Wine and Cheese in park

 Caption (left to right, top to bottom): cheese platter of blue cheese, machengo, swiss, smoked cheese, Bourisin cheese spread, duck paté, and water crackers. The whole spread  with appetizers and grapes, appetizer plate of bacon, mushroom, and leek quiches, smoked salmon, and pain au chocolat (puff pastry with chocolate), Pear wine

I had a wine and cheese event in the park. It was a great way to utilize the park and the last days of summer. The weather was just nice, not hot or too cold. I made Mini leek, bacon, and mushroom quiches and homemade pain au chocolat (little puff pastries filled with chocolate). They were very tasty. I also brought smooked salmon and 4 types of cheeses---machengo, blue stilton cheese, a smoked cheese from Poland, and Bourisin cheese spread. I like cheese that smells stinky but taste good but my friends and to avoid people asking what smells I just stuck to the usual blue cheese (one that is less pungent). The Machengo cheese was a nice hard cheese not too strong and not too light on taste. The smoked cheese was great with the smoked salmon.

My friends brought olives, salami, wines, and some crackers. We had a pear wine, strawberry riesling (my Favorite), and a rosé wine. 

Such a great way to spend a saturday afternoon with friends, talking, eating, drinking, playing games, and enjoying the huge park NYC has to offer. I will plan many more events like these. 

If you would like for me to plan an event like this you can comment or contact me at fancindy888@yahoo.com. I would be more than happy to accomidate your needs no matter how small or big.

French Macaroons

Have you walked to bakeries and seen the little round pastries that are usually stacked as a tower in many different pastel colors (green, pink, yellow) in the windows? Those are French Macaroons. The crispy outer cookie with a chewy center, that can be filled with almost any type of filling (my favorite is lemon curd). I fell in love with them. Just getting one to eat is a treat since they cost about $2.75 each at my favorite bakery. I always wanted to find out how to cook these little treats and was so happy when my local cooking school had a class on it. The instructor said this is like one of the hardest cookies to make cause it al depends on the humidity of the weather outside (if you get a puffy cookie with the characteristic "feet" or flat cookies). First batch was okay. But then BAM....the second batch that came out the teacher was impressed because they came out with the natural "feet" characteristic they are associated with.

So after learning them in class, I decided to try making these in my apartment. This is not as hard as it seems. The trick I learned is to beat the merigues a bit stiffer than the recipe asks for since when you start piping the humidity will start to make the batter get a bit flat. I just made traditional french macaroons with food coloring. I made lemon curd fillings. Another thing is that when in oven, the cookies gave the nice "Feet" like quality and puffed up very nicely but then after cooling the puffiness started to deflate. I will have to try to figure out how to be able to keep them puffy, maybe oven temp. or the amount of mixing the batter.(any suggestions are welcomed).

I brought them to my annual BBQ as a surprise dessert and all my friends were impressed. They were saying that I should sell these. I still want to experiment with getting them puffier, different flavors and fillings (chocolate, pistachio, Raspberry, maybe vanilla or strawberry).

Here are a few pictures for my first attempt. The recipe i used is below.

Finished version of my Macaroons, I put green food coloring in the batter