Menu and Food Prep for the 4th Annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza: “Plenty” of “Good Fish”

I would write more but I’m too busy chopping onions and buying fish for the 4th annual Volk/Watson Christmas Extravaganza. My family’s at-home Christmas party will see about 200 friends and friends of friends pass through our doors over the course of 4 hours tomorrow afternoon. I cater the themed event, with an incredible amount of help from my mom. This year’s theme? We’re testing recipes from two new cookbooks: Plenty: Vibrant Recipes from London’s Ottolenghi by UK chef and food writer for the Guardian newspaper Yotam Ottolenghi, and Good Fish: Sustainable Seafood Recipes from the Pacific Coast by American west coaster-er Becky Selengut. Plenty is a cookbook of gourmet vegetable recipes organized by vegetable. There’s an entire chapter devoted to “the mighty eggplant”. I love this book. “Good Fish” is an entire cookbook about sustainable seafood – what’s sustainable, why, and recipes from beginner to chef-y. Since neither book has a lot of dessert options, I decided to do simple cookies and treats to keep the focus on the vegetables and fish.

So in the past three days we’ve made:

two platters of stuffed zucchini

a huge bowl of quinoa, lime and sweet potato salad

a roasted beet, orange and olive salad

a broccoli, snow pea and green bean sweet sesame salad

roasted cauliflower to go with the vanilla-apple roasted wild Labrador arctic char

I thought about making the pinot noir sauce for the wild Labrador salmon, but that will happen tomorrow

Oatmeal raisin cookies

honey-sesame-apricot cookies

peanut butter cups

chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls

I haven’t started the turbot escabèche (turbot is caught wild in Labrador and is my preference over expensive black cod from Alaska for shipping reasons. I think it’s reasonably sustainable, and it’s so buttery that it’s a real treat) or the soy caramel sauce for the turbot on a bed of bok choy. Those will happen tomorrow morning. then just before and during the party I’ll have to actually cook the fish. Everything else is ready to go in advance – no hot hors d’hoeuvres, thank goodness – but cooking fish under the pressure of co-hosting a party (3 times during the course of the party!) is tough. And we’re doing the wine pairing suggestions that Becky Selengut gives in her book “Good Fish”. There are also cheeses (sheep’s milk, cendrillon goats milk, oka classique for my dad, a raw blue for my mom, and an unpasteurized emmental – just small portions, so I overdid the 3 cheese per cheese plate rule, I know). Oh, and there’s my dad’s mulled cider (he doesn’t know “apple cider” doesn’t necessarily mean alcoholic cider, so it calls for a 6 pack of strongbow…), a bunch of grapes and nuts for garnish, and baguette. We’re expecting maybe 200 people over the course of the day.

So the whole party is a cookbook test. Already I know the quinoa-lime-sweet potato salad is AMAZING. I used lime zest instead of dried Persian lime (try finding THAT in Newfoundland). The stuffed zucchini should be baked, not simmered in a pot, but they’re delicious if you somehow manage to not burn them. Peanut butter cups are the coolest, simple but generally over-complicated dessert, and if I could get those side ridges without using too much dark chocolate I’d make them all the time.

I’ll be back with photos soon. Send me all your good not over- or under-cooking fish vibes tomorrow afternoon!