"Omelet" > wrote in message
news
> 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!
>
>
But none of it's true. Poor hard working Om owns a camera and posts pics of
some fine vittles... I would never doubt any meal Om claims to have made.
Do you really believe that gum flapping big mouth baboon ass faced
prevaricator can't scrape up like a hundred bucks for a digicam... of course
not... he's obviously unemployed (unemployable) and sponges off the schmoo's
food stamps... if not for the schmoo twilly wouldn't have TP and would have
to wipe his butt with his bare hand, like an arab. LOL