Shopmates, Part 1
Melissa has a business which connects her jewelry and woodworking skills. The jewelry component is easy to do at home but the woodworking requires a bit more space, and so she shares a shop with a number of people. She's become friendly with some of them, and asked if we could have them over for dinner. I never mind a chance to cook (sometimes to a fault), and was happy to get to know them better or at all; I had only met one of our guests before that night.
We started dinner with a bagna cauda, a traditional Piemontese dish which is essentially a fondue where the central pot is filled with warm olive oil, garlic, and anchovies. It was a cold night, and something warm and gratifying as guests walked in seemed like a good idea. I also added some lemon with a nod to the Lemon Bagna Cauda from the Zuni Café Cookbook. I use salt-packed anchovies for my bagna cauda (indeed, for all my anchovy needs). I decided to try them after seeing both Jeremiah Tower and Judy Rodgers sing their praises, and I've come to share their belief that they're better than the more popular oil-packed fillets. They're a bit more work; you have to run them under cold water and rip the fish apart to fillet them yourself.
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| A small plate of bagna cauda dippables greeted our guests |
Not surprisingly, we served a Piemontese wine, a Roero Arneis (our wedding white). Piemontese wines made in the traditional way are perfect exemplars of the axiom that regional wines go well with regional foods.
To open, I served risotto cakes. I made risotto the day before (somewhat overcooked, I think, but still good), and chilled it overnight. The next day I shaped them into rounds with cookie cutters, packing in the risotto, and shortly before the guests arrived, I dredged the risotto cakes in flour, egg, and then Panko bread crumbs. To cook, I dunked the cakes in hot oil and fried them until the crust was golden-brown.
When I served it, I laid thinly sliced raw fennel on the plate, then I put the risotto cake on that, placed some fried basil leaves on that, and then garnished with a sun-dried tomato mayonnaise.
Some notes on this. Fried basil leaves? Really fantastic garnish. I saw the idea in Art Culinaire and thought I'd give it a whirl. They work pretty much like you'd expect: heat some oil to 350°, drop in some basil leaves a few at a time so they don't glom together (and stand way back; the water in the leaves causes a lot of popping), then use a skimmer to remove them when they seem finished and drain on paper towels. A simple process, but they're stunning. They look like basil leaves that have been fashioned out of thin, translucent green glass. They crumble easily, so are fairly fragile. The basil flavor is muted (it has been cooked after all), but still present.
The sun-dried tomato mayonnaise was a last-minute idea, but came out extremely well. This was largely due to the sun-dried tomatoes I used. My mom recently went to Italy and bought some for me, which she gave me as a Christmas present. I thought this was an odd choice; sun-dried tomatoes are available in every bulk section of every supermarket, I imagine. Maybe so, but not these sun-dried tomatoes. I was caught by surprise when I tasted the purée I made to be mixed into the mayonnaise. Made with nothing but these tomatoes, rehydrated, the puré was flavorful and delicious, far more so than what I would've gotten with our domestic versions. They don't seem to have any particular provenance, though the Italian label might be telling me quite a bit about them and I wouldn't know it. No producer's name seems apparent. Maybe my mom just bought high-end Italian tomatoes. Or maybe just regular ones. Or maybe ones that had been seasoned. Either way, the normal sun-dried tomato you find here just doesn't compare.
With this course we served a Rock River Merlot. This was from our wine club, and is one of those typical things where they tell you that it's a second label from a well-known winery, whose name they can't disclose. Someone famous I guess. Regardless of which illustrious wine maker constructed the wine, it's quite good. My tasting notes say "baked cherries, but not cherry pie", among other things.
For the main course, one person (who doesn't eat a lot of meat) got the striped bass dish from the other night (see below) while everyone else got a slice of pork roast. Probably the slices were too thick, but people enjoyed it. I served it on top of the same spinach/shiitake/pepper/saurkraut mixture which went under the fish, and which I used the other night, but obviously the sauce was different. For the pork, I deglazed the pan with chicken stock and reduced it.
To go with this we took a chance. Another wine from our wine club, "The Prisoner" is a tantalizingly named wine from Orin Swift. Like most of the Napa reds we've gotten through the wine club, it's a blend of a wide variety of grapes. Not bad, but I probably won't be buying more (unlike other shipments we've gotten; we've bought more of virtually everything).
After that, we took a break. Our guests had brought a bottle of 2001 Sterling's Vintner's Collection Cabernet Sauvignon, and we retired to the living room (such a luxury) to enjoy it. We started pulling out some samples from my mechanical puzzle collection (another one of my hobbies) and our guests, two of them woodworkers and one a mechanic, were fascinated by the stunning woodwork and clever mechanisms. My mechanical puzzle collection turns out to be a great thing for people to play with when we retire to the living room, as we tend to do once or more per meal these days. It serves as a nice break, a chance to digest, and puzzles are possibly the world's greatest ice breakers.
Check back soon for the conclusion of the meal, with a new take on a cheese course, a deeper explanation of the brownie dessert I tried with my mom, and of course the mignardise course.
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