What's Up for New Year's Eve?

Record-Eagle/Jan-Michael Stump
Dan Kelly of Catering by Kelly’s and the Williamsburg Showcase Dinner Theater prepares fondue using emmentaler and gruyere cheese, rubbing the pan with garlic then adding white wine, corn starch as a thickening agent and a pinch of nutmeg and cayenne pepper. Diners then dip cured meats, breads and apples.

TRAVERSE CITY — Celebrating the First Night at home with friends and family is hardly a 50-yard dash to the midnight hour.

Loading a long table is hardly a foreign concept to Anya Courtright, a first-generation Russian immigrant who hosts New Year's Eve parties for around 30 people or so.

"In Russia, New Year's is the main celebration — it's very festive, and there is lots of food,” said Courtright, who met her husband Chris on Mackinac Island and settled here in 1998.

Since her country forbade any public celebration of Christmas during the Communist regime, Courtright grew up looking forward to New Year's Eve. That was when Grandfather Frost and his granddaughter Snow Girl would come and shower her age group with gifts.

Later, the adults would gather to eat, drink and eat some more, eventually toasting the New Year, a tradition Courtright and her Russian friends continue today.

"The saying goes, if you eat a lot of fancy stuff on New Year's Eve, you'll eat well the whole year,” said the Holiday Hills resident. "So we put out smoked salmon, caviar, goose, cakes — the more the better.”

The amount of food brought in to Courtright's house is indeed staggering — so much so that last year, the party went on for five more days so that nothing would go to waste, she said.

"Everybody feels they have to bring so much,” she said. "You say, 'Bring a salad' but they bring a salad, a cake, and everything else they love to eat.”

Like her parents at home, Courtright sets up her buffet table with her best crystal and Russian china in honor of the holiday. She and her professionally trained chef-husband also roll out the epicurean rug with specialty dishes and plenty of vodka — straight.

"We don't do fancy cocktails; it's just a shot and you finish it off with a pickle, which is why we have so much pickled stuff, I guess,” said the Ekaterinburg native.

Beyond pickles, caviar, potato salads and game birds, another specialty served by the Courtrights as an appetizer is salmon kulebyaka, which is a pastry-wrapped salmon fillet that rests on a bed of lemony rice, chopped eggs and shiitake mushrooms.

"It can be served as a main dish but we slice it as an appetizer,” she said. "It is just wonderful.”

Another European tradition that many New Year's chefs espouse is that of Swiss raclette, or using an electric grill to communally broil specialty cheeses while the accompanying meat sizzles in a fondue pot.

Dan Kelly at the Williamsburg Showcase Dinner Theater, who also owns Catering by Kelly, says he "loves” this method, especially at New Year's when the mood is casual and the eating goes all night long.

"Everybody gets involved with it,” he said, "but it's a bit of a hard sell because people aren't aware of it.”

Raclette, a word derived from the French verb "racler,” or to scrape, evolved when Swiss shepherds would let their cheese melt by the bonfire and then would scrape it on to their boiled potatoes and other slow perishables, like pickles and pickled onions.

Keeping the raclette grill going the whole night not only keeps guests in the game, it helps ease the effects of imbibing, said Kelly.

"It's so great and wintry — the fire, the potatoes, the onion…it's so fun and the flavor is great,” he said.

In fondue, raclette has the perfect partner especially when the fondue pot is used to cook marinated meats, said Kelly.

"Believe it or not, venison is the best,” he said. "Just marinate it in a balsamic vinaigrette, chunk it up, and stick it in ([the oil) until it's medium rare — any longer and it will get tough.”

Finding raclette cheese in northern Michigan is fortunately a breeze — some of the best is made just south of Suttons Bay by Leelanau Cheese Company, whose cheese cave is home to up to 2,000 wheels. The bonus of buying raclette from the Hoyts' store at Black Star Farms? Free use of their raclette grill for an evening or two on a first-come, first serve basis; Anne suggests calling ahead. The grills are also available for sale as well, said Hoyt. (Call 271-2600 for more information.)

If the party is larger, Kelly recommends setting out various fondue pots, each filled with different varieties of meltable yummies like Emmental and Gruyere cheeses, chopped green chiles and Monterey jack cheese, dark chocolate and Grand Marnier, and even a strawberry Neufschatel dip served with pound cake and strawberries.

Salmon Kulebyaka

Preheat oven to 350°. Melt butter over low heat and sauté onion until translucent. Mix in rice, mushrooms, dill and lemon juice and let cool. Lay out puff pastry, place rice mixture over half of pastry and place salmon on top. Season with

salt and pepper, and cover with eggs. Fold over pastry and seal with beaten egg.

Crimp the edges of the kulebyaka. Brush with egg and poke a couple of holes in the pastry to let out steam. Bake for about 30 minutes until pastry is golden brown. Let cool and serve.

White Bean and Mustard Greens Hummus Dip

Chop and sauté bacon until crisp. Drain fat. In same pan, add two cloves minced garlic, cook until light golden. Add mustard greens; cook until wilted. Put mustard greens, beans and bacon in food processor and process until smooth, slowly adding lemon juice and olive oil in a steady stream. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Emmentaler and Gruyere Fondue

Rub smashed garlic inside the fondue pot. Add wine and cornstarch, whipping until blended. Heat up pot. When the liquid starts to thicken, slowly add cheeses, nutmeg and cayenne. Served with fresh French bread and chunks of apple.

Gouda and Feta Pizzettes

Preheat oven to 400°. On a lightly floured board, unfold one sheet of puff pastry and roll into a 10-inch square, about 1/8-inch thick. Make two parallel cuts lengthwise and two parallel cuts crosswise to make nine equal squares of dough. Arrange three slices of tomato on each pastry. Sprinkle with pepper. Top with Gouda, crumbled feta and olives. Repeat with other sheet of pastry. Place pizzettes on cookie sheet. Bake until pastry is golden brown and has puffed, about 18 to 20 minutes. Remove from oven and sprinkle with herbs. Serve warm. Makes 18 servings.

Chile and Cheese Spirals

Combine cream cheese, cheddar cheese, chiles, green onions and olives in medium bowl. Spread ½ c. cheese mixture over each tortilla. Roll up. Wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for one hour.

Remove plastic wrap. Slice each roll into six 3/4-inch pieces. Serve with salsa for dipping. Makes 24 appetizer servings.

12/25/2006