I’ve eaten a lot this year. Let’s just get that out of the way at the start.
So, you can imagine my dilemma in coming up with a list of a mere 10 dishes or items that were my ultimate favorites this year. I limited the list to meals I ate out at restaurants, rather than made at home. They also had to be so great as to have me still longing for a taste even now.
Here, in no particular order, are my top eats of this year:
SusieCakes bakery has all you need to welcome 2011 with a sweet flourish.
Through Dec. 31, the bakery (with locations in San Francisco and Greenbrae in Marin County) is baking up sugar cookies shaped like champagne flutes and sparkling wine bottles, as well as two special varieties of cupcakes.
You could almost float away on these crackers as they’re so thin, light and delicate.
34° Crispbread is a wonder — round, fragile wafers that are made from whole wheat flour, salt and natural cheese flavor, then baked until shatteringly crisp. The name comes from the latitude of Sydney, Australia, where company founder Craig Lieberman hails from. The product is inspired by his favorite Australian crispbread.
Now made in Boulder, Colo., the crackers come in six varieties: Whole Grain, Natural, Sesame, Cracked Pepper, Rosemary, and Lemon Zest. They’re sold at Safeway, Whole Foods and Walmart. Nine crackers have a total of 35 calories. A 4.5-ounce box is about $4.99.
I had a chance to sample a couple of boxes recently. I especially liked the Cracked Pepper variety with is subtle hit of spice. The crackers crumble easily so handle them gently. But they can stand up to the likes of charcuterie, cheese and all manner of dips if you spread them on with a knife rather than dunking them.
I served them over the holidays to great acclaim with food writer and blogger superstar Dorie Greenspan’s “Sardine Rillettes.”
The recipe is from her new book, “Around My French Table” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).
After taking my first bite of this creamy-dreamy dessert, words simply failed me.
Search as I may, I don’t think there’s a word that can properly describe how amazing this “Frozen Maple-Mousse Pie with Candied Cranberries” is.
Luscious? Yes. But more than that. Gorgeous? You bet it is, but it’s even beyond that. Swoonful? Oh my, it sure is, but I’m not even sure that’s a real word.
I made this as the finale to my Christmas dinner. And what a showstopper it was.
The recipe is from Kathleen Callahan of Seattle’s Emmer & Rye and was published in the November 2010 issue of Food & Wine magazine.
It’s deceptively light tasting, given that the crust is almost all pulverized toasted pecans with a little bit of butter to hold it all together and the filling is a full cup of maple syrup, egg whites and 1 1/2 cups of heavy cream.
A slice of cheesecake may be decadently wonderful, but at the end of a big holiday meal, it just sits like a lead weight in your stomach at the end of the night. Not so this pie. Once frozen, the filling turns ethereal. It’s much more airy than any ice cream; more like a sound wedge of whipped cream. Best yet, you can make it days ahead of time and keep it in the freezer until you’re ready to serve it.
I’ve got the TV set for watching the glittery ball drop in Manhattan’s Times Square and the fireworks exploding in technicolor over San Francisco.
I’ve got a bottle of fine bubbly chilling in the fridge.
And I’ve got my husband geared up to do battle with the long, unruly lines at the seafood counter at the local Asian market — all in effort to snag live Dungeness crab on New Year’s Eve.
It wouldn’t be a New Year’s Eve without any of that. Nope, not in my book.
You can have your lobster. I’ll take Dungeness over that any day.
Especially on New Year’s Eve, when you just can’t go wrong with simple yet spectacular seafood and glasses of Brut sparkling wine.
Sure, you can buy already cooked crab at your local seafood market. Just make sure it’s freshly cooked and there’s a lot of turnover or else you risk ending up with dry, stringy meat. And nobody wants that.
But having grown up in a Chinese-American household, I’m used to cooking my own at home for the freshest taste. My late-parents liked to steam our Dungeness. Then, my Dad would take a cleaver to the steaming hulks and crack them with a resounding wallop before bringing the massive platter to the table, where we would all dig in, our hands getting messier by the minute.