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First SF Dinner Party: Menu
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September 06, 2005
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In Irvine, I had a bad habit of throwing dinner parties and forgetting to take pictures of the dishes as they went out to the table. Worse yet, sometimes I would take pictures and forget to blog about them later. After moving back to San Francisco, I promised myself I'd photograph and blog every dinner party I threw. Well, I nearly fell off the wagon on the first go-round.
Two weeks ago we threw the first dinner party in the new place, and I only took one servicable picture, and I nearly forgot to write the whole thing up. Here's the lone picture and what I remember of the dishes.
I was going for something unexpected and fun here. There's a delicate balance which, when achieved, it tastes pretty good. If one of the flavor elements dominates, which is easy to do with the stilton, it tastes one-dimensional and flat. In truth, I think it needs a third ingredient to tie the two tastes together more tightly, but I'm not sure what it would be, especially given that it would have to fit inside of a half of a date that's already stuffed with cheese. Interesting, but I don't think I'll be pursuing it further.
I haven't made a tomato soup in a long time, so I thought I'd break it out for this party. This soup is made with porcini mushroom stock, the reconstituted porcinis themselves, white wine, good canned tomatoes, some herbes de provence, a little sour cream and one lone carrot. There is enough porcini flavor to come through as a dusky, brooding undertone, but not enough to drag the focus away from the bright, acidic tomatoes.
The epitome of tomato soup, for me and for a surprising number of people, is from Bistro Jeanty. For me, it's nearly an ancestral memory, since it's been five years since I had it last. I remember a number of great things about it, but one of them is a particular indescribably round, golden, delicious flavor that I've never known how to even attempt to duplicate in my versions. This time, I remembered an email that someone sent me years ago that made some suggestions as to how to improve my soup. I used a couple of them and tripped across the answer.
The "secret", as it turns out, is merely to swirl a metric sh--load of butter into the soup just before serving. That's it. Am I a dullard or what? The thing is, when you taste it in the soup, it doesn't come across exactly like butter. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Anyhow, if you make a tomato soup, try it the next time you have a dinner party. It is totally worth the calories, at least when you're making it for guests. Don't just do it for your own dinner unless you're terminally skinny, because it's quite addictive.
I use Cook's Illustrated's approach to making the goat cheese rounds -- freeze a log of goat cheese, cut it into rounds, roll it in herbs, egg, and then Melba Toast crumbs, and bake. It generally turns out well. (Though I'm not nearly as enamored with the magazine as I was when I first started cooking, I find that I still use it quite a bit, and this is exactly the sort of preparation that it is useful for.)
This is another dish I haven't made in awhile. Last time, I used roasted white asparagus and a basalmic redux. This time, I just tossed the greens with truffle oil and good port vinegar. I prefer the reduction, but I think the tossing method works better with loose greens like this.
I'd like to try this recipe with an aged goat cheese.
Yes, you read that right, leeks and fennel. In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court of home ruled that in this instance it was okay to cook these ingredients and add them to the dish as long as Rebecca's didn't have any in hers.
This was basically a rectangular slice of puff pastry underneath a bit of salmon fillet, with the artichoke bit in between and the sauteed leeks and fennel on top. The "artichoke creme fraiche" was essentially a modified version of my baked crab artichoke dip, but that isn't nearly a fancy enough name for this dish, now, is it?
I chose this format partially because I thought it might be easier to prep than a regular wellington. It actually turns out to be a lot fussier, because the elements are cooked separately and then assembled at the end, so you have to worry about timing everything properly. By the time I got everything to the table, nothing was at the right temperature. Nevertheless, it has its advantages in dinner parties because portion control is far easier, and because the puff pastry won't get soggy.
I found the flavor of these cookies so intriguing that I thought they might be good in a savory recipe, perhaps as a pie crust. This was my first attempt to use the recipe in a savory context. I cut back on the sugar and the baking soda and pressed them a little thinner.
The resulting dish was, I thought, a success. Arguably, the flavor of the rounds is a bit too strong for pork. One of my guests suggested lamb or venison, which I did try later on that week. It was also good, but not the dream combination of flavors that I was hoping for.
I may try to groom this into a signature dish. It's unsual enough that people will remember it, and if I can get the balance of flavors just right, it could be very good. It's the sort of dish that people talk about. A few weeks later, at a Labor Day Barbeque, I was the "Pork Cookie Guy".
September 6, 2005 in main_dishes, menus, salads, side_dishes | Permalink
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Comments
I stumbled across your blog while I was doing some online research. A tomato soup such as you've presented here puts to shame all of us who reach for that red and white can when we want to indulge in this comfort food!
Posted by: thebizofknowledge at Aug 7, 2006 1:11:12 PM
