Last fall, I decided to shut down the supper club. People are just not signing up, and my renters are interested in renting the whole house, which actually is a two-fold benefit: 1) I’ll be getting a little more money every month in rent, and 2) Getting the house to look more like a single family instead of a two-flat should make it both easier to sell, and get a higher price.
At the same time, I decided to start doing dinners/meals at the house where I live. Good things and bad things about that – no need to shlep food over to the other place, but it does mean inviting guests into my own home and mess and cat hair.
Anyways, the first one was the Sunday of Valentine’s weekend.
We ate:
A composed salad, with assorted roasted winter vegetables: carrots, beets, fennel, and a mix of parsnips, rutabaga, and turnip, arranged around a pile of spicey greens, with a mustard-y vinaigrette
Choice of seafood or spinach and cheese crêpes, served with:
A barley & rice pilaf with broccoli
Basket of homemade rolls; wheat knots with walnuts & raisons; sour cream-herb – served with fresh local butter
Linzer tart with whipped cream. Home made chocolate truffles on the side.
A little like our dinner at Osteria in Philadelphia, the star of the night was the salad.
The crepes were good – one couple didn’t show, so I had a little more leftover than I would’ve liked. Only one spinach crepe was left, but I actually chucked not only the extra seafood filling, but 4 already rolled up crepes – and we’ll be having leftover crepes (and rice pilaf) for dinner one night this week, too.
I wondered why the linzer tart crust seemed so dry – and finally realized on Monday night that I had doubled everything but the butter. I used my own recipe for linzer tart crust, that I think I first developed for my brother’s tiered wedding tart. It’s the continuing saga of Dorie’s – a little too hazelnutty, almost bitter, but can be baked as sables or thumbprints – vs. Rose’s – delicious, but too buttery to bake as cookies. Next cookie season I am using my own recipe for the linzer thumbprints!
Anyways, (again) not having to shlep meant for a more relaxed day – and I had help from both Mark and Toni setting up and setting the tables. So I had time to take a shower, and think a few minutes about what to wear. And we all sat and ate with the guests, and took part in the dinner table conversation – that ranged over a lot of topics, including analog and digital in movies and music. I confessed that I can’t hear the difference between vinyl and CD. I also don’t get the concept that you must see a particular moving image on film, rather than digital, especially the really high quality digital they use in movie theaters now, where the movie comes on a hard drive, instead of in a film can. And, importantly – as Mark pointed out – the hard drive goes into and is projected using a system (like Chrystie) with really good lenses. And I can see the difference between the big screen and all the little screens we watch stuff on nowadays – TVs, laptops, computer monitors, iPhones, tablets…. And I also think there’s a difference between watching alone or with your family in your house, and watching as part of an audience.
So by having the dinner at my own house, I got to play the hostess role, as well as cook and serving staff. Nice.
