As I’ve continued to hone my craft, each successive dinner party has gotten better and better. The three most recent ones have really been shining stars. Composed mostly from ordering whole chicken and whole duck, I had tested a menu of my own making and last week we covered the dishes made from the birds. This week, in continuing our discussion about the Bistro’s menu, we’ll cover the dishes made from the other animals the menu utilizes. In addition we’ll talk about another dinner party celebrating the bringing together of two sisters, where I retested some recipes that I hadn’t felt spectacular about before.
The party following the chicken took place in the early fall, somewhere in October if my memory serves. The leaves were all changing, but the weather was still sunny and warm; although the days were noticeably shorter. On a cool autumn evening, my guests arrived with the smell of fresh baked bread filling the house. I always serve homemade bread and a lemon and herb butter at the beginning of each service. After munching on that for a bit, we started with a homemade charcuterie and artisan cheese board. About a month before the party I had cured short ribs and hung them in my fridge wrapped in cheesecloth. This is in no way a traditional charcuterie item, but the notion sounded really good to me and indeed it turned out wonderfully. The thin shaved short rib had a peppery steak flavor, and the fattiness of the short rib really lent itself well the curing of this product. Also featured on the board was homemade pork rillettes. If you are unfamiliar, rillettes is traditionally pork butt cooked in its own fat at a low temperature for a very long time. The meat is then shredded finely, and mixed with enough of the fat so that it is spreadable at room temperature. It is capped with more lard, like many pâtés, in order to help preserve it. The rillettes were a huge hit at the table that night. There is no way to know what cheeses were selected for that night, but if you’re making homemade charcuterie, you’re getting a good cheese to grace the board as well.
To cleanse the palate after our appetizer that night we had a Belgian endive salad. The leaves were kept whole and used as a boat for the other salad components. It was kept simple with bacon lardons, candied walnuts, garlic herb Boursin cheese and a homemade white wine vinaigrette drizzled atop the three boats. To my surprise, the table was raving about this salad. Not that I also didn’t find it tasty, but it’s not often to hear such compliments about a salad.
Much like the chicken recipe testing party, we had two entrees that night. There was two of each, so the four of us each essentially ate one entrée portion. The first entrée we had that night was a beautiful beef tenderloin, seared to a ruby red rare, and served with sauce bordelaise, which is a red wine, and beef stock reduction sauce served with a garnish of roasted bone marrow, it can be cut into coins, small diced or even cold oil dripped to make pearls. For the sides with the steak I made a butternut squash gratin with thyme, and gruyere cheese. At the time I didn’t have a mandolin to slice the squash nice and thin, so it didn’t hold together quite as well as I would have liked; although it tasted lovely. For the vegetable side we had roasted Brussels sprouts sautéed with bacon lardons and hit with just a little red wine vinegar, then mounted with butter. They were very tasty.
For our second entrée that evening, I served my take on Bœuf Bourguignon. Bone in short ribs, braised in red wine garnished with the lardons, carrots, and pearl onions. This sat atop a bed of homemade egg noodles tossed in the same herb butter I served at the beginning of our dinner. The egg noodles came out beautifully and in addition to their buttery delight, they caught the rich sauce from the short ribs as well. As our vegetable side for the entrée I cut obliques of parsnips and roasted them in the oven, until just achieving a little golden brown. They were then sautéed in butter and the pulp from a vanilla bean. They were wonderful and it was definitely a highlight of the evening.
We had a savory dessert that evening in the form of a cheese soufflé. It was alright, but needed more cheese. It had achieved a nice rise however.
The following party took place in mid spring. The rains of April were finally settling, and we were inching closer to May. Instead of the red wines that guests brought to the beef testing party, they brought whites to pair with the seafood we were eating that night. We started with a Roulade de Poisson, or stuffed fish roll. I was unable to find the sole fish that I wanted to use for this recipe and had settled on trout instead, which worked okay, but I believe this dish needs to be retested with the proper fish intended for it. I made a mushroom duxelle and each filet was rolled with a little of this as a filling. The fish was then baked to flaky perfection with a small pad of lemon herb butter on top. It was served with a ramp leaf pistou and braised Belgian endive, then garnished with candied lemon peel. Ramps, if you don’t know are a wild onion, with red intensely oniony stalk, and flat green leaves that have a delightful garlicky flavor. The table loved this dish as well, although we all agreed the portion size was large for an appetizer
Our salad that evening was made from some lovely local spinach tossed in a homemade red wine vinaigrette, gold beets, toasted cashews, pickled ramps, and goat cheese. The salad was nice, and everyone enjoyed it. The spinach should have been torn though, and again the portion was a bit big for a salad.
For our entrée that evening, I served a wonderful medium rare salmon filet with an herb hollandaise. It was served atop a bed of French Puy lentils stewed with pearl onions and bacon lardons. As something of an afterthought, I took the greens from the gold beets and what was left of the spinach and braised them as a vegetable side. They turned out nice, and I was glad to utilize some things I hadn’t initially planned on. I garnished the salmon with a single leaf of fried parsley. The lentils paired really nicely with the fish, keeping the dish nice and light.
Our dessert that evening was a lavender crème Brulee. The small torch I had bought wasn’t great at melting the sugar, but the oven’s broiler served that purpose just fine, and the crunchy caramel crust was a lovely golden brown. The sweet and floral custard was nice and rich, and the lavender was kept light so as not to give it a soapy flavor.
Last year around Christmas I got probably the coolest gift ever. I have a sister that had lost touch with the family almost two decades ago. When I lived in California I had resolved to try and find her, but had only two small details to go on, and the odds seemed against me. I searched on Facebook as well to no avail. But this past Christmas, Kerri found me! In March she came and visited, and we got to spend some time together.
Naturally in order to properly celebrate, we had to have a dinner party. I had received some pretty cool things from a tragic accident that occurred at the restaurant I work at.
For our meat and cheese board we had smoked ham hock rillettes, and smoked salmon mousse, along with some nice cheeses, and the accompaniments for each item. These always go fast and are big hits with the table.
For our salad that evening, I got a wide variety of citrus including grapefruit, blood orange, caracara orange, and a little navel orange which my lovely friend Bridgette was kind enough to supreme, or cut just the fruit wedge out with no pith. She has been to the last five dinner parties, and I will really miss seeing her so frequently. This lovely collection of citrus was tossed with a small amount of arugula, a little thinly shaved fennel and goat cheese. Instead of a dressing, I just used a bit of the mixed citrus juice, a light drizzle of a honey ginger vinegar that Kerri and I found at a cute little shop in South Haven on our little adventure out there, and just a little olive oil. It was then topped with coarse sea salt.
For our entree I retested my take on Canard l’Orange, and served a medium rare duck breast with an orange gastrique and garnished with pickled orange rind. For our sides, I retested the butternut squash gratin this time with a mandolin in my possession to get the nice thin cuts I wanted from the squash. It came out much better and indeed was a highlight of the meal. For our vegetable side, we had a roasted mushroom medley, sautéed with guanciale, and some herbs. The whole table was raving about the mushrooms. The only real issue with the dish, which I didn’t notice until seeing a picture of it, was that it was a little monochromatic.
I retested the cheese soufflé for dessert, and while it turned out better, I ultimately have decided to rework the dessert menu a bit and will be changing it to a chocolate and amaretto soufflé. I certainly have some retesting to do still, but otherwise only one dinner party remains. It’s very possible for that to be next month some time; as yet another housewarming seems likely.
As a side note to my readers, with my big move to Colorado being next week, I will unfortunately not be making a post next week. Not to worry though, we’ll continue to follow food the first week of September.
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