Cooking
We are on a temporary hiatus from dinner parties, catching up with various things. But I view it as a chance to practice some things I have been interested in, as well as try out some recipes from a cookbook I'm reviewing for my food writing class. So I decided to have a tiny dinner party for Melissa and me. Of course, somehow I imagined that a meal for two people would be less stressful. Normally I make a little schedule which serves partly to remind me when to do things and partly to remind me what things to do. This time I didn't, and so various things were forgotten or hectic. Fortunately Melissa didn't mind bigger-than-normal gaps between courses.Main Course
Pan-seared salmon with baked figs and sauteed leek and spinach salad
Wine: 2000 Ridge Grenache
This just came together off what looked good at the farmer's market. I had hoped to serve it with couscous, but I bought larger couscous than normal, and it wasn't done steaming by the time dinner was ready. It wasn't even close, in fact. And since it seemed like the obvious thing to do, I made a wine reduction sauce with the grenache. It's from Ridge's ATP program, which we joined when visiting the vineyard.Cheese
Tomme de Crayeuse
Wine: Vin de Savoie Altemont, Boniface
In this case the wine dictated the cheese, sort of. A couple weeks ago, I had made bread and cookies for a dinner party but I made way too much. So we decided to give some of the bread and cookies to our next-door neighbor. A few days later, we found the wine sitting outside our door. Since it was a Savoie wine, I decided to do the regional pairing thing and get a good Savoie cheese. We had had Reblochon recently, so I wanted Tomme de Savoie, a very nice, simple cheese. Alas, the Cheese Board in Berkeley was out of Tomme de Savoie. But the woman helping me suggested Tomme de Crayeuse, which is similar. We tried some, and I figured it would go reasonably well. It worked very nicely. More and more I find myself siding with the "white wine with most cheese" view espoused by some modern gourmets.Dessert
Poached pears with pear brandy caramel sauce and anise ice cream
This was a recipe from the cookbook I'm reviewing. Straightforward and classic, though the author had paired it with regular vanilla ice cream. I decided to make anise ice cream instead, because I had the idea for it a while ago and wanted to try it.
- The Other Lady Marmalade
Photo by Melissa Schneider. Watch an artisan at work and you get a new appreciation for her products and her prices. That thought came to me as I attended a marmalade class with June Taylor. The clean, vibrant flavors of Taylor's jams, marmalades,...
- Jojo Wine Tasting - The Rhône
One of our favorite Oakland restaurants is Jojo on Piedmont Avenue. Curt and Mary Jo, the chefs and owners, have impressive pedigrees. Mary Jo was pastry chef at Chez Panisse for many years, Curt worked at Zuni for a time, and on and on. When they opened...
- J & J 10 X 10
It was an email I didn't think I'd ever see. "Hey, what if we did a 10-course meal when James and Jeffrey come over?" Melissa is usually the voice of reason when it comes to dinner parties. It is not a coincidence that she is also the person who cleans...
- 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...
- Last Night's Dinner
Over the last year, and the last six months in particular, my dinner parties have gotten more elaborate. Whereas I used to have two basic courses (not counting appetizers), it's now fairly routine for me to have four, which includes neither the...
Cooking
Cooking for Two
We are on a temporary hiatus from dinner parties, catching up with various things. But I view it as a chance to practice some things I have been interested in, as well as try out some recipes from a cookbook I'm reviewing for my food writing class. So I decided to have a tiny dinner party for Melissa and me. Of course, somehow I imagined that a meal for two people would be less stressful. Normally I make a little schedule which serves partly to remind me when to do things and partly to remind me what things to do. This time I didn't, and so various things were forgotten or hectic. Fortunately Melissa didn't mind bigger-than-normal gaps between courses.
This just came together off what looked good at the farmer's market. I had hoped to serve it with couscous, but I bought larger couscous than normal, and it wasn't done steaming by the time dinner was ready. It wasn't even close, in fact. And since it seemed like the obvious thing to do, I made a wine reduction sauce with the grenache. It's from Ridge's ATP program, which we joined when visiting the vineyard.
In this case the wine dictated the cheese, sort of. A couple weeks ago, I had made bread and cookies for a dinner party but I made way too much. So we decided to give some of the bread and cookies to our next-door neighbor. A few days later, we found the wine sitting outside our door. Since it was a Savoie wine, I decided to do the regional pairing thing and get a good Savoie cheese. We had had Reblochon recently, so I wanted Tomme de Savoie, a very nice, simple cheese. Alas, the Cheese Board in Berkeley was out of Tomme de Savoie. But the woman helping me suggested Tomme de Crayeuse, which is similar. We tried some, and I figured it would go reasonably well. It worked very nicely. More and more I find myself siding with the "white wine with most cheese" view espoused by some modern gourmets.
This was a recipe from the cookbook I'm reviewing. Straightforward and classic, though the author had paired it with regular vanilla ice cream. I decided to make anise ice cream instead, because I had the idea for it a while ago and wanted to try it.
And there would have been a mignardise of grape jellies, but the grocery store near my work didn't carry apple pectin, only citrus pectin. I'm not opposed to trying something different, but there wasn't a conversion ratio between citrus pectin and apple pectin. Since the citrus pectin supposedly works off the calcium in fruit, not the sugar (though I'm suspicious of the fact that it nonetheless comes with "calcium water" you have to mix in; if it works off the calcium naturally present, why do you need more?), I didn't know what kind of translation to use. So we ended up with firm grape jelly, not grape jelly candy that you could cut into squares. Ah well. I'll try harder to find apple pectin!
- The Other Lady Marmalade
Photo by Melissa Schneider. Watch an artisan at work and you get a new appreciation for her products and her prices. That thought came to me as I attended a marmalade class with June Taylor. The clean, vibrant flavors of Taylor's jams, marmalades,...
- Jojo Wine Tasting - The Rhône
One of our favorite Oakland restaurants is Jojo on Piedmont Avenue. Curt and Mary Jo, the chefs and owners, have impressive pedigrees. Mary Jo was pastry chef at Chez Panisse for many years, Curt worked at Zuni for a time, and on and on. When they opened...
- J & J 10 X 10
It was an email I didn't think I'd ever see. "Hey, what if we did a 10-course meal when James and Jeffrey come over?" Melissa is usually the voice of reason when it comes to dinner parties. It is not a coincidence that she is also the person who cleans...
- 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...
- Last Night's Dinner
Over the last year, and the last six months in particular, my dinner parties have gotten more elaborate. Whereas I used to have two basic courses (not counting appetizers), it's now fairly routine for me to have four, which includes neither the...