In article >,
"Bob Terwilliger" > wrote:

> 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.

Sorry. I can see Salmon with cucumber, but with mint? What does it add?

>
> 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.

Squash blossoms were always served stuffed, then fried here. They are
fun that way. :-)

>
> 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.

That sounds wonderful. :-)
I'm fixin' to go ahead and purchase a food mill. I can't find moms
Chinoise. :-( I think sis' absconded with it and if so, that's ok...
I'm hoping that BB&B has one, along with some muslin bags for making
jelly.

>
> 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.

Pork or beef? Sounds like a winner either way.
>
> 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

Good review!
--
Peace! Om

"Human nature seems to be to control other people until they put their foot down."
--Steve Rothstein


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