This was probably our hardest dinner (up to this point), and possibly our easiest and smoothest. The key to a dinner of 6 courses, is planning and being super, super organized. Usually 2 to 3 weeks before a dinner like this, I will sit down with my cookbooks and spend 2-3 hours paging through and looking and thinking. We consider color and taste; texture and temperature. When I have a rough idea, I'll call Care and we"ll hash over the ideas. Sometimes she likes what I've come up with, but more than likely, something gets axed. Then I sit down and rethink, or quite often, she'll have an idea of something to take the place of the exiled dish. Once the menu is settled, I will sit down again and comb through every recipe and make a grocery list. We serve 10 at the table, and 4-6 servers, so this has been tricky at times. You don't want to find out at eleven at night, that you don't have enough cream, and have to abort the cooking because you are utterly too exhausted to run to town. Not good. So I do my best and hope I've calculated correctly. Once I have that settled, I begin at the top again and make a plan for the acual cooking. This takes more hours. Many more hours. I now have 2 stoves, but at the time, we were working with one stove and a grill (which was great as long as it didn't rain...). So really, the only way to pull this dinner off, was complete control over every dish. Sometimes my schedule would begin a week out. We would make chicken broth, or pasta, or items we could freeze. Then the schedule would focus on the days, listing everything we needed to accomplish 3 days out; then 2 days out. The day of, the prep work would be scheduled by hours, and then minutes. When plates needed to go to the freezer to be cold in time. When a dish needed to be pulled out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature in time. When the oven needed to be turned on, and what was being cooked. How long a dish cooked for. How long something simmered for. When a pan of water needed to be put on the stove to come to a boil in time. Every minute throughout the evening. Every detail. Care and I sat at the table with each course, so we had to have a plan. And this was our first dinner of printing menus! So nice! Our guests were able to see the description of what they were eating, and what was yet to come.
1
SALMON TARTARE WITH SWEET RED ONION CREME FRAICHE
a cornet filled with smoked salmon and creamy red onion
2
CREAM OF PARSNIP AND PUMPKIN SOUP WITH PARSNIP CHIPS
a soup of contrasts where the velvety, silky quality of the pumpkin
works well with the subtle spiciness of the parsnips
3
SAUTEED WHITE ASPARAGUS IN PARMESAN TUILE WITH SUMMER GREENS
a parmesan cookie cradling butter herb sauteed white asparagus
with a drizzle of garlic-lemon aioli
4
LEMON-MINT SORBET WITH RED PEPPERCORNS
a palate cleanser able to make your eyes pop!
5
MEDALLIONS OF PORK IN BLACK CHERRY-PEPPER SAUCE
WITH SPATZLE-BRAISED FENNEL
grilled pork tenderloin topped with sweet black cherries served with
lightly sauteed spatzle and delicately flavored fennel
6
CREME de FARINE WITH POACHED APPLES AND ICE CREAM
a satisfying blend of poached apples, candied apple ice cream, cream of wheat
and puff pastry cinnamon twist cookies...whew
We didn't have the fancy molds needed to make the shaping of these cornets so much easier. I researched, but came up empty handed. So we fashioned molds out of foil. We spread our dough out on a silpat and baked it ever so carefully. These little disks burned when you weren't looking. Then we'd open the oven and lay the cookie sheet on the door, and quickly roll the baked disk around the cornet mold before it cooled and cracked. And in so doing, burned our fingers. We also didn't have the fancy holders to serve these tasty morsels in, so we became creative and served them nestled in peppercorns in mismatched china teacups. These were soooo goooood! Thank you Thomas Keller.
The soup.
Have you ever peeled white asparagus?!? Oh my gosh! I think I'd rather clean my refrigerator than peel white asparagus. If you're not ever-so-careful, it snaps. Then the asparagus is not uniform in size. But looking beyond that, this salad was fabulous. The parmesan crisps were made by grating parmesan on a silpat in a circle, baking, and then draping it over a form to cool.
Refreshing
Now this dish has a story. One I chuckle at and Care groans at. The black cherry sauce was the culprit. It's been so long ago, I hope I'm remembering correctly. The sauce didn't work the first time. It had to do with caramelizing the sugar. Ah yes, now I'm remembering. My pans gave Carrie a difficult time. Normally she could caramelize sugar with her eyes closed, well... anyway. But my pans were giving her a time. She ruined the mixture twice, and I was out of sugar. So a boy was fetched, and ran to town for more sugar. She located a useful (!) pan, and hallelujah! success. (the clock was nearing 11:00 pm) About this time, a boy was passing through the kitchen, who was grabbed and given the job of grinding pepper (for the sauce...). My mind was getting a little fuzzy (long day), and I remember, kind of thinking, that's a lot of pepper. But I worked on my tasks. Then Care asked me if I could put the pepper in the sauce (already containing the cheeries). Now there's a tiny lesson to be learned here. Many times with these dishes, we had to double or triple the ingredients to have the right amounts. This works for most ingredients. NOT SALT AND PEPPER. Have you ever noticed the little guys by our "about us"? They're there for a reason. So I picked up the measuring cup with the pepper, and begin dumping it into the sauce. As the pepper is cascading into the pan, I'm thinking, "gosh, that's a lot of pepper". By the time I came to my senses, it was too late, I realized what had happened. Carrie increased the pepper by too much, I believe. A quick taste confirmed that the sauce had to be dumped again. You couldn't even swallow this stuff. The throat refused! And we, at this point, were rolling on the floor in hysterics! Once the laughter (by all) subsided and we dried our tears, we realized we had to begin again. And we were out of cherries! A boy was sent again to town. (love my boys!)
The crowing touch of the night. Sorry it's a little blurred. Homemade puff pastry. Homemade apple ice cream. A poached (in such good things) apple ring. Would love to include the recipe, but the night is turning into morning, and my alarm sounds early. Recipe in the French Laundry by Thomas Keller.
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