I spent New Year's Eve at a good friends house and helped prep and make some
of the food. This was such a huge success that I thought I would offer the
experience and some of the ideas to others who might be tempted to try
something similar in the future.

Angela, my friend, has a wood burning oven in her beautiful new kitchen so
she wanted the evening to revolve around thin crust individual pizza. She
started heating the oven early in the morning so by party time it was
hovering around 550 F. We made the pizza dough early in the day. I was
surprised a bit at the amount of yeast used in the recipe but it made for a
wonderfully elastic crust (it started with a sponge then, IIRC, 4 tbl active
dry yeast, 6 cups AP flour, water, olive oil and a pinch of salt). Early in
the afternoon we rolled out the dough using a manual pasta maker. I hadn't
tried this before but it works beautifully especially if making many
individual sized pizzas. The individual pizzas ended up being a bit of a
rounded rectangle. We stored them between in lightly flowered layers of
parchment paper and kept them chilled till needed. We prepped all of the
pizza topping ingredients in the morning stored and chilled till needed. I
labelled all of the containers and we arranged them at party time. These
included:
cheeses - freshly grated reggiano parmesan & pecorino romano, crumbled
montrachet chevre (mild goat cheese), crumbled Greek barrel aged goat and
sheep milk feta, crumbled gorganzola amd sliced buffalo mozzarella;
Sauces - homemade tomato sauce (made with tomato, onion, garlic, herbs &
seasonings) and pesto;
Everything else - prosciutto, pepperoni, pitted kalamata olives and sliced
green olives, roasted red & yellow peppers, caramelized onions, raw red
onions, capers, sauted wild mushrooms, roasted garlic, marinated artichoke
hearts, chopped sun dried tomatoes, caramelized sliced pears, halved grape
tomatoes, minced fresh herbs (mainly basil, rosemary, parsley & thyme) plus
dried crushed red pepper and oregano.

We also had a bowl of EV olive oil and a brush available for people to brush
the dough before topping. People were encouraged to be creative but we made
some classic combinations and personal favorites to start. These included
Pizza Margherita, echoing the colors of the Italian flag, red - tomatoes,
white - mozarella & parmesan cheeses and green - basil); Pizza della casa
(Angela's husbands favorite) - fresh tomato sauce, fresh tomatoes, capers,
mozarella & parmesan cheeses, anchovies and fresh herbs); Caramelized onion,
wild mushroom and goat cheese pizza; Gorgonzola, wild mushroom & roasted
garlic to name a few that I can recall. This obviously can't be completely
replicated unless you have a wood burning oven but a large thick pizza stone
and a very hot oven will make a nice facsimile. This made a lot more
toppings than were used. The remainder became more pizzas the next day and
some were later combined with left-over tuna from the tuna carpaccio
appetizer to make a salad Nicoise and a huge fritatta.

In addition we had several grazing appetizers which were available all
night. Angela has a chef friend who makes a fabulous smoked salmon and a
wonderful duck pate. We used the smoked salmon two ways. One as a stuffing
along with fresh herbs in brie de meaux. This is a ridiculously easy and
elegant appetizer. Basically we trimmed the rind from the brie and sliced
it in half horizontally using dental floss. We topped the bottom half with
a generous mound of thinly sliced smoked salmon and fresh herbs. Placed
the top back on a wrapped in plastic wrap tightly until party time. The
brie was then cut into bite sized pieces. This was served on a platter with
the sliced duck pate. The second use of the salmon was to dice it and
combine it with minced shallots, herbs, lemon zest, seasonings and fresh
lemon juice to make a smoked salmon tartare. This was served mounded on
Japanese soup spoons. She also had a plate of tuna carpaccio. Paper thin
sliced tuna "cooked" in a marinade of lemon juice, Asian chile sauce, sesame
oil, soy etc. My sister made a marinated then roasted duck breast salad
served on a bed of baby greens along with pomegranate seeds, avocado &
starfruit with an Asian themed vinaigrette.

After the first glass or two of champagne Angela offered a roasted red
pepper soup served with optional shrimp pesto and romano cheese.

Desserts were made, mostly, ahead of time, frozen and thawed before serving.
These included; pumpkin chocolate cheesecake, marbelized chocolate brownies
and ginger flavored shortbread coins plus passion fruit curd served on
purchased shortbread tartlets.

*burp* ;-)

Kate