Dine About Friends ~ Chapter 4ish

So, how beautiful does our new table look? The table, incidentally, is like 3 times the size of our old one so we can now invite up to a whopping 8 people! Very, very exciting... Anyway, Alisa, the foxy wife who never lies, went nuts on the table setting - I wish our little camera could do it justice. My good friend Leonard, with his sweet nikon, got much, much, like 150 thousand times, better photos. And, amazingly enough... wait for it... they are posted on Facebook.

So the basic premise of the night was thus: me and said foxy wife host; guests bring the booze. What, not civilized enough? Fine, the libations, how's that? (Not quite a proper use but c'est la vie.) While Alisa spruced Chez Berliner's to the apex of it's potential, I cooked. Our honored guests elevated the evening even further with the Lewelling 1995, which I'll cover later - and hopefully drink again someday - and what I easily considered the best pitcher of sangria I've ever had, which, again, I will cover later. Now this blog is about cooking and since I actually did that part, that's what I'm going to write mostly about. I don't know wine and won't pretend to, same goes for sangria I suppose. Nonetheless I'll talk a bit about both... mostly the cooking tho.

Ahem, the menu?
~ Gruyere Cheese Puffs (aka Gougeres)
~ Gnocchi with Brown Butter, Sage, White Truffle Oil
~ Greens with Orange, California Avocado, Champagne Vin
~ Savory Crepes with Chive Sauce
~ Rack of Lamb with Gewurztraminer Poached Apples, Asparagus
~ Foxy Fabulous Ice Cream Cones, Fresh Fruit Plate

And here's the my geeked out "to-do" list. (I love to-do lists... there's a great finality to putting a nice little circle with a check mark next to each task. like a gratifying little reminder that i accomplished something - and no mini-victory is too small. so positive eh?) Check out the mint bunch - didn't end up using it. I tried mint in the wine, i tried mint in the lamb sauce, i tried and tried but the mint just didn't work. Oh yea, the list:

On to the cooking...

First Up: the Prep...

The night before the big event I prepared what became known as "the Thousand Layer Mushroom Crepes." My friend Hedda named them, gotta love the romantic Chinese nature - I immediately felt like the dish was imbued with history and grandeur a thousand times greater than my humble creation deserved. Bottom line: basic crepes (a paltry 8 layers in reality) layered with finely chopped Cremini mushrooms - by far my favorite mushroom oddly enough - served on a chive oil sauce.

Asparagus spears, apple cubes and tangello segments... frui-tay (and, technically, vegitabl-ay)

Cheese puffs, pre-baking. These are funny on so many levels. But quite tasty once baked.

The 10, no 13 year, Lewelling Cab. As promised I'm going to cover it: it was freakin' good. I thought it was mellow and went superbly with the lamb.

Cheesballs eating cheeseballs.

Cheesballs after eating cheesballs plus 4 more courses.

The gnocchi - no, the were not fresh made. Will probably never buy packaged gnocci again unless I find a much better product that these. And, as a matter of fact, my ego was bruised by serving these relatively poor gnocchi so now I am forced, by none other than my own stubbornness, to make them by hand for the next dinner party. Oh yes, it's fun to be stubborn!

Mixed gren salad with avocado and tangello segments. The tangello was an odd choice but i liked it, nice and sweet. Also I tried putting them and the avocado on the side. After a bit of usability testing (that is my day job by the way) i came to belive that when scattered all throughout the salad itself, chopped avocado or even full segments became difficult to find, inevitably ending up alone, drenched in dressing at the end of the salad consumption. Now while several bites of pure avocado after a nice salad if just fine with me (i tend to eat 1/4 of the avocado like an apple when preparing them for salads anyway), I did come to believe that maybe, just maybe, this segragated presentation would allow my users (damn! wrong job), my guests, to assemble and consume the perfectly balanced bite of citrus, greens and avocado. So, the result you ask? ... I don't think anyone really noticed so again, cest la vie. Looked pretty, no?



The aforementioned "Thousand Layer Mushroom Crepes" with chive sauce.





The star and one of my all time favories - RACK 'O LAMB. The lamb and the asparagus spears were plated on top of a lamb stock reduction sauce and then topped with the apples that had been sauteed in butter and then poached in reduced Gewurtz wine. I was fairly pleased with the combo - the savory lamb and sauce was nicely offset by the crisp and slightly sour apples and wine. Lesson for next time though, and there always is one otherwise it wouldn't be so deliciously frustrating for me to always get something wrong... wait, am i serious, is that fun? well, it always happens and there's nothing i can do about it, so i might as well be ok with it. again with the positiveness. so yea, the lesson: remove that big layer of fat on the top side of the ribs - I had left it on hoping that it would add flavor to the ribs when they roasted, but think now that the ribs, trimmed all the way down to loli-pops just looks cooler. period.

And, finally, the Foxy Fabulous Ice Cream Cones, Fresh Fruit Plate (fruit plate not pictured here). They were delicious and cleverly presented in wine glasses. So the users - frack! - g-u-e-s-t-s, grabbed a wine glass, took out the cone, enjoyed the cone, then enjoyed the wine i poured in the glasses while said cone was being enjoyed. They do say Foxes are clever...

Well, there you have it. My first big ass blog post about my biggest dinner party yet. This took me forever but was kinda fun so I'm hoping that I will have another up after the next big party - which will be in about a month. Cheers... -- TB