Week 3 - Menu "Goat Cheese Dessert Souffle Part 2"

Week 2 was a success, in my estimation. The sauce turned out quite well and the pasta worked, though it's a time consuming process to actually make it. I'm doing the goat cheese souffle again because I think it can be improved. Thanks Jer and Theresa for a most enjoyable evening.

Next: Thursday, May 24
Menu:
Wine - likely the 2003 Spanish Granache that I picked up last week, but we'll see
Entree - Homemade fettuccine red wine and eggplant tomato sauce (see recipe in last post).
Salad - Spinach, onion, toasted almonds, fresh mango with strawberry-balsamic vinagrette
Dessert - Goat's cheese souffle with strawberry and basil purees
Coffee - Black Pearl Espresso
*all item menus subject to change
Seats available: None

Recipe - Strawberry Balsamic Vinagrette
I made this last night for myself with some of the left-over strawberry purree from this week's meal. Sweet and tangy with a great colour.

Purree strawberrys and add suger until sweet enough to serve as a dessert sauce.

Combine about 1/2 cup purree with 1 Tbsp. Balsamic Vinager.

Taste and continue to add small amounst of vinager until the tang of the vinager just balances the sweetness of the strawberries.

Squeeze about half a Tbsp. fresh lemon juice into the dressing, if desired.

The Sauce is Where It's At

I was trying to imagine the meal I made last night devoid of all the sauces - it really would have been a dull affair. Of course had the sauces been poor, the result would have been worse than none at all. In terms of this whole dinner series, what I'm really after is to improve my sauce-making abilities. I've stayed away from the classic French sauces for now-still engrossed in curry sauces and sauces thickened with pureed vegetable - plus, pureed vegetable has certain health benefits over cream, white flour and butter (as delectable as all three can be in the right combinations).

Here's a recipe that I made last week and which I will make again next week for three friends:


Tomato sauce with Merlot and Fresh Basil – Theme and Variations
makes about 2 cups
In a 3L, heavy-bottomed saute pan:

saute
½ cup minced shallots in
2 Tbsp good olive oil
until shallot pieces start to turn brown at the edges
add
1-1/2 cups pureed tomatoes
(tomatoes, of course are the key to a good sauce – I used Aurora canned crushed tomatoes available at DeLuca’s-ripe, fresh, peeled and seeded tomatoes, would be preferable, but this Manitoba in spring)
and simmer for about 5 minutes
add
½ cup merlot
(take the advice of a cookbook author I read recently – "if you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it" – I used left over Diablo Merlot)
stir to mix thoroughly.
Here I also added 2 Tbsp. of fresh chili sauce
(made simply by rehydrating dried Anaheim chili peppers, simmering, blending and draining – any kind of store-brand enchilada sauce would only ruin the sauce – in my case, this sauce added a nice kick and turned the colour of the sauce to a deep claret)
finally,
add
as much finely chopped fresh basil as you think you can handle
(about ½ cup loosely packed in my case)
stir again and simmer for another 10 minutes.
salt to taste. add a bit more wine if the sauce is too thick.
serve over pasta tossed with sauteed mushrooms or zucchini or eggplant or something else that meets your fancy.

OPTIONS:
1. to sweeten the sauce add ¼-1/2 cup pureed carrot with the tomatoes
and/or
2. to deepen the flavour, add ½ cup broiled, slivered almonds, crushed after broiling
3. omit the wine and add 1 Tbsp. vodka. after simmering, add ½ cold cream (slowly to avoid curdling)

Week 2

Week 1 was a moderate success, food-wise - and perfect, company-wise (thanks, Kurt, Carla, Ben and Hinke). More that later. Now for week 2.

Next: Tuesday or Wednesday, May15 or 16

Menu: Wine - TBA
Homemade fettuccine with tomato fenugreek cream sauce and oyster mushrooms.
Fresh vegetables with olive oil basil dip.
Goat's cheese souffle with strawberry-basil puree
Espresso
*all item menus subject to change without notice

Seats available: 4

All Hobbits, of course, can cook...

"All hobbits, of course, can cook, for they begin to learn the art before their letters (which many never reach); Sam was a good cook, even by hobbit reckoning, and he had done a good deal of the camp-cooking on their travels, when there was a chance. He still hopefully carrried some of his gear in his pack: a small tinder-box, two small shallow pans, the smaller fitting into the larger; inside them a wooden spoon, a short two-pronged fork and some skewers were stowed; and hidden at the bottom of the pack in a flat wooden box a dwindling treasure, some salt" ("Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit", Book IV, The Lord of the Rings).

Frodo’s and Sam’s journey to Mordor is made all the more believable and poignant by the intense humanness Tolkein creates for them. Sam’s steadfastness, stout heart and hope flag at times but rush to the surface at the slightest break in their dire circumstances. One such moment involves a high, clear star seen out of the smoke and stench of Mordor itself, another is a rabbit stew in a forest. Frodo, Sam and Gollum have finally left the Black gate behind and suddenly enter Ithilien, once the garden ante chamber to Minas Tirith: "As they walked, brushing their way through bush and herb, sweet odours rose about them. Gollum coughed and retched; but the hobbis breathed deep, and suddenly Sam laughed, for heart’s ease not for jest."

There he cooks a stew and feeds it to Frodo. So this is what struck my mind as I tried to think of a name for this new blog about a weekly meal that got underway this Tuesday. Actually mushrooms came first, mushrooms and then Hobbits and finally this scene. Because food is a beautiful thing, but more so the company in which it is enjoyed. And who can actually separate all the components that make food worth relishing. A piece of flat bread, for example, hot and fresh to be sure, but eaten in crisp mountain air under vast towers of snow and rock, or in a smoky hole of a restaurant with a flushed face and friends around drinking hot tea.