The dinner last night was lovely – 10 people, pleasant conversation, pacing good, food just right. I set up a drinks table, with glasses and ice and a few bowls of nuts and olives, and had people come in and make themselves a drink. And pay the man – I had Mark hosting and serving, and he’s so good at that. While they were milling we got the first course – squash gallette and salad – onto the table, and then invited them to sit. After the mains, I put out the dessert on the drinks table – that I had cleared – so they’d get a chance to get up and stretch – and we cleared the main table and put out the cheese boards.
The first course was something I’d been wanting to try – making one of my favorite pizza toppings – caramelized onion, roasted squash cubes, and goat cheese – into individual galettes, with the dough wrapped around. I was afraid that I’d let the dough rise too much, so that the crust-to-filling ratio was off. But no big hunks of crust came back on anyone’s plates – in fact, as Mark said, all the diners were members of the clean plate club. And as Terese says, you could put caramelized onions on cardboard and it would taste good – and that’s not counting the squash and cheese. I served it with a salad with a reduced-cider vinaigrette, and toasted hazelnuts and dried cherries.
I made baguettes, and put out plates with roasted garlic, Parmesan cheese and olive oil for dunking the bread.
The mains was a Lidia Bastianich recipe – everyone’s favorite Italian mama. Boneless chicken breasts, wrapped in prosciutto, dredged in flour (I used a gluten free baking blend) and sautéed in butter, then cooked in a white wine wine and tomato sauce. You were supposed to do it all in a skillet; I did the sautéeing and made the sauce in the skillet, then transferred everything to baking dishes to finish. Lidia said after you wrap the chicken to whack it with the back of your knife to make the prosciutto stick – and it works – loved that, and the smell of chicken and prosciutto frying in butter. Lidia also says she usually doesn’t prescribe side dishes, but with this chicken, a lentil pilaf is delicious – it was lentils cookedg in water with bay leaf, onions, carrot and celery, just till tender, then drained, and heated with chicken broth and olive oil in a skillet to serve (I used my good veggie broth) and you add a few large handfuls of shredded spinach to steam on top. A forkful with the chicken, the sauce, the prosciutto, and the lentils, was perfect. For the vegetarian version, I dredged tofu steaks in flour then sautéed them in butter and cooked them in the same white wine tomato sauce. I couldn’t make myself put cheese on tofu, but there was Parmesan on the table. I’m having the leftovers for lunch one day this week.
Salted caramel tart for dessert – one with a gluten free crust. The crust’s not really the point, anyways, it’s the caramel and chocolate – and it’s the type of shortbread crust that you roll, but it falls apart and you pat it back into the pan, anyways. I think the regular flour version was a little smoother – less grainy – and maybe a touch better tasting – but only a touch.
On the cheese boards, I had Carr Valley Mobay and Hook’s Tilston Point for the blue, stinkier ones, and Widmer 4-year old cheddar and another Carr Valley Smoked Cheddar, and the Marieke Gouda with Fenugreek for the milder. With grapes and pomegranate and pear. I made Heidi’s roasted lemon chutney, but it was barely touched – I’ll be eating that for lunches this week too – on baguette slices with honey-ed goat cheese. Yum. It’s one of the few work luxuries that stuff like that gets to perfect room temp when I take it for lunch at my desk.
