips was nil. So, we settled for a can of passionfruit concentrate from which to make our margaritas. [It was a lazy Sunday and no, I was not juicing a gazillion limes for real margaritas. So there.] It's not the same thing, but at least passionfruit has good acidity. Even though I added extra lime juice to the margaritas, they still came out a bit sweet. We should have thrown in the towel and made the extra trip to the regular grocery store.

Passionfruit Margarita