Michele Braden, author of a series of cookbooks called Fast and Fabulous, transforms Heidi Bohay's bar into a spectacular buffet table for the Super Bowl party. Heidi asks Michele to highlight her choices in preparing the buffet. - Braden uses bricks to elevate the various dishes and to serve as a hot plate for the food so the wood remains unharmed. She prefers to use different heights for the food presentation.
- She includes plenty of colorful raw fruits and vegetables to enhance the buffet's appearance and suggests bringing in some greenery from outside for decoration. The leaves she chose from Heidi's backyard hold up well and are placed in a large vase along with whole vegetables. She says that a couple of footballs can be placed in the arrangement to highlight the theme of the party.
- Braden places bowls of condiments at various levels around the serving bowl of chili that Heidi has made. She has included green onions, cheese, salsa, cilantro and rice. Potato skins that have been scooped out are baked, not fried, and serve as edible containers for the chili (figure A).
- You can make this Frijoles Caliente as spicy as you want. Simply mix and heat black beans, sour cream, green onions, cilantro, cumin and lime or lemon juice for a dish that is perfect with chips at parties (figure B).
- Braden's Mexican Cream Sauce is made with a small amount of avocado, sour cream and tomatillos (figure C). Tomatillos are green Mexican tomatoes that have a husk on them and give the sauce a bright lemony flavor that is tangy, not spicy.
Braden's fast and fabulous approach to cooking is a synonym for her whole culinary philosophy. In her books, every recipe has tips underneath them that make it easy for busy people to serve a delicious and unique meal. She leaves nothing to the imagination as she tells how to approach each recipe - how to organize and present it, how far in advance to cook it, and how long to freeze it. She stresses the joy and fun of cooking as well as the technical aspects of this art. You don't need a lot of time to creative flashy, fabulous food, says Michele. She gives tips on what temperature to serve the food and how to garnish it with style. But at the same time she encourages you to take off on your own creative adventure. Including suggestions for variation, she wants her readers to experience cooking in a fun way with plenty of experimentation. Did you know? Party at Home presents a couple of little known facts: - Over 14,500 tons of chips and 4,000 tons of popcorn are eaten on Super Bowl Sunday.
- The first NFL game on television was played at Ebbets Field. The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Philadelphia Eagles 23 - 14 on October 22, 1939.
RESOURCES :
Fast and Fabulous Hors D'Oeuvres: A Survival Guide for Today's Busy Entertainer
Model: 0020091850
Author: Michele Braden
336 pages
Reissue edition
(December 2, 1992)
All About Football
Model: 0399219072
Author: George Sullivan
August 1990
Penguin Putnam Inc.
E. Rutherford, NJ 07073
Phone: 201-933-9292
Fax: 201-896-8569
Email: webmaster@putnam.com | putnam@genevaonline.com
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