Valentine's Day
It's easy to sniff at Valentine's Day. It's widely perceived to be mostly a creation of greeting card companies who were trying to correct the card-buying lull between Christmas and Easter (or whatever your winter solstice/spring equinox rituals of choice are). It's therefore not a surprise that it has become heavily commercialized, with ample pressure on everyone in a relationship to spend, spend, spend to prove their love. And don't even get me started about the heavy blow to self-esteem for single people out there; I suspect not even Christmas as a single person is as lonely as Valentine's Day.
But it's still a good excuse to cook a great meal. We don't go out on Valentine's Day; at best restaurants are going to be mobbed, at worst they dumb down and price up their menus. Fortunately, however, we don't need to go out; Melissa is perfectly content to suffer through one of my dinners. And if I choose to go all out, so much the better.
 |
| Oysters, caviar, and meyer lemon aspic. |
The appetizer for our meal was a platter of raw, just-shucked oysters. This is an easy dish to prepare, just shuck the oysters and put them on a plate (careful not to let the juice flow out if you don't have a big bag of crushed ice or rock salt to work with for bedding). I will add that it's so easy that the Chronicle did an article all about oysters on the Wednesday before Valentine's Day. This made them very difficult to find on that Saturday. On top of each oyster, I placed a dollop of caviar from a hackleback sturgeon, raised in California. And finally, I made a Meyer lemon aspic which I cut into small cubes and used as another ornament atop each oyster. Melissa loved the oysters, but she also had me fetch the rest of the aspic out of the refrigerator so she could eat some more of it on its own. The oyster and caviar thing is fairly classic, but the oyster and aspic thing is enjoying a bit of limelight at the moment in the culinary scene. The tartness from the lemon (the aspic was just lemon juice and gelatin) made a nice counterpoint to the meaty brininess of the oysters and caviar. As Melissa ate the little aspic cubes on their own, her mouth puckered and she gave a little wince.
If caviar is a classic pairing with oysters, sparkling wine is the classic wine to drink with both of them. We decided to do sparkling wine throughout the dinner, starting with a Roederer Estate sparkling wine from California (owned by the French Champagne house). Melissa discovered this in a wine class, and it must be said that it's a phenomenally good value.
 |
| Better enjoy it now, while I still can... |
After the oysters, I served a torchon of foie gras with black truffle sauce and toasted pain de mie. I make the joke that since I'm working on an article about the ethics of foie gras (which if you don't know is a much-enlarged liver from a duck or goose that has been force-fed for the last bit of its life), I have to eat a bunch now since I'll probably never want to eat it again when I'm done with the article. I accompany this with a nervous laugh; I may be right. At any rate, I have to be able to describe the taste for the article, so technically this was research. A torchon is sort of like a Tootsie roll. You mush up the foie gras, roll it tightly in cheesecloth, poach it briefly (wincing as the high-priced fat leaks out into the water, even though you know you'll put the water in the fridge and skim off the fat to use in cooking), roll it in a damp towel, and then hang it in your refrigerator. The process takes a minimum of three days if you're using high-quality foie gras (at least according to The French Laundry Cookbook recipe I used). Lower grade foie gras takes an extra day of soaking in milk to draw out the blood. When you're ready to serve, you unwrap the torchon, cut it into pretty little rounds (trimming the edges, which have gotten crusty from oxidation), and serve it.
Now, Melissa's not normally a foie gras fan; she likes it and all, but only in small quantities. Still, I wanted there to be two rounds on each plate, so I went ahead and gave her both rounds. She loved them; I think she finished hers before I finished mine. She says she really liked the truffle sauce which accompanied it. This was, incidentally, jarred "Black Truffle Sauce". Given the price, I'm going to go out on a limb and say they weren't the belle dame of the truffle world, the black truffle of Perigord. More likely, they were Himalayan truffles or some other similar but not equal truffle. Still, they have their own pungent aroma which is quite pleasant in its own right.
 |
| Rack of lamb. Not my favorite plating ever. Probably it didn't work because the lamb was so damn big. |
For our main course, I made roasted rack of lamb. I used lamb from Prather Ranch, a producer who does all the right things when it comes to raising livestock. But I was surprised when I picked up the rack from their store in the Ferry Building. It was huge! The worker said they use a different breed than what you normally see (often from New Zealand) and they just grow bigger. Lots bigger.
I frenched the lamb as best I could; it was quite the struggle and eventually I got to the "it's good enough" point (two nights later I used the leftover meat from the frenching in a delicious shepherd's pie). To go with it, I sautéed some spinach and tossed in some green garlic. I also roasted some potatoes, and cut them into little wedges. I served the whole dish with a red-wine sauce, leveraging a "preserved" half bottle of a Chilean Merlot and a square of my beef demi-glace.
Believe it or not, we served this with a sparkling wine as well. In this case, a rosé Champagne. It might seem a little odd, but I occasionally try to recapture an ephemeral memory of an unbelievably stunning pairing I once had: rosé Champagne with rare venison. I wouldn't say I mimicked the previous experience, but the wine held its own just fine against the lamb nonetheless.
And now, those of you who have read me for a while are expecting the cheese course. And the dessert. But no, not this time. Oh, I had some planned out, but Melissa and I were exhausted and full. Rather odd, since we routinely have five or six course meals, but this time we couldn't do it. Melissa blames the foie gras; it's an unbelievably rich food. That seems as good a theory as any other. At any rate, our main course was our last one.
- Foie Gras Without Force-feeding?
In a post at The Ethicurean, I noticed a link to an article describing a Spanish foie gras that received the Coup de Coeur award for innovation at the Paris International Food Salon. The surprise here isn't the country of origin: Spain, like Belgium,...
- Dr. Vino Goes To The Geese
Some of you know that I have a spider-sense that tingles when writers mention foie gras, but this time Tyler at Dr. Vino made my job easy when he sent a link to his post about a visit to a French goose foie gras farm. He touches on the "unmentioned" problems...
- Chez Spencer
Chez Spencer Originally uploaded by melissa nicole. Melissa and I eagerly arrived at Chez Spencer for a "date" a couple of weeks ago. The unabashedly French restaurant gets the nod from Patricia Unterman and the Chronicle, and the enclosed front...
- Christmas Eve
(Note: If you haven't seen Pim's links for tsunami relief assistance, I urge you to check them out. Help your fellow humans. If you work for a large corporation, some charity organizations may qualify for donation matching. Let us show others...
- The Final Champagne Tasting
Note: Forgive any rambling in this post; I am recovering from a cold so heaven only knows how coherent this post is. It may seem as if Melissa and I have done our fair share of Champagne tastings recently. The Terry Theise event in January, the K...