The Walking Dead, season two, part two, picked up right where it left off a couple months ago: amidst a pile of zombie leftovers. Mary and I have some friends that fall into one or more of the following categories:
1) Had not seen the new house
2) Think zombies are fantastic
3) Enjoy food
The solution here, obvious even for your average shambling zombie, was to host a zombie-food themed party to watch the newest Walking Dead episode. Nailed it.
While I wasn't going to venture down the route of classic, stereotypical zombie food (brains or other glandular options), I was inspired by the large packet of short ribs I had in my freezer from last fall when Mary and I bought an eighth of a cow. The connection from zombie food to ribs seemed pretty solid.
The first cooking technique that came to mind during the planning stages was braising the ribs low and slow. The recipe I used let me utilize both my awesome blue dutch oven and almost a whole bottle of red wine, which meant I could have braised a shoe for three hours and it would have been delicious.
I thought the flavor of the short ribs turned out really nice. However, since I have no prior short rib experience to use as a comparison, I can't say for sure that they turned out how a perfectly cooked short rub should turn out.
My side dishes for the short ribs consisted of some BBQ chicken wings (going further with the theme of gnawing meat off of a bone) and mashed sweet potatoes with poblano peppers and orange (because zombies need a starch with their meal?). Now those, I can say, were done well.
Mary's contributions consisted of some very artsy deviled egg eyeballs...
...and a hummus/veggie tray which could have benefited from a brain mold had I been thinking ahead far enough.
The guests offerings included some very appropriate maggot empanadas (filled with bacon naturally)...
...and some "It Came From Beyond the Grave" spinach and artichoke dip made with a fantastic amount of the "People's Cheese" as it was described.
The entertainment during intermission included some thought provoking dialogue about overcoming obstacles, then it was on to dessert (the best part).
As I remarked recently to Mary, I would like an opportunity to bake some cupcakes with various flavor profiles, but all be damned if devil's food chocolate cupcakes with seafoam frosting aren't just the most delicious cake item out there, so why bet against a sure thing? Sure there would be a near 100% success rate with other cupcake flavors, but devils food is at least a 103% guaranteed successful transaction.
To zombify these cupcakes, I added a filling in the middle of the cupcakes made from strawberry and marionberry jams, with the idea that it would ooze out when bitten, and topped them with some semisweet chocolate skulls made from a Halloween mold I had stashed away.
I'm pretty sure zombies would have even given up human flesh for this spread.
--Isaac.
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