For The Union-Tribune
If your New Year’s Eve party menu includes the inimitable Lipton onion soup dip and ridged potato chips, stay in that ’50s and ’60s mode, but how about adding to it with a full complement of midcentury-inspired food and cocktails?
If you’re of a certain age, this menu will make you smile as you recall the fun food of your youth. If you’re young, you’ll actually feel pangs of jealousy that your elders came up enjoying such cool party food and drink — or just swallow the jealousy and make these for your party.
The menu comes from the new (opened just last August) restaurant Ponyboy, which resides in Point Loma’s Pearl Hotel. Ponyboy’s design and menu meld midcentury-modern aesthetics with 21st century taste. It’s a concept that mixologist Ian Ward and chef Danny Romero of Service Animals (formerly of Addison, where they met) brought to the Pearl Hotel management, Casetta Group.
You can enjoy Chicken Kiev — but made with Jidori chicken, farmstand vegetables and truffle butter — or an imaginative Tuna Casserole that is an elegant upgrade from your mom’s or grandma’s, with its potato-crusted local tuna, house made pasta and maitake mushrooms. There’s even Ambrosia Salad and Beef Stroganoff. And, you can dine poolside and take in their “Dive-In” movie night cult classics on Wednesday evenings.
Ward and Romero found inspiration for the menu from the classics. Romero slipped away momentarily and returned with a stack of cookbooks and other materials ranging from “Joy of Cooking” to old bound Gourmet magazines.
“We just started leaning into old cookbooks,” Romero said. “Ian has brought in a bunch and then I brought some from home.”
So, what’s on our New Year’s Eve menu? First up is a classic cheesy fondue served with seasonal roasted vegetables and fruit, and cubed and toasted bread, along with a Pumpkin Brandy Alexander. This creamy cocktail blends brandy and pumpkin, of course, but it comes together with local Old Harbor Ampersand Coffee Liqueur, coconut milk, and easy-to-make pumpkin-coconut milk. It’s just as luscious as it sounds.
Also up are deviled eggs, but probably nothing you’ve ever experienced before. The whites are brined in a beet-hibiscus mix, giving them a party-perfect purple hue. The mousse combines your typical egg yolk, mayo and Dijon with pistachio praline and praline oil. These playful deviled eggs are accompanied by Ponyboy’s All Saints cocktail featuring the elderflower liqueur St-Germain and champagne — because what goes better with eggs than champagne?
The fondue is as rich and gooey as you’d want. Make sure you’re equipped with a fondue pot and spears. But the actual fondue is made stovetop, as Romero and executive chef Josh Reynolds showed me. First you’ll sweat onions and garlic and then add wine. Bring that to the boil and add evaporated milk and sodium citrate. Sodium citrate allows cheese to melt evenly.
You want the mixture to heat until just before it simmers. At that point, you can start slowly adding your mix of shredded white cheddar, Gruyere and Parmesan that you’ve tossed with cornstarch. Be careful, said Romero, that you keep the heat even — not too hot or too low, to avoid the fondue from breaking. Aim for the temperature to stay between 140 and 180 degrees.
Once the cheese is melted, remove it from the heat and add Dijon mustard and ground white pepper.
With the fondue, you’ll serve a variety of roasted seasonal vegetables. This time of year that means carrots, Brussels sprouts, string beans and fingerling potatoes. Want something sweet? Grapes, sliced apples, pears and persimmons go with this beautifully. And don’t forget the bread. Romero likes a good rye or sourdough cut into cubes, tossed in a little olive oil and lightly toasted. Basically croutons, but not so toasted that they won’t absorb the cheese.
Serve this with a Pumpkin Brandy Alexander. Ponyboy mixologist Meagan Crumpley came up with this cocktail.
“Like most of us, I love a good pumpkin spiced latte in the fall,” she said. “I tasted a local pumpkin butter and knew immediately I needed to make a cocktail out of it. I settled on a version of the classic brandy alexander. We use cognac, coffee liqueur, a bit of pumpkin butter, and condensed milk and coconut to provide a creamy body. I had seen coconut and pumpkin work well together in curries, so it just made sense in my mind to pair them together here. The coffee liqueur adds a nice backbone and brings the cocktail right into pumpkin spice latte territory.”
Your other appetizer is a twist on traditional deviled eggs. We’re calling for hard-boiling a dozen eggs for 24 servings, but you can double it. Romero emphasized that this isn’t the time for jammy eggs — you want a firm, hardboiled yolk. Once the eggs are cooked, cooled and peeled, slice them in half lengthwise and remove the yolks from the whites.
The whites will be brined in a beet-hibiscus mixture for at least two hours, but try for overnight. Your now-purple white halves will then be ready for stuffing with the deviled egg mousse. Be sure the whites are at room temperature. You don’t want them cold and rubbery.
The mousse is a familiar mixture, except for one cool component — a pistachio praline. It just takes sugar, a splash of water, and raw pistachios. Cook the sugar and water until the sugar has dissolved and it turns to caramel. Add the pistachios and continue cooking until it reaches a gorgeous amber color. Poor the mixture onto a greased pan and let it cool. At that point you crumble it into a food processor and puree it. That goes into the mousse.
Romero came up with a fun idea for plating the eggs: making a nest. For that, he uses a phyllo-like dough called kataifi, which is phyllo sliced thinly into what look like very skinny noodles. You can find kataifi online or at Middle Eastern markets. They tend to come frozen, so you’ll want to defrost them overnight in the fridge, then bring them to room temperature for a couple of hours. To get them crispy, all you need to do is separate them as best you can in a bowl while you heat the oven to 400 degrees. Then lay them out on a sheet pan and bake until golden, about 15 minutes.
With that ready, you can plate your deviled eggs. Arrange the kataifi in a serving dish. Drizzle with honey so you can enjoy them, too. Then arrange your purple egg whites on top. Place the mousse in a pastry bag and fill the egg whites. Then sprinkle crumbled roasted pistachios and minced chives on top.
Serve the eggs with the All Saints cocktail created by Ponyboy mixologist Tawny Mayer. It’s pretty straightforward, but you’ll need to make a vanilla simple syrup, which is easy. Bring a sliced vanilla bean, sugar and water to the boil and simmer for five minutes. Remove from heat and cool, removing the bean from the syrup. No bean? No problem. Just make the simple syrup without it and add vanilla extract to the cooled syrup.
Then mix the rest of the ingredients — except the champagne and garnishes — and shake, then strain into a wine glass and top with the champagne.
Happy New Year!
Three-Cheese Fondue
Makes 6 to 8 servings
INGREDIENTS
1 tablespoon neutral oil
1/2 onion, peeled and sliced
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 teaspoons kosher salt
4 ounces white wine (chardonnay or Chablis suggested)
One 12-ounce can evaporated milk
1 tablespoon sodium citrate
7 ounces white cheddar, shredded
7 ounces Gruyere, shredded
2 ounces Parmesan, shredded
1 tablespoon cornstarch
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1/2 teaspoon white pepper (optional)
Serve with:
• Roasted seasonal vegetables, such as carrots, string beans, fingerling potatoes, Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes.
• Sliced seasonal fruit, such as apples, pears, and persimmons, as well as grapes.
• Bread cubes, from rye or sourdough bread. Toss in olive oil and lightly toast.
DIRECTIONS
1: In a large, heavy-bottom pot, heat oil and sweat onions and garlic until translucent. Season with salt.
2: Add wine and heat until it comes to a boil. Add evaporated milk and sodium citrate and heat to just before simmering.
3: In the meantime, toss the shredded cheese with cornstarch.
4: Once liquid has reached a slight shimmer, turn the heat to the lowest setting and gradually add cheese to the pot (about a small handful at a time). Mix in with hand blender. Allow the heat to come back for about 1 minute in between add-ins of cheese.
5: Remove from heat when all cheese is melted and add Dijon mustard and white pepper, if using. Taste and add more salt if desired.
6: Make sure heat is correct by tasting before serving or measuring the temperature, which should be between 140 and 180 degrees. Once it is at temperature and you’re ready to serve, you can pour the fondue into a fondue pot and keep it warm by lighting the burner below it.
7: Serve with roasted vegetables, fresh fruit and toasted bread cubes.
Ponyboy Deviled Eggs
Makes 24
INGREDIENTS
1 dozen eggs
For the beet-hibiscus brine:
1 cup beet juice
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon pickling spice
1 tablespoon hibiscus
4 ounces (100 grams) sugar
2 teaspoons (10 grams) salt
For the deviled egg mousse:
1 dozen egg yolks
2 ounces mayonnaise
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons pistachio praline (see below)
1 tablespoon pistachio oil
1 teaspoon kosher salt
For the pistachio praline:
2 cups sugar
1 cup raw pistachios
For the garnish:
One 1 pound package of kataifi (shredded phyllo)
Honey for drizzling
1/4 cup roasted pistachios, crumbled
2 tablespoons chives, minced
DIRECTIONS
1: Hard-boil the eggs until yolks are fully cooked. (It can depend on the size of your pot, but our method is to boil water, add eggs and cover the pot. Boil for 13 minutes. Then remove the pot from the heat, uncover, and and run cool water until the eggs are cool.) Once eggs have cooled, carefully remove shells and discard. Slice eggs in half lengthwise and remove yolks. Reserve both separately.
2: Make the brine. Add all ingredients to a pot and bring to a boil. Once it reaches a boil, turn off the heat, cover with a plate, and let it steep like a tea until it has come to room temperature. Then strain, discard solids. Add the hard-boiled reserved egg whites. Brine at least two hours and preferably overnight.
3: Make the pistachio praline: Add sugar and a splash of water to a small pot. Heat at low temperature until the sugar has dissolved and the color starts to turn to caramel. Add the pistachios. Continue to cook until the mixture has turned into a rich amberlike maple syrup. Turn off heat and pour the mixture onto a greased pan or dry Silpat baking sheet to cool. Once cool, crumble into a food processor and puree until smooth. If necessary, add a little neutral oil to reach a smooth consistency. Reserve for mousse.
4: Make the deviled egg mousse: Press the reserved hard-boiled egg yolks through a ricer into a large bowl. Gently fold in mayonnaise, Dijon mustard, pistachio praline, pistachio oil and salt.
5: To assemble, remove egg white halves from brine and bring to room temperature.
6: Prepare the kataifi: A fine phyllo that looks like noodles, kataifi usually comes frozen, so defrost it in the fridge overnight, then bring it to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and, while it heats, place the kataifi in a large bowl and separate the strands with your fingers. Then place it onto a large baking sheet as close to a single layer as possible and bake for about 15 minutes until golden. Take it out of the oven and let it cool.
7: To plate the dish, place the crispy kataifi into a serving dish like a nest. Drizzle with honey. Place egg white halves on top. Place a #19 or other small pastry tip into a pastry bag or large plastic bag with a corner cut off. Fill the bag with the deviled egg mousse and pipe into the egg white halves. Top the deviled eggs with crumbled roasted pistachios and a sprinkling of minced chives.
COCKTAILS
All Saints
Makes 1 cocktail
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce of St. George Spiced Pear
1 ounce of St-Germain
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1/4 ounce vanilla syrup (see below)
1 teaspoon fig marmalade/fig jam
Champagne
1/2 fresh fig for garnish
3 slices of pear on a toothpick for garnish
For the vanilla syrup:
1 vanilla bean or 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sugar
1 cup water
DIRECTIONS
1: Make the vanilla syrup: If using a vanilla bean, cut the bean in half lengthwise. Add the sugar, water and vanilla bean to a small saucepan. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and cool. Remove bean from syrup. If you’re using vanilla extract, follow the instructions above but without the bean. Once the sugar-and-water syrup has simmered and cooled, stir in the extract.
2: Make the cocktail: Combine all ingredients up to the champagne in a shaker tin. Shake and strain into a wine glass with ice.
3: Top with champagne. Garnish with fig and pears.
Recipe by Tawny Mayer.
Pumpkin Brandy Alexander
Makes 1 cocktail
INGREDIENTS
1 ounce cognac
1 ounce Old Harbor Ampersand Coffee Liqueur or comparable coffee liqueur, like Mr. Black
1.5 ounces pumpkin-coconut milk (see below)
1 whole nutmeg to grate, as garnish
For the pumpkin-coconut milk:
Makes 8 servings
INGREDIENTS
One 8-ounce jar of Jackie’s Jams Pumpkin Butter
4 ounces Coco Lopez cream of coconut
4 ounces condensed milk
DIRECTIONS
1: Make pumpkin-coconut milk by blending together ingredients.
2: Make the cocktail: Combine all ingredients in a mixing tin with ice. Shake and strain into a Nick & Nora glass or standard coupe or cocktail glass. Grate a smattering of nutmeg onto the cocktail.
Recipe by Meagan Crumpley.
