The Walkers - What an Epiphany!

You may recall that we were supposed to have the Walkers over on the 9th, but had to postpone, then they postponed, and here we are. The idea was to celebrate Epiphany, when the Wise Men arrived to give Baby Jesus a bouncy chair and a couple pacifiers. Really, it was an excuse to get together and I thought I might make King's Day bread for a traditional touch ... but didn't.

The Walkers are great fun. We always enjoy good conversation about child rearing, politics and religion. Matthew is their little one, and he is a whirlwind! He is so jazzed about everything and has energy that won't quit. Sam likes him quite a lot, and is always at his most enthusiastic in Matthew's presence.

I just realized that I forgot to photograph the kids' food! Sam gobbled up EB's fine meal of pesto pasta and fake chicken nuggets. The day before, he also guzzled down EB's snacks when the mommies and boys met at the zoo. Well, they were Matthew's snacks, prepared by EB. I guess whatever one's own Mommy does not make is more appetizing. Hm.

The adult menu was different. I love planning menus. I relish the time I get to spend with my cookbooks thinking of good combinations, assembling the shopping list, and making the timeline for the preparation. I get better with my timeline each dinner party. I think I was only 10 minutes late last night. Although that was after I called the Walkers to let them know that my original 5:30 dinner time needed to get pushed back to 6. The ribs had two steps, and I went to the store late, so got them in the oven late ... you get the picture. The menu: EB's fantastic and warm artichoke-spinach-camembert spread as an appetizer, then wilted kale salad, port-braised cipollini, mashed potatoes, and port-braised beef short ribs. For dessert, drunken bananas with vanilla ice cream (that Dave picked up for $1.75.) and almonds.

The onions were a disaster. Okay, that's too strong. They were an utter disappointment. Classic Jen move on this one, too. I have a port-brasied onion recipe that is really good, calling for pearl onions instead of cipollini. Is that the recipe I used? Goodness no, I went with a different one out of my new-fangled cookbook ... the cookbook that already steered me wrong on aioli. Surprise, surprise, they sucked. I think they need a caramelized flavor, and to cook longer, and the sauce needs a thickener because it was not getting thicker in the boiling down process. And, see that fat layer there? That's chicken broth and I think it thinned the port taste too much and was an ill-advised addition to the braising liquid. I didn't even finish my one onion. Oh, sorry, they're not actual onions. They are the bulbs of the grape hyacinth.

The kale salad, on the other hand, was delicious. This is a variation on a salad Josh and I have frequently. I usually make it with spinach, but I was feeling a kale vibe and went with it. You wilt the kale in boiling water for a couple of minutes, then drain. Saute (over barely med-high heat) four garlic cloves, sliced, with 1/2 cup golden raisins, 1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes and 2 T extra virgin olive oil, until golden. Then you add your kale and turn it in the oil et. al. until it's coated, warm, and a little more wilted. Be careful not to let the garlic burn. Off the heat add 2 tsp. each sherry vinegar and extra-virgin olive oil, and sprinkle 1/4 cup of slivered toasted almonds. Delicious every time. And I know the raisins may be a bit off-putting, but they make the salad, trust me. And they have to be golden.

I didn't photograph the mashed potatoes. We all know what they look like and I only made them to sop up the beef ribs' gravy. Mashed potatoes are the furniture of the food world: totally necessary in a room, but somewhat forgettable.

I did, however, photograph the roasting pan after the rendering process. I mentioned the two steps for the short ribs, and this was the first one. 1.5 hours at 375 to melt fat and brown meat.

This would be the browned meat. Did you know that, with meat, it is not "caramelization"? When you brown meat, you are conducting (setting in motion?) the Maillard reaction. "Caramelizing" is for food with a high concentration of carbohydrates and, therefore, sugars.

So after you brown the meat, you heat up a Dutch oven (Le Creuset), caramelize your aromatics, toss in all the liquids, throw the ribs back in, and put the whole thing in the oven for two hours. The result: Nothing short of Divine. I strained the sauce so that it was nice and smooth. The key ingredient to thicken? Minute tapioca! It worked swimmingly.

Finally, the Drunken Bananas. This dish was not a jewel in my prodigious dessert crown, but it was good. I wanted the sauce to be thicker. Perhaps a little tapioca in there would do the trick while in the oven. And next time I would like to try plantains, as the recipe calls for.

Come to think of it, Jacques Pepin has a crepes plus bananas foster recipe that I will probably try first. Since I have an entire bottle of rum, I might as well use it for something delicious. I certainly won't be drinking it. Yuck.

So the difference between PCD dinners and dinners now would be that the men don't sit at the table with glasses of whiskey while the ladies gab after the meal. Now we gauge how tired the kids are, and sign off by 8:30pm. It's a different kind of fun.

The First Dinner Party of 2010

The Morgans came over for dinner tonight. We adore the Morgans for many reasons. One is that they always talk about interesting things. We have conversations - which is sometimes hard to have with kids around, definitely hard to have when both parties involved in the meal have kids. You know what I mean - you start into a story, or just some deep, topical discussion and BAM! somebody grabs, somebody cries, somebody does something and you need to respond and the conversation gets put on hold only to be forgotten. Sometimes you just try to talk through whatever the incident is. You think, "She can totally listen and respond while wrestling with her toddler, so I will keep talking." But it never really works out, you stop talking, and no one says, "Go on. I can do both at once." The get-together is nice, BUT you have this itchy sensation that only comes when you can never finish a thought or truly ride a conversation to its natural end or *gasp* a tangent. We only had to deal with Sam tonight, so we could actually talk like adults. Nice.

I did the shopping this morning for the dinner. I went to Uwajimaya, which, for the uninitiated, is an Asian grocery store here in Seattle. I believe it started as a Japanese-Hawaiian focused place and now has Indonesian, Korean, Chinese, whatever. You want pig uterus? They have that. Spam? No problem. Any obscure cut of beef - check. I love Uwajimaya. They have the best produce, especially if you are looking for Asian stuff. And they are so serious about their protein that there are separate counters for fish and meat. I went to the fish counter today to get my Arctic char - which they didn't have. I asked the fishmonger what I could put into a salt bake instead and he said, "That's all our whole fish over there." Oh, I thought. So, no suggestions on the salt bake, got it. I made a game time decision for four trout - one per person! That is: over one pound of fish flesh per person. Too much? Yes. I will upload pictures.

The menu:
Appetizer - white bean spread with arugula and red onions on bruschetta. Delicious. From the Test Kitchen cookbook.
Salad course - winter salad with radicchio, endive, and watercress, topped with candied pecans and walnuts and gorgonzola, and homemade vinaigrette, of course. Also delicious and from my new cookbook, "Earth to Table."
Main course - salt baked trout, roasted root vegetables, bulgar-spaghetti with carmelized onions. Trout was awesome; it didn't even need the homemade herb aioli. It gets stuffed with herbs and lemon and that definitely imparted flavor, while the salt kept the flesh moist. The veggies were good, but I think I will do them at a higher temp next time because I like lots of carmelization, and there wasn't much. The bulgar was okay - I should have used chicken stock or water because the vegetable stock was not very good.
Dessert - almond cake with two sorbets. This is a great low-cal cake - no butter and no flour. All the lift comes from whipping egg whites and the body is the almond meal.

I'll have photos. We discovered that we have to reboot the computer in order to get the blog finder to register new photos. So I'll shut down tonight and add photos tomorrow.

I also need to talk about homemade aioli. I have LOTS to say about that.