"Bob Terwilliger" > wrote in message
...
> My birthday dinner had some hits and some misses.
>
> First Course: Salmon cured with mint, cucumber, and dill on sushi rice.
> The salmon had been cured too long. As a result, it was too salty and too
> firm. The tastes of the cucumber and vodka were lost, and the mint was
> just barely discernible. Lesson learned: Remove salmon from the cure much
> earlier, and use a *lot* more cucumber and mint.
>
> Second Course: Tempura squash blossoms. These were nice, but a bit plain.
> Lin was also a bit worried about the fat content. I think I could have
> come up with something more elaborate with more planning, but this
> ingredient was kind of sprung on me. Initially, I had planned to make a
> sunchoke-and-avocado salad, but no sunchokes could be found. This was a
> first for me; I hadn't realized that there *was* a sunchoke season,
> because every time I've looked for them in the past, my local Safeway had
> them on the shelves. We still have squash blossoms we haven't cooked; I
> think they'd be very good in quesadillas.
>
> Third Course: Smoked tomato soup with watercress and cheddar. I had
> planned to make cheddar powder using aged cheddar and tapioca
> maltodextrin. But it never powdered, for some reason, so I ended up with
> cheddar granules. Nevertheless, this was a very good course. Lin
> hickory-smoked the tomatoes, and the soup was beautifully flavored by the
> smoke, the cheese, and the watercress leaves which had been puréed with a
> tiny bit of extra-virgin olive oil. The soup was made by putting the
> smoked tomatoes through a food mill, then through a conical strainer,
> salting to taste, then adding the cheddar and the watercress purée on top.
>
> Fourth Course: Country-style ribs braised in foil with plums, habañeros,
> allspice, and salt. I donned gloves to remove the seeds and membranes from
> the chiles, and then left the chiles in fairly large chunks so they could
> be avoided if they were too spicy to eat. The combination was amazing: The
> pork was unctuous, the plums picked up a bit of the floral flavor and heat
> of the chiles, and the allspice blended it all together seamlessly.
> *Definitely* worth doing again.
>
> Fifth Course: Watermelon "pickled" with rice vinegar and shiso. Shiso
> turned out to be fairly hard to find. None of the herb farmers around here
> had it, so Lin had to buy it from a sushi restaurant we patronize
> regularly. This is a bit hard to explain, since I've gotten perilla (of
> which shiso is a specific variety) in my CSA boxes before. The watermelon
> pickle was intriguing: sweet, sour, and exotic-herbaceous. I can't say it
> wowed me with its flavor, but there wasn't anything bad about it, and it
> was very interesting. I'm glad I tried it, but I probably won't do that
> again.
>
> Sixth Course: Liquefied popcorn with honey-pepper foam. This was intended
> as a kind of drifting-toward-dessert course. It's made by popping popcorn,
> then cooking the popcorn with butter, sugar, salt, and water. That results
> in a kind of popcorn mush. The mush gets blended and then put through a
> fine strainer. So far, the recipe is from _Alinea_, the cookbook from the
> restaurant of that name. But that recipe goes on to make a foam from
> caramel and soy lecithin. Instead of doing that, I infused honey with
> black pepper, then made a foam from the strained honey, egg whites, water,
> and lemon juice. The foamer had to be chilled for six hours before the
> foam was ready to dispense. To serve, the room-temperature popcorn stuff
> was put into little porcelain sake bowls and the foam was dispensed on
> top. Yowza! This was another hit. We had a bunch of the foam and the corn
> stuff left over, so I consolidated them and I am currently freezing the
> mixture in my ice cream machine.
>
> Seventh Course: Apricot "anti-lava" bar and cinnamon hot chocolate. The
> "anti-lava" bar was made by cooking dried apricots and apricot nectar
> together until the apricots were soft. That mixture was blended and put
> into little containers (two tablespoons? somewhere around that size), then
> put into the freezer until frozen on the outside but still liquid inside.
> The cinnamon hot chocolate was made by melting milk chocolate in hot milk,
> then sprinkling with cinnamon. The idea was to put a spoonful of the
> ice-cold apricot stuff into your mouth, then take a sip of the hot
> chocolate. This was a FANTASTIC way to end the meal; the flavor
> combination was so astoundingly yummy I could have cartwheeled for joy.
>
> The meal was accompanied by a chilled Riesling from Navarro Vineyards and
> by ginger-peach iced tea. By the time we thought about taking pictures, we
> were already into the ribs, so we just blew it off.
>
> All-in-all, it was an enjoyable and memorable meal!
>
> Bob, reeling from the Riesling
>
>

I see no meal. All I see is keyboard pounding yourself on your back... you
know what they say, self priase is no recommendation... show us, LIAR!