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End of Summer Dinner

Saturday night we had a passel of in-laws over for dinner, which included my parents-in-law, Uncle Gary the (as of yet uncertified) organic farmer from nearby Greenland, and Steve & Debbie from Landaff. Pictures were taken at each course -- hopefully we'll get some posted here.

We started with hors d'oeuvres of Cheese and Crackers, Roasted Red Pepper Hummus and Bagel Chips and Roasted Garlic Baguette with Parmesan dipping sauce. For cocktail selections we sampled a couple from the newest addition to my library, The Art of the Bar: Peaches and Herb (with Uncle Gary's homegrown peaches and my homegrown sage) and Venetian (recommended for Campari enthusiasts). We also made our new favorite, the Sapphire Savoy and an old favorite, the Moscow Mule.

Nights are getting cooler, and my 6 tomato plants are slowing down their production, so I figured this would be the last hurrah for a summer heirloom tomato salad. We wanted to go out with a bang, so my father-in-law came up with the concept of a tomato salad served inside a large hollowed tomato, on a bed of arugala. I couldn't stand to see the tomato guts go to waste, so I strained them and used the tomato water as the base for a vinaigrette, along with some champagne vinegar and blood orange olive oil, et voila: Ten Tomato Salad with Arugala, Mozarella, Filipino sea salt and Tomato-Blood Orange Vinaigrette. The ten heirloom varieties were: Brandywine, German Striped, Green Zebra (my own), Yellow Peach, Yellow something-else, Black Nyagous (my own), Black cherry, Sun gold cherry (my own), Yellow Pear (my own) and Pink Grape (my own). The salt was something we picked up last November in San Francisco at the Ferry Building. It has a big crystal that looks like it might be uncomfortable to eat, but they're hollow and so they crumble in your mouth. (It was included mostly because Gary was making fun of the fact that I had more than one salt.)

Uncle Gary has an abundance of yellow squash, and I just happened to have a 16oz bag of coriander seeds purchased a few weeks ago at Atlantic Spice (if anyone needs some coriander let me know), and so: Chilled Yellow Squash and Leek Soup with Coriander and Lemon Creme Fraiche. This was pretty good, although there is one difficulty with the recipe: Running the soup through a blender does not break the coriander seeds down into comfortable bits for eating. I ended up straining it and re-blending several times, and finally just tossed out what was left. I will probably just grind them up prior to cooking next time.

Next up, a little palate cleanser. Uncle Gary also has an abundance of white peaches from a tree in his front yard. The only white peaches I had ever had were from the supermarket and they were pretty bland -- it's amazing how much better Gary's were. So, I put the ice cream machine to good use and made up a White Peach-Lemon Verbena Sorbet which turned out great and I will probably never be able to recreate. The Lemon Verbena was my own, and I've been baking it into all sorts of things this summer.

On to the main course. The Inidividual Beef Wellingtons with Duxelles, Gorganzola and Madeira demiglace were cooked gray throughout -- I'm lucky no one called the SPCA on me. Thankfully the puff pastry crust, mushrooms, gorganzola and demigalce made them edible. I know where I made my mistake -- in the future I will sear only the top of the filets before wrapping them. In addition we had Red Apple Inn Corn Pudding (always a favorite, first time this summer), Roasted Golden Beets and Apricot-Glazed Roasted Asparagus. For wine we had Chocolain Carmenere Reserve 2004 (Chile), Susana Balbo Crios Malbec 2005 (Argentina), both purchased from a nice wine shop in Provincetown on a recent visit to the Cape.

And finally, dessert. There was much debate on the menu, but creme brulee seemed a clear favorite and I hadn't made it in a long while. My torch had been out of commission, but my father-in-law figured that out, so I made Apricot-Almond Creme Brulee, which is essentially almond-flavored creme brulee with a little apricot jam on the bottom. I thought it was a little too firm -- owing to the fact that I misjudged its done-ness in the oven and overcooked it -- but better than the runny batches I've made in the past. I used Demerra sugar for the top, and it brulee'd up much better than anything I've tried before. Everyone seemed happy, and if they weren't we had some dessert wines to keep everyone otherwise occupied: Moscato d'Asti and Mondavi Botrytis. Ah yes, we also had Aunt Debbie sample some Chartreuse -- the "elixir of life" made by French monks beginning in 1605 from a secret recipe of 130 "alpine herbs" -- and she is the first person to whom we've served it who claimed to enjoy it!