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Halloween Party Menu

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.]

On the Menu:

Bloody Mary Bar

Cheese Fries of Fire

Pasta Fra Diavolo

Baked Apples FROM HELL

Cayenne Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chris Perrin ‘The Party Food Dude’ is part mad scientist, part glutton, and part culinary adventurer who is always ready to hit the kitchen to make something delicious.  And if not delicious, then certainly edible.  Cooking, especially for friends, has always been one of his deepest passions and explains why he enjoys making party food as much as he does.  You can always taste his mad creations at www.BlogWellDone.com

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.

Baked Apples FROM HELL

While it is true that getting an apple during trick-or-treating has led to more than one trick, apples are a mainstay of the Halloween parties.  Hosts protect themselves from tricks because the apples they serve are candied, dipped in caramel, covered in candies, and otherwise have had all their nutritional value erased under a flood of sugar.  These apples are different.  They are both the trick and the treat.

Ingredients

2 sticks unsalted butter

4 apples, cored and sliced in 1/8 inch pieces

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

Juice of 1/2 lemon

1/4 cup apple juice

1 tablespoon cornstarch

2 Serrano chilies finely diced

Directions

Basically, this is like making the filling for an apple pie.  Bring the butter to room temperature and cut into tablespoon sized pieces.

In a skillet over medium heat, melt the butter and add everything but the cornstarch and the apple juice.  Cook covered until the apples are fork tender.  Then mix the cornstarch and the apple juice and pour that over the apples.  Continue cooking until the sauce has thickened.  Serve as is or on top of vanilla wafers.

Cayenne Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Cookies

This is more of a suggestion on how to adapt a recipe than an actual recipe.  Take your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and replace the chocolate chips with cinnamon chocolate chips (if you can find them.  They are often only available at Christmas, but I buy a bunch and freeze them.)  Also, add 2 teaspoons of cayenne pepper to the mix.  The end result is a cookie with a spicy, cinnamony bite that no one is going to forget.  

These cookies are great fun to bring to the office and to give to co-workers without warning them of the spice.  

The looks on their faces…Priceless!