Week of September 30

Hoo. Back to business this week. Not much time to post this weekend, so let's get down to brass tacks (whatever that means).

On Sunday, I:

• Made tabouli (with millet instead of bulgur)
• Made muhammara
  
• Hard-boiled some eggs for the nicoise salad
• Grilled zucchini and eggplant for sandwiches (and Sunday dinner)
• Prepped chicken cacciatore (post to come!)
• Made Sunday dinner

Menu for the Week

Sunday
Sausage ratatouille
Roasted delicata squash
Garlic bread

Monday
Millet tabouli
Muhammara
Zucchini carpaccio

Tuesday
Chicken cacciatore all Noney
Roasted potatoes
Steamed broccoli

Wednesday
Nicoise salad

Thursday
Beef stir fry
Bok choy
Rice

Friday
Quesadillas
Cole slaw

Pasta with Tomato-Porcini Cream Sauce

Ooh, check out that action shot! Sorry there is no picture of the finished dish ... imagine if you will, a pinkish sauce, studded with slices of mushrooms, enrobing a hot plate of pasta ... but hey, look how fast my hand is moving. Pretty spiffy.

This is a recipe I created for my in-laws 50th anniversary party. I needed a not-too-fussy recipe that could be made (mostly) ahead, that would satisfy the vegetarians (not vegans) in the group, and that would be deliciously worthy of being served to a fairly discerning crowd of relatives.

This dish ended up filling the bill on all counts: I made the sauce and pasta the day before, I spotted one of the vegetarians taking a third helping, and my (very discerning) mother-in-law took some home as leftovers. All in all, a great success.

A major ingredient in this dish is the marinara sauce. I have had great success with Trader Joe's Sugo de Pomodoro; just be sure to choose a very tomatoey marinara, ideally one you would actually sauce pasta with. I used a "convenience" food for this dish because I needed to make so much of it (enough to sauce six to seven pounds of pasta) and I did not have the time to make a tomato sauce from scratch.

Tomato-Porcini Cream Sauce serves 4 - 6 when used to sauce one pound of pasta

• 1/4 cup dried porcini (you can find these in speciality stores)
• 10 oz. fresh mushrooms (cremini, baby bella, or white), sliced thin
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 28 oz. can marinara sauce
• pinch of dried thyme (or 1 teaspoon fresh)
• 1/2 cup heavy cream

In a small bowl, soak the dried mushrooms in enough warm water to cover.

Thinly slice the fresh mushrooms. Heat a large skillet or dutch oven and pour in the oil. When hot, put in the fresh mushrooms and saute until browned and most of their liquid has boiled off.

While the mushrooms are sauteing, lift the soaked (now not so dry) dried mushrooms out of the water. Squeeze them (over the bowl) to get a little of the water out of them. Chop the dried mushrooms and add them to the fresh mushrooms in the pan.

Strain the soaking liquid through a coffee filter or a cheesecloth lined strainer and add it to the pan.

Let the liquid boil down until there are only a few tablespoons of liquid left. Add the marinara sauce, thyme and cream. (Depending on the size of your skillet, you may need to move this operation to a larger saucepan.)

Bring the sauce to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes or so, then taste for salt and pepper. Correct seasoning if needed.

Recipe notes:

I like this with a short, sauce-catching pasta like pennette, gemelli, fusilli, or campanelle.

To make ahead: Make the sauce and refrigerate. Boil the pasta until it's just underdone (it should be a little tougher than you would like it normally). Drain the pasta and cool it down by running cold water over it. Toss the pasta with a little olive oil.

When ready to serve, heat up the sauce. Put the pasta into the sauce and stir occasionally until heated through (5-10 minutes). The pasta will cook through in the hot sauce and will become tender. The recipe scales easily, just saute the mushrooms in batches (In my enormous skillet, I sauteed six 10 oz. boxes of mushrooms in about 4 batches.)

What Did You Do This Weekend?

This is what I did. No, I didn't get married.

I did help out with a joint 50th Anniversary Party for my in-laws and my hubby's aunt and uncle (double ceremony, you know). 'Twas very classy and everyone had a simply smashing afternoon.

I had a grand time seeing everyone at the party. I also had a wonderful time trying out my make-ahead techniques on a catered lunch for almost 70 people!

My next few posts will highlight some of the items I made for this event. They'll be scaled down for everyday portions, but I'll include my make-ahead tips too.

The Menu

Smoked salmon with tzatziki
Cheese and crackers
Crudites
Olive spread
White bean hummus
All apps were brought in by other family members

Chicken cacciatore alla Noney
Baked polenta with cheeses
Pasta with tomato-porcini cream sauce
Broccoli and broccoli rabe with gremolata (lemon, garlic and parsley) and pine nuts

Wedding cake (Brown sugar butter cake with fruit and cream cheese frosting)
Cookies
Fruit salad

Drink of the Week: Good Witch Bad Witch Cocktail

Picture to come, I promise. I am on the road and forgot to bring the cable doohickey for my camera. (Updated 9/25, doohickey retrieved, my drink is ensconced in a bed of rue. Rue may not be a Strega herb, but it smells like one.)

I wanted a Negroni last night (post on that one soon), but I was in a Campari-free household. I perused the [very] random assortment of other beverage in the liquor cabinet and saw Strega. Strega, like Campari, is a digestivo/apertivo. They are both herbal and fairly high in proof (around 80), but Campari is a beautiful ruby color. Strega looks a little like pee. Mmm, appetizing. So, I thought I would try to develop a Negroni-esque cocktail with Strega. Hm.

Since Strega means "witch" in Italian and half the people I gave a sip of this to were not crazy about it while the other half liked it, I have dubbed it the Good Witch Bad Witch Cocktail.

Good Witch Bad Witch Cocktail

Mix in a shaker:

• 1 oz. gin
• 3/4 oz. sweet vermouth
• 1/2 oz. Strega
• two dashes bitters

Shake to combine and serve over ice.

Tomato Pie

Okay, so you've made sauce, filled your freezer, eaten a caprese salad every day of the last week ... just what do you do with those tomatoes?

This recipe won't use up your entire stash, but it's a nice lunch or dinner idea. The leftovers reheat well too.

The idea is to make the top and bottom crust out of biscuit dough. You layer tomatoes, cheese and herbs as the filling. Bake and eat. It's easy and if you're fearful of biscuit-making, it may ease your anxieties on that front too.

The recipe I use has been lifted from Laurie Colwin's book More Home Cooking (more on that below).

Tomato Pie

Biscuit Crust

• 2 cups flour ( I used 1 cup each of white and wheat flours for this batch)
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4-6 tablespoons cold unsalted butter (more butter makes a richer crust)
  
• 3/4 cup milk

(I'm writing this for the non-biscuit makers out there - the biscuitophiles among you know what to do.) Fear not. Biscuit making will take you five minutes. I swear.

Put the flour, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Cut the butter into little cubes and toss them into the flour. Toss the butter cubes (with your hand) around until they are coated in flour.

Now you're going to "cut in" the butter. Some people use knives, a pastry cutter (special equipment alert) or such implements to do this, but I use my hands. With your clean hands (you've already washed them right?) reach into the flour and butter and rub the flour into the butter cubes: pull some flour/butter onto one hand and then rub rub rub more flour and butter into that hand. As you rub, let the flour and butter fall into the bowl. You're rubbing the flour and butter together. The goal is to have a crumby-crumbly blend of butter and flour. Trust. This isn't that hard and some people get all freaked about it. Your great-grandmother did this and that was way before the age of Cuisinart and the Food Network.

When the flour and butter are blended and what's in your bowl looks shaggy and breadcrumb-like, stir in the milk. You will end up with a wettish biscuit dough.

See. Five minutes. Or so. Now you can make the pie ...

Tomato Pie Construction

• 1 batch biscuit dough made with 2 cups flour (see above)
• 2 pounds tomatoes, sliced
• handful of herbs, chopped
• 1/2 cup grated cheese (parmesan, cheddar, romano, etc.)
• 1/4 cup mayonnaise

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Pat half of the biscuit dough into a 9" pie pan or baking dish. It is easy to do this if you dampen your hands with cool water: the dough won't stick.

Layer sliced tomatoes over the biscuit dough. Sprinkle chopped herbs and cheese over the tomatoes. Dollop little squiggles of mayo over the top of that (to be honest, I don't think this does much, but Laurie says to do it, so I do).

Take the other half of the biscuit dough and flatten it over the top of the tomatoes. Depending on the size of your dish, you may get a full top crust or a more cobbler-type top. This dish was bigger, so I laid smaller pieces of the dough over the top and let the tomatoes peek through.

Bake for about 30 minutes. Let sit 5-10 minutes before eating; those tomatoes will be hot!

You can also make this with canned whole tomatoes (1 large can, drained) when you can't find good fresh ones. The textures are different, but the flavors are great.


More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin. This book and its predecessor, Home Cooking, are composed of essays Laurie Colwin wrote for Gourmet magazine in the nineties. They are comfortable, cozy books, sometimes a wee bit too cutesy I'll admit, but they are great to curl up with for inspiration or companionship. Nothing in these books is outside the ability of a beginning cook and Laurie is nothing but reassuring.

Both are actually still in print, praise be. Find Home Cooking and More Home Cooking here. The recently released collection Alone in the Kitchen With an Eggplant is named after an essay of Colwin's.

Week of September 16

Those are roasted tomatoes. Slice some tomatoes in half, squeeze out the seeds, sprinkle with salt, olive oil and basil. Bake for 30 minutes at 400. Great on toasted bread or over pasta.

There, now you know what you're having for dinner tomorrow night. Don't forget folks, tomato season is coming to a close (at least here in the northeast) so make sure you keep eating all the local tomatoes you can.

One rerun from last week in this week's menu: zucchini and greens soup. Goodness was that good. So good, it's gotten another spot in the rotation right away.

On Sunday I will:

• Make Zucchini and greens soup
  
• Make pizza dough for the freezer (enough for 3 pizzas)
• Make Sunday dinner

Menu for the Week of September 16
Sunday
Campanelle with a porcini mushroom tomato cream sauce

Monday
Zucchini and greens soup

Tuesday
Home-smoked bluefish fillet
Grilled eggplant and peppers with herbed vinaigrette
Green beans tapenade

Wednesday
"Sliders" (mini-burgers)
Corn on the cob
Tomato salad

Thursday
Pizza

Friday
Dinner out

Drink of the Week: Hanky Panky

I drank my first Hanky Panky at the Eastern Standard last week. I drank my second on Friday at home. ES has it on their impressive cocktail list in honor of LUPEC Boston's efforts to raise awareness (and funds for) Jane Doe Inc, the Massachusetts Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence.

I do recommend you do yourself a favor and get yourself to Eastern Standard where Jackson, Tom, Nicole or Beth can explain the provenance of this drink for you. And you'll be doing a good deed too (a portion of the sale price goes to Jane Doe). If you can't make it into Boston, you'll have to make your own.

Hanky Panky Cocktail

Chill a martini glass. Pour into a shaker:

• 1 1/2 oz. Beefeater gin
• 1 1/2 oz. sweet vermouth
• spoonful of Fernet Branca*
  

Stir together and strain into your glass. Garnish with a strip of lemon zest.

(ETA: to recommend stirring vs. shaking to combine)

* Fernet is the special ingredient in this drink - without it, this is just a really sweet martini. If you don't own a bottle of Fernet you'll be shocked by how pricey it is when you buy it. Don't worry, if you use it only for drinks like these, the bottle will last you for years. However, if you become enamored of Fernet's digestive properties, you'll blow through a bottle every month or so. Either way, it'll be worth it.

Trip Report: Montreal - La Montee de Lait

La Montee de Lait
371 Villeneuve Est (just off Rue St. Denis), Montreal, 514-289-9921 (reservations recommended)
Metro: Laurier or Mont-Royal

La Montee de Lait is a tiny place. 12 tables fill the space and a banquette runs down one side of the room. The menu is only available in French but is conveniently posted in the window, so we spent a few minutes deciphering everything before we went in for our reservation.

The restaurant serves a four-course prix fixe menu for about $40 (Canadian). You select any four items from the menu to create your meal (the portions are all about the same size, and while they looked small, we both we quite satisfied by the meal). We took quite a traditional path through the menu: seafood, pasta, meat, cheese, then dessert, but you don't have to be that rigid. Get four salads if you want, or four desserts!

The wine list is extensive but did not have anything we recognized on it. We relied entirely on our server's recommendations for our wine choices and were extremely happy with them.

For our first course, we had two seafood dishes. One was an incredibly thick piece of swordfish, sear-roasted and placed over roasted chanterelle mushrooms and an aioli. It was garnished with a tempura-battered scallion. The swordfish was incredible: juicy throughout and cooked properly. The other was a "Nicoise scallop": a seared scallop served with green beans tossed with tapenade, cherry tomatoes and a hard boiled quail egg. The platings for these dishes (all the dishes actually) were just gorgeous.

Our second course was two pasta dishes. The first was a bowl of ricotta-stuffed gnocchi served in a "bacon broth" (I don't know else what was in it, but it was really delicious). The other dish was a mimolette ravioli with roasted tomatoes, parsley and onion rings.

The third course was two meat dishes. We had a rabbit terrine (served at room tempertature) with a foie gras mousse, arugula salad and a red berry jam. We also had quail, the leg was given a confit treatment and served with morels, the breast was stuffed and served with flash-fried carrots.

We finished the night with a cheese plate and dessert. One cheese was a camembert and I do not recall the name of the other. They were served with poached apricots and toasted pecans.

For dessert, we shared a caramelized fig tart with ice cream (I recall the ice cream was a very interesting flavor. Ricotta? Goat's milk?).

This meal was really the highlight of our trip. The service, the room, the food and the wine were all excellent. Everyone else seemed to be having as lovely a meal as we were. I can't thank the folks over at ... an endless banquet enough for this recommendation.

Week of September 9

What a strange weekend, weather-wise. On Saturday it was 95 hot and muggy degrees but as I write this on Sunday morning it's 65 and not expected to get much warmer than that. I am going to take advantage of this cooler weather and heat up the kitchen with the oven and pots of boiling water.

On Sunday I will:

• Make chili (some will go in the freezer)
• Bake shortbread
• Prep my "broccoli blend": this is equal portions of broccoli and broccoli rabe. I will cut up and blanch the vegetables. Then on Monday they will just need to be sauteed before serving.
  
• Make polenta
• Make pickled slaw
  
• Make macaroni and cheese (some will go in the freezer)
  
• Make Sunday dinner

This looks like an aggressive plan, but it's actually not so bad. The chili and macaroni and cheese are things I have made many times before, so I don't really have to puzzle over those. I use my food processor to do all the chopping and cheese grating; while I don't mind knife work, it is much faster (although my cuts aren't too clean) when the Cuisinart is used. I use an oven method to make the polenta and as a result it's almost completely hands-off. The hardest part of this plan is that I need my large pasta pot for three items (boiling macaroni, blanching broccolis and cooking up the chili).

Week of September 9
Sunday
Chicken rollatini with parmesan and swiss chard
Roasted potatoes & tomatoes
Lemon verbena shortbread with roasted figs and cantaloupe sorbet

Monday
Grilled sausage and broccoli blend over polenta

Tuesday
Dinner out

Wednesday
Chili
Pickled slaw

Thursday
Macaroni and cheese with swiss chard and cauliflower

Friday
Grilled hot dogs (I have found a good source for Pearl all-beef hot dogs, boy are they good)
Pickled slaw

Drink of the Week: Bourbon

Some nights, you just don't want to mess around. Tonight was one of those nights.

Bourbon

In a rocks glass, pour bourbon over four ice cubes (optional). If you don't want to feel like a complete derelict, toss in a few drops of bitters (I have been informed derelicts don't use bitters).

Consume.

Corn Pudding

I love corn on the cob. I do, I really do. But after my hundredth cob of the summer I start to crave fresh corn in a different form.

This corn pudding will become a new staple in my repertoire. It's a little fussy (scraping all the kernels off those cobs) but it's really good and allows the flavor of the corn to shine.

Corn Pudding (adapted from Saveur magazine, July 2007 )

• 12 ears of corn (this corn must be fresh and sweet - find a farmstand and get freshly picked corn)
• 2-3 tablespoons butter (original recipe used twice as much butter - try if you like, but I didn't think the dish needed the extra richness)
  
• salt to taste

Heat the oven to 400.

Shuck the corn and cut the kernels off the cobs. (I find that my mandoline is great for cutting off the kernels and much neater than using a knife.) Using the back edge of a knife, scrape the cobs: you want to get all the remaining pulp and milk off the cobs.

Put the kernels and juice/milk/pulp into an 8x8 baking dish (it will look a lot like creamed corn at this point). Dot the butter over the top and sprinkle on salt to taste. Bake for about 40 minutes. The top will caramelize (you will fight your tablemates for the browned bits on the edge of the pan) and turn all golden and lovely. Really fantastic.

Serves 4-6 people.

Steak, Caveman Style

For those who like a steakhouse-style piece of ribeye or sirloin, Dirty Steak is a revelation. The technique is basic, if dramatic: Build up a charcoal fire and let it burn down to coals. When it is "honkin' hot" (in the words of my grillmaster) you lay your sirloin or ribeye directly on the coals. I kid you not. Have faith and be rewarded.

I first heard of this style of cooking steak on Julia Child's Cooking with Master Chefs program. The chefs at Al Forno in Providence, RI developed the technique and dubbed it "Dirty" (I have seen this style elsewhere as "Terrorized" - I think Dirty Steak sounds more fun). Go here to find a link to the original video with George Germon, Johanne Killeen and Julia Child (scroll down to the bottom of the page).

Dirty Steak (adapted from Al Forno's technique)

Take your steaks out of the fridge at least 30 minutes before cooking to help them lose their chill. I recommend ribeyes or sirloin/strip-type steaks, cut an inch thick. Use good-quality beef. (My local Shaw's supermarket carries Prime beef and you can really taste the difference.)
Make a charcoal fire (do not use briquettes, please use real hardwood charcoal which you can find easily at any Trader Joe's or Whole Foods. For charcoal ratings, take a look at the Naked Whiz's Lump Charcoal Reviews).

Let the fire burn down until the coals are red hot and covered in grey ash. (If you put you hand a foot over the fire, the fire should be so hot that you need to pull your back within a second.)
Dry the steaks well with paper towels and then salt and pepper them generously. Using tongs, put the steaks directly on the hot coals. You will have left all the fat on the steaks so they will smoke a lot, this is a fine thing unless you get a snootful of smoke.
After about 3-4 minutes turn the steaks over. Knock off any charcoal that sticks. Cook the steaks for another 3-4 minutes or so.

3 minutes a side will give you rare, 4 minutes a side will be medium-rare. (See below for a medium-well/well variation.) Let the steaks rest, uncovered for about 5-10 minutes, slice and serve. The exterior of the steak will be crusty and charred and the interior will have a great smoky flavor. What's amazing about this technique to me is that considering what it's just gone through, the steak does not taste burned at all.

For well-er done temps: Take the steaks off after 4 minutes per side. Put them in an oven safe pan or skillet and place them in a 400 oven for about 5-10 minutes, depending the thickness of the steaks and your desired doneness.

Green Beans, Greek-Style

I can't get clear on whether this dish is called Fasolatha or Fasolakia me Lathi (Mom? Official title please?) , but that doesn't really matter. Greek-style Green Beans is a fine working name. These green beans are stewed in a tomato and onion base. When the beans are done, they should be silky-soft, not crunchy. This dish is best served at room temperature.

Fasolakia me Lathi (Thanks Ma!)

The amount of oil is not a joke, also this is one of the few dishes where I'll use extra virgin olive oil for cooking (as opposed to regular ol' virgin oil). "Lathi" means oil and this dish is seasoned with it. My recipe uses a lot less than a "traditional" recipe would. Serves 2 when it is used as a side dish, serves 4-6 when served as part of a multi-salad meal.

• 1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
  
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 gloves garlic, minced
• 1 pound tomatoes, peeled, seeded and minced (see below for quick tip)
  
• 2 pounds green and or yellow string beans (I used both), chopped into 1-2" lengths
  
• salt and pepper
• Greek dried oregano
• lemon juice
• extra virgin olive oil

Heat 1/4 cup of the oil in a dutch oven or deep skillet. Saute the onions and garlic until softened. Add tomatoes, beans and oregano. The beans should be mostly covered with liquid from the tomatoes. Add water if necessary.

Cover the pan and turn the heat to low. Simmer the beans for 45 minutes to 1 hour. (Older "store bought" beans may take longer.) Check every now and then to make sure that the beans aren't too dry - add more water if needed. When done, the beans should be soft and melting, but not falling apart. Squeeze some fresh lemon juice over the top and season with salt and pepper.

Serve at room temperature drizzled with extra virgin olive oil.

Quick tip: In this recipe, the tomatoes provide the sauce. The easiest way I've found to prep the tomatoes is as follows: Cut your tomatoes in half (through their equators) and squeeze out the seeds. Using a box grater, grate the tomato pulp, keeping the skin against your hand. When done, you'll have grated off all the tomato flesh and the skin will be left in your hand.

Week of September 2

So, I was going to start this post with a paean to vegetable gardening: how wonderful it is to pull nourishment from the earth, circle of life, blah blah blah. I had just dug these potatoes (French fingerlings, seed taters came from Fedco) and I was so pleased with myself.

Then I checked out my tomatoes and saw the very obvious signs of tomato hornworm activity. Then I saw the hornworms. For those of you not familiar with these exceptionally icky pests, a link to info is here (yes, they are enormous) Hornworms cause me to do the "heebie jeebie dance" (as in: those totally NASTY worms make me lose all ability to act rationally so I dance around the yard, going "ew ew ew YUCK ew!"). Usually takes ten minutes for the goosebumps to go down.

Vegetable gardening's still pretty awesome, but it was nice to get that reminder that it's not all roses (or Rose Finn potatoes) out there.

With the three-day weekend, my normal cooking plan is a little more spread out.

On Sunday I:

• Made a batch of oven-roasted tomato sauce (I swear I will post this recipe soon).
• Made melintzanasalata (Greek eggplant salad). I promptly spilled half of it in the driveway (don't ask) and so I'll make some more on Monday.
• Made Sunday dinner.

On Monday I will:

• Make more frickin' melintzanasalata (good thing it's wicked easy to make).
• Make fasoulakia (Greek-style green beans stewed with tomato, onion and olive oil).
• Make tabouli.
• Make zucchini and arugula soup (inspired by 101 Cookbooks - she uses spinach instead).
• Make pizza dough.
• Make Monday dinner.
  

The fasoulakia takes some time to cook, but is very hands-off. While that's cooking everything else will come together easily.

Menu for the week of September 2
Sunday
Pan fried haddock with chervil and dill flowers
Oven roasted new potatoes with garlic and lemon verbena
Oven-roasted ratatouille (idea and technique completely lifted from Smitten Kitchen)

Monday
Dirty steak (steak grilled on hot coals - see this link for technique and video, click through "Dirty Steak with Hot Fanny Sauce")
Corn pudding
Tomato salad
Green salad
Peach tart

Tuesday
Greek Night
Melintzasalata
Fasoulakia
Tabouli (not Greek per se, but ...)
Feta & olives

Wednesday
Zucchini and arugula soup
BLTs

Thursday
Turkey burgers (patties are in the freezer, will take them out to thaw on Wednesday night)

Friday
Grilled pizza

Drink of the Week: Blood Orange Margarita

For those in the know, this is also called a "Lower Cost of Market-arita" (... it's a long story involving getting blood from a stone, etc. etc.)

Ideally, you'd make this with fresh-squeezed blood orange juice. However, blood oranges are a seasonal citrus fruit for us, and we really can't get them in the summer, when most of us would want to make a margarita. So, I used Trader Joe's Italian Volcano Orange Juice, which is made from blood oranges instead. (Dunno where the volcano comes in.)

Since this recipe involves squeezing a fair amount of citrus, I recommend you make the juice mix ahead and store it in the fridge until you're ready to have a drink. It should keep for 2 days or so.

Blood Orange Margarita
Make the juice mix in a 4-cup measure, or quart mason jar (good for shaking in the sugar)

• juice of 3 limes
• juice of 3 oranges (Valencia are better than navels for this)
• pour in enough blood orange juice to bring your mix to about 3 cups total
• sugar to taste - this mix will be pretty sour at first, so you will want to add some sugar
  

Refrigerate until serving time.

To serve - prep your glasses, rocks or not, salt or not, etc.

Mix together:

• 2 oz. tequila
• 1 oz. (or less) triple sec
• 2-3 oz. juice mix (if it's on the rocks you may use less)

Pour into prepared glass, float a sliver of lime on top and serve. You should have enough mix for 5-6 margaritas.