Saturday, January 10, 2009

dinner with tom and doug

we started with arancini made from a red wine risotto with truffles, troy's pickled green tomatoes, and a couple pates: duck liver and pheasant with persimmon. we drank st. germain martinis. i added sparkling water to mine.

then we had a butter lettuce salad with shaved fennel and cara cara oranges with an apricot tarragon vinaigrette.

by the time we got to the beef en daube with buttered fresh pasta, i'd lost the ability to focus my camera. maddie thinks the head of the table is hers. tom and doug brought a couple stunning wines: a brick house gamay noir and an ayers pinot noir which lead into dessert nicely.

but i regained my ability to focus on the dirty dishes. i got us steak knives that day at an estate sale right across the street. i scored.

for dessert we had a cheese plate with camembert, a smokey blue from rogue creamery, an aged fontina from willamette valley creamery and a buddah hand citrus marmalade troy made, with chocolate fleur de sel cookies.




4 comments:

tom said...

A night to remember.

Tara said...

Oh my god - it sounds like bliss from start to finish (I mean except the dishes part - but nice job with the steak knives! Even if you have lousy neighbors across the street - at least you have good estate sales across the street!)

briana linden said...

what are you talking about, i love my neighbors! they totally protect us from any lingering gang activity, tell us when we left our lights on in the car, and generally make us feel well watched all the time.
and the dinner was fab, too. such great dinner guests, the dishes weren't even bad-- now that we have a relationship-saver. I mean, dishwasher.

Phaedra Elizabeth said...

i love that maddie almost makes the blog at the head of the table! i have been forwarding your link to my foodie new york friends trying to create you a following so you can become like the sartorialist of food . . . he just got a book deal, you will too!