I like to cook and so does my neighbor so we often conspire to put together some really good meals. Yesterday was my birthday so we had some guests over and had a feast.
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Smoked and peppered (flaky) salmon – if you shop at Costco you will recognize this combination. It is quite good, we cut it rather thin using a serrated knife and put out those circular whole grain crackers that Costco also sells. Excellent in the living room with Veuve Clicquot Champagne. I don’t buy V.C. that much because there seems to be a surprising bottle variation but the bottle last night (brought by a guest) was really nice.
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Oysters and Pearls. This is a famous Thomas Keller dish from the French Laundry. Oysters help to flaver a creamy pudding, and the special pearl tapioca in the pudding confuses the tongue with the garnish of caviar. Exquisite flavors. And we had it with a 1996 Brocard Beauregard, a premier cru Chablis. Not a bad idea but the wine was a little faded, flawed.
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Viennese mushroom soup, also brought by a guest. Lots of nice tender sliced mushrooms in a soup that apparently included some dairy, but had a nice refreshing sour note. We just nursed the Chablis through this.
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Liver pate on “Keller toast” with 1990 Ch. d’Yquem. If you cut a baguette at 90 degrees, you get a useless little circle. If you cut at zero degrees, you have cut the loaf exactly in half down the middle. To make Keller toast you cut the baguette at 10 or 15 degrees so you get ovals about six inches long. Paint with good olive oil and salt lightly, and cook in a hot oven until brown around the edges. A nice hard crunch. And I unmolded a container of paté and cut it into 3 slices vertically and 3 slices horizontally so I had 9 long “sticks” of foie gras (what the heck, it INCLUDED some foie gras) which I put on top of 9 Keller toasts. Then I could just pass it around and everyone could munch theirs with a glass of Yquem. The Yquem was not quite up to my expectations of luxurious wonder, I think it was very slightly corked. It was still good.
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Because we had some non-eaters-of-mammals present, along with the prime steaks from Costco I also made a version of Tuna Tataki which turned out wonderfully well. You cut the thick tuna steaks into rectangular “logs.” You roll the logs in a mixture of sesame seeds and grated fresh ginger, and you salt the meat. When ready to eat you throw the logs into a hot frying pan with peanut oil, and cook about 30 seconds per side. Oh – you pre-cut the logs before cooking which makes it MUCH easier to get nice even slices. Slice up the logs and arrange the squares around the edge of a platter, and have slices of avocado and raw red onion and caper berries in the center. The bright red centers of the squares make a very attractive presentation.
To go with the beef I took a pound of Chanterelles (Costco again) and browned them with shallots, and finished with a bit of Keller’s veal glaze that I had in the freezer. Really good.
The wine was 2002 Vignes de l’Enfant Jésus, a Burgundy which did live up to my expectations. Good with both the tuna and the steaks. We also had some garlic mashed potatoes and roasted asparagus with that course.
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a salad made of chopped raw brussels sprouts, walnuts, and pecorino cheese. Interesting.
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Stilton (Costco has gotten in a shipment of nice Stilton) with 1994 Warre’s Vintage Port. Getting the cork out was a struggle. The port tasted good but once again, not the powerful stuff I was hoping for. The Stilton brought out the best in the wine.
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Various desserts made by my wife Louise. These included the best Jamaican Black Cake I have ever tasted (from a recipe by the poet, Emily Dickinson), a Meyer Lemon pie with white chocolate, and a sort of pound cake with dates and other fruits. Thin slices of the cakes were laid out on a platter and the pie was cut to order.
It was all really nice, and just excessive enough to be quite special.