Halloween
Party
By Chris Perrin ‘The Party Food Dude’,
and author of BlogWellDone.com
Welcome to the spooooookiest night of the
year: Halloween! As a holiday, Halloween
means many different things. For children,
it means fun costumes and candy!! For
parents, it means dealing with children on
sugar highs. For younger partygoers, it
means bobbing for apples and doing the
Monster Mash. For adult partygoers, it
means crazy/sexy costumes, bobbing for
apples, drinking Bloody Marys, and doing the
Monster Mash!
One thing that Halloween normally doesn’t
mean is gourmet cuisine. Usually, the food
eaten on Halloween night consists of a quick
sandwich on the way to trick-or-treating and
a lovely late dessert consisting of a lot of
candy. However, one place is changing that:
East Coast Grill in Boston. Every year on
Halloween, East Coast Grill features a
special Hell Night menu filed with dishes
laden with chilies, spice, and enough
capsaicin to sear every taste bud off your
tongue.
Sound like the kind of Halloween pain you
want to subject your friends to? Here is a
selection of recipes inspired by East Coast
Grill’s Hell Night menu for you to try at
home.
[Quick
note: when you make these dishes,
be careful cutting the chilies. If the
spice molecules get on your hands, they can
aggravate cuts and get into your eye,
causing chemical burns. Always wear gloves
when cutting chilies or wash your hands very
thoroughly with soap. You can also use a
food processor to chop them.]
RECIPES:
Bloody Mary Bar
Cheese Fries of Fire
Pasta Fra Diavolo
Baked Apples FROM HELL
Cayenne Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Cookies
Bloody
Mary Bar
Nothing
says Halloween like a nice bloody cocktail.
This is perhaps why during Hell Night, East
Coast Grill offers patrons a
make-your-own-Bloody Mary bar. With just a
few store bought items, you can do the same!
Ingredients
2 bottles of Bloody Mary mix (if you can
find habanero or jalapeno flavor, so much
the better)
Grated horseradish
5-6 Jalapenos, diced
1-2 habaneros, diced
Red pepper flake
Celery salt
Tabasco or other hot sauce
Directions
Just lay everything out with ice and
cocktail glasses. If you don’t have a
Halloween glass that screams Bloody Mary,
regular water glasses work fine.
That should be enough mix to make 16-20
cocktails. You can double the recipe
accordingly.
Cheese
Fries of Fire
One of things East Coast Grill likes to do
is turn their cheese fries into instruments
of spicy joy. Might as well go with a good
thing and make our version. The key to
making this dish go from kinda spicy to
uberpain, is your choice of hot sauce.
Don’t settle for Tabasco sauce. The
supermarket is full of superhot/borderline-nuclear-waste
sauces that will give this dish the kick it
deserves.
Ingredients
2 packages French fries
Oil for frying
1 pound bacon
1 pound cheddar cheese
1/2 cup hot sauce
1/2 cup pickled jalapenos
Directions
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Fry the fries according to their package
directions. Notice I said fry. This is a
party, there’s no need to bake the fries.
When you take the fries out the oil, salt
them and let them drain on a cooling rack or
on paper towels.
While the fries are taking an oil bath,
crisp the bacon and break it into little
pieces. When the fries have started to
cool, grate the cheddar cheese over them and
top with bacon.
Bake in the oven until the cheese starts to
melt, this usually takes about 10-15
minutes. Take the fries out of the oven and
add the hot sauce and pickled jalapenos.
This recipe easily makes enough for 8
people.
Pasta
Fra Diavolo
Fra Diavolo was the name game to a guerilla
resistance leader. It’s also become
synonymous with really hot pasta sauce.
Guess what? That’s right, East Coast Grill
has their own spicy pasta dish, so we will
as well!
Ingredients
6 tablespoons olive oil (pepper infused oil
if you can find it), divided
8 shrimp
6 cloves garlic, diced and divided
3 tablespoons red pepper flake, divided
1 green pepper, diced
1 onion, diced
1 Serrano chili, diced
1 28 ounce can of crushed tomatoes
2 teaspoons cayenne
2 tablespoons each black pepper and salt
2 packages of prepared pasta
Basil for garnish
Parmesan cheese for garnish
Directions
In a skillet over high heat, add 4
tablespoons of olive oil and let the oil get
warm. Then add the shrimp, half the garlic,
and a tablespoon of red pepper flake to the
skillet. Cook the shrimp 2-3 minutes on a
side, moving them every so often to prevent
burning. Flip the shrimp and cook them
another 2-3 minutes. The shrimp are ready
when they are pink and firm. Remove them
from the skillet and discard the garlic and
red pepper flake.
Add the rest of the oil to the pan along
with the green pepper. Cook for 3 minutes
and then add the onions, the rest of the
garlic, the rest of the red pepper flake,
and the Serrano chili. Cook until the green
peppers are soft, probably another 8-10
minutes.
Add the crushed tomato sauce, cayenne, black
pepper and salt. Simmer the sauce while you
cook the pasta according to package
directions. When it is done, add the shrimp
to the sauce so they get warm.
When the shrimp are warm, mix the sauce,
shrimp, and pasta together. Top with basil
and cheese. This recipe makes 8 servings.
Serving note:
At a dinner party, you can serve this pasta
as the main entrée. At a party, put the
pasta in small cups so guests can walk
around and snack on this flaming treat.
