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Another Dinner Party

Another dinner party has come and gone chez nous. And since I don't have a big preamble for this one, I'll just dive into the particulars. Appetizer Baguette and olive platter with pumpkinseed oil Wine: Moet et Chandon Champagne I kept things a little simpler for this dinner, trying to recover from getting slammed so hard at our Champagne tasting last week. And it's hard to go wrong with a crisp baguette, some marinated olives, and a little bit of our treasured pumpkinseed oil, that intensely nutty oil which is such a dark green that it usually looks brown. In fact, our guests at first assumed it was some sort of balsamic vinaigrette.

I had intended to serve a good Prosecco with this, as is our wont, but two of our guests brought a chilled bottle of Moet et Chandon Champagne. I love Prosecco, but it's very hard to argue with a ready-to-drink bottle of the royal family of sparkling wines.

Amuse-bouche Seared ahi tuna with wasabi mayonnaise Wine: the same This came out nicely, though it wasn't as pretty as I wanted it to be. I took sushi-grade ahi tuna, cut it into cubes, and pan seared some of the sides quickly, just enough to form a crust but leaving most of the center uncooked. The wasabi mayonnaise was made with Pacific Farms wasabi paste, made of course with authentic fresh wasabi (most wasabi you get, in all but the very nicest of sushi restaurants, is merely dyed horseradish). I had hoped to pipe this through a small star tip into a little rosette on the side, a hearkening to the dollop of radiant green one normally sees, but the mayonnaise didn't thicken enough, so I spooned it on the side. Opener Saffron Risotto cakes with a Hazelnut Crust Wine: 1999 Cascina Ca'Rossa Roero Rosso "Mompissano" This was my favorite dish of the evening for a couple of reasons. First, it was easily the prettiest plate I served that night. Second, I am justifiably very happy with my risotto cakes, the result of years of trying to get them right.

I made the risotto that morning, mixing in saffron as I cooked it, and then set it in the fridge. A couple hours before our guests arrived, I formed them into patties using one of my square cookie cutters, and set them back in the fridge. When I was ready to make them, I started heating some oil in my saute pan (a lot of oil, actually), and dredged the cakes first in flour, then in egg, then in a mixture of finely ground bread crumbs and hazelnuts ground very fine. Once they were coated, I dropped them in the hot oil, and fried them until the crust was a deep luscious brown and the inside was hot.

To plate them, I laid some frisee on a plate, and then laid a single leaf of red chicory next to it. Red chicory looks like Belgian endive, but significantly larger, and with a raddicchio red in place of Belgian endive's yellow-green leaf tips. I laid the risotto cake on the frisee, and then topped it with a beurre blanc (which also didn't quite thicken enough, so it was more of a thick dollop of melted butter). My guests were enchanted with the mix of colors, especially once they cut into the vibrant yellow risotto underneath the crust.

The crowd was definitely a red-wine crowd, and so I opted for the charming little Piedmontese red we bought a half-case of 10 months ago. Some people preferred this to the next wine, others preferred the next.

Main Turkey Breast stuffed with a Fig-Port Chutney with a Porcini-Balsamic Sauce Wine: 2000 Ridge Nervo, Late-Harvested Zinfandel I had been wanting to try this food and wine pairing since I first made turkey breast stuffed with figs, and tonight seemed a good time to do it. It worked very nicely, I thought. The chutney was dried figs rehydrated in port with red onions, which was then reduced for a few hours over a low heat. I opened up a turkey breast (technically half a turkey breast), pounded it somewhat flatter than it was originally, and then brined it for a few hours in a weak brine. I smeared the chutney over it, and then rolled it up, trussing it to keep it tightly rolled.

For the sauce, I took some leftover porcini liquid from a little while ago, and reduced it a lot. I added in a sheet of gelatin to give it a little body, and then at the very last added in some 25-year-old traditional aceto balsamico.

To plate the dish, I prepared thin slices of root vegetables, each cooked a different way. The beets were roasted, the carrots were stir-fried and the parsnips were boiled. I arranged a heap of the root veggies in the center of the plate, and then topped the heap with a slice of the turkey, the fig chutney forming a neat circle in the middle of the meat, and then topped the whole thing with the sauce.

Given the contented sounds my guests made, I'm guessing it came out pretty well.

Cheese Reblochon and Valencay with pain de mie Wine: Moscato d'Asti, Rivali Yeah, okay. This cheese course has been repeated at numerous of our dinner parties, though the cheeses have varied a fair amount. But even I recognize that this is an extremely enjoyable addition to the meal, and it's hard to come up with something to improve on it. Besides, we haven't had much repetition with our dinner guests since I started this, so it's only us who notices. And Melissa isn't exactly suggesting I not do it anymore. Dessert Croquembouche with a hazelnut pastry cream and pear-vanilla granita Wine: Tokaji Aszu, 5 puttanyos Croquembouche is a bit of an obsession with me. It's not that I make it all the time, but every time I make it, something seems to go wrong. The first few times, I didn't know enough about caramel, and my sugar would always crystallize. Then once I figured out how to get the caramel to work, I assembled a croquembouche for a potluck at work and left it out overnight. In what I'm guessing was a warm kitchen, because by the next morning, the caramel had reliquefied and I had a nice pile of slightly sticky but also somewhat moist cream puffs.

No such problems this time, though after the effort of cleaning the caramel off the plate, I think next time I'll serve each individual croquembouche on a tuile or something. I underestimated the amount of pate a choux I needed, so each person only got three little cream puffs.

The granita was a last-minute addition. I had some leftover syrup from a compote I made a couple of weeks ago, and I had never made a granita, so I decided to try and make one, and if it didn't work, it wouldn't go on the table. It came out quite nicely, though I can see why some suggest serving it in glasses that have been in the freezer: as soon as it hit the room temperature glass, it started to melt. This was no doubt partly caused by it not freezing a whole lot (our freezer, it turns out lacks freezing oomph), but the cold glass would have helped. Regardless, the guests liked it quite a bit.

Mignardise Candied grapefruit peel with piped shortbread cookies We've had candied citrus peel at the close of a number of meals recently, and I decided to try it for our dinner, in another last-minute addition (last-minute here being sometime that morning). It turns out that candying citrus peel is extraordinarily easy and produces great results. Just chop the peels and blanch them three times, then cook at a light simmer in a 2:1-ish sugar:water mixture for an hour and a half. Then roll in sugar (I suggest letting them dry a bit before you do this; I didn't and my sugar clumped unattractively). That's it. And they taste fantastic. Ideally they should dry overnight, but mine, which dried for something like seven hours, were still good. And I saved the syrup.

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