A tasteful potluck dinner

The cute table

I haven't been to a potluck in...well, ever. But we were invited to one for Valentine's. And it was pretty great, I must say. Four couples all food loving and wine lusting. Francoise, our hostess is French. She supplied the meats (beef roast and duck confit with the most delicious tomato and orange peel sauce) for our main course. Tim, her husband, is a wine connoisseur in every sense of the term, and has the cellar in his basement to prove it. He supplied us with three Burgundies (specifically Volnay-Santenot) from the same plot of land/grape grower, but the difference was the wine makers. And they (the differences) were fairly obvious. All very good.

Duck confit, beef roast, lentil salad and scalloped potatoes



Decanters previously full of Burgandies (sorry forgot to take a picture until after he poured).

John #1 and Allison made scalloped potatoes and a delicious lentil salad. John #2 and Kate made an amazing dark chocolate fleur de sel cake with creme anglaise sauce and brought a nice Framboise liqueur (all of which I forgot to take a picture, dammit). But we also had a nice cheese course and this Brandy that basically set my nose hairs on fire. It's a man's drink...kind of like a French version of Grappa.

And we contributed Champagne and this:

Salmon plate

They said "Bring finger food for the appetizer." We didn't know what the audience would be like, but we knew we wouldn't be bringing meatballs or anything with cream cheese. Because, well, who eats that? We don't. So we went to Whole Foods yesterday (as I mentioned in my last post) and picked up all the goodies for our salmon plate. Though not an exceptionally original idea, it's easy and everyone loved it. We served it with yogurt dill sauce. By the way, it's all in the plating. Shallots (instead of red onion), cornishons, capers, chopped boiled egg, dill sprigs, mini rye bread and lemon slices.

[If you dare use cream cheese with this plate, get out of here. I detest cream cheese as much as I detest grilled salmon and chicken. It's complicated.... I have a feeling this year is going to be a good one, since I'm returning with such a positive attitude.]

Everything at this potluck was extremely simple, but sooooo well conceived and it went surprisingly well. Great food, wine and conversation. How can you ask for more? Speaking of conversation, here's Tim and Francoise's parrot, Verdi:

Verdi, fixing to bite me.

Bye-bye.

Thought of the Day: Food Associations

They say that the olfactory sense (of smell) is the most powerful conjurer of memory. For me, in a similar way, food evokes wonderfully poignant associations.

1. mushrooms = cool autumnal woods and morning dew on blades of grass
2. brioche = cherubic babies and mother’s milk
3. steamed crabs = warm summer days and flip flops
4. soft ripened cheese = provincial village-towns and lambs in green fields
5. chicken = white cars and Basics cigarettes
6. Kraft products = screaming children and coupons
7. cream cheese = theme parties and PBR
8. casseroles = your grandmother’s green shag carpet
9. iceberg lettuce = e-coli and drive-throughs
10. salmon = Ruby Tuesday’s and the new “town center” in your ex-urb.

What are your food associations?

Nip Night: Soba Noodle Salad and Sesame Grilled Salmon

I don't like Japanese food, save for sushi and tempura. Otherewise, it can be a scary combo of bland and vomitous. But tonight, I decided to try a milquetoast version of a Japanese-inspired menu, including soba (buckwheat) noodle salad and sesame grilled terryaki salmon. First of all, as you may know, I think salmon is JV and I kind of have a like-hate relationship with it. But for a Tuesday night dinner, doctored up, it can be pretty fine. What made this dinner special was the layering of fresh ingredients. Instead of using store-bought, thick, gooey, corn-syrup terryaki, I combined a little brown sugar, ginger, garlic, and light soy. For the Soba noodles, similarly, I used light soy, sesame oil, garlic, and lime zest with ribbons of fresh herbs including (not so Japanese, but fragrant) basil , cilantro, and mint. There was a lot of chopping, including julienn-ing sweet red bell pepper and shredding of other vegetables. But the point is, despite all this chopping and assembling, the meal was quite simply fish and noodles. It came off well due in large part to the dressing and marinade. If you want an interesting flight of foreign fancy without (unlike the title of this entry) offending your mate/partner/spouse/dinner companion, try this--a far cry from fish sticks and Kraft mac and cheese:

Soba Noodle Salad (you can half this recipe, it serves 6):

4 ounces soba noodles, or whole-wheat spaghetti

1 large shallot, very thinly sliced

1 1/2 cups shredded carrot 1 red pepper, julienne

1/3 cup shredded fresh basil leaves

1/3 cup shredded fresh mint leaves

1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro leaves

Dressing:

1/4 cup rice vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon walnut oil (or canola oil)

1/2 teaspoon sesame oil

1 teaspoon finely minced garlic

1/2 teaspoon chili flakes
1/2 teaspoon lime zest

1 teaspoon lime juice

1/2 teaspoon fish sauce, or 1 teaspoon low-sodium soy sauce

Salt

6 large Bibb lettuce leaves

Boil noodles according to package directions. Drain and cool. In a medium to large bowl, combine noodles, shallot, carrot, pepper, basil, mint, and cilantro. Combine all dressing ingredients, season with salt to taste, add to noodle mixture, and toss lightly.
Snap off Bibb lettuce leaves and wash and dry. To serve, scoop spoonfuls of noodle salad into the lettuce leaves.

Sesame Terryaki Salmon:

1/4 cup low-sodium soy sauce

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons dry sherry

2 tablespoons rice vinegar

2 garlic cloves, crushed with a garlic press or minced

1 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger

1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes

2 4-oz Salmon filet

2 teaspoons sesame seeds

Combine the soy sauce, sugar, sherry, vinegar, garlic, ginger and red pepper flakes and stir until the sugar dissolves. Transfer to a resealable plastic bag and add the salmon. Seal the bag and marinate the salmon in the refrigerator, turning once, for 1 hour. The salmon can be marinated for up to 4 hours.

Heat the broiler to high. Arrange the salmon on a broiler pan skin side down and broil until brown and crispy, 4 to 6 minutes. Flip the salmon and broil until almost cooked through, about 4 minutes longer. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and cook until the seeds turn golden brown or another minute longer.

*A light-bodied red, such as a pinot noir goes well with this meal. Try Abiouness from Carneros.

Lox Three Ways

I paid way too much for a package of salmon lox the other day. To my shock, half of my $30 grocery bill was the salmon. Most of you know that I think salmon is prolitereate for dinners out, but lox is a different story. (For the uninitiated, lox is smoked salmon fillet that has been cured and then often cold-smoked. The cold smoking does not cook the fish, resulting in its characteristic smooth texture, similar to the raw product.)

I think I really need to get my money's worth. So instead of just putting it in my sandwich (with a slathering of creamed horseradish sauce, bunch of sprouts, and handful of greens on cracked wheat sour dough), I will put the fish to use in real recipes. Here are three good ones:

Smoked Salmon and Potato Galette

Smoked Salmon Frittata

Smoked Salmon and Caviar "Pizza"

Salmon is JV

I won't eat salmon as a main course. It's jv. And by jv, I mean second rate, uninteresting, amateurish. For some reason about eight or ten years ago, a lot of people got turned on to salmon. And perhaps the massification, popularization, and suburbanization of the fish has cheapened its appeal for me. If it's on the menu at Ruby Tuesday or Applebee's, I'm not ordering it up at any of my DC haunts. Same goes for chicken. I hate chicken. What do these two things have in common? Ubiquity and flavorlessness...they've gone the way of Merlot...and velour sweat suits.