Penny’s egg was small–closer to a quail egg than a chicken’s egg in size–but I can honestly say it was one of the best eggs I’ve ever had. The yolk was almost orange when we cracked it open. We fried it butter and ate it as an appetizer before dinner last night.
Now I will go out and see if we have another egg yet!
Update: We did!
I’m glad to see it’s okay to use your fingers and I hate when people bite sushi in half. On the other hand, I am guilty of putting the wasabi in the soy sauce. But I like doing that, so nanner nanner boo boo.
From The World’s Best Ever via Swiss Miss.
Mustard in a vineyard
This weekend, Kyle and I took some friends wine tasting in Healdsburg. We didn’t realize that there was this was the barrel tasting weekend, which means that a bunch of people had paid advanced tickets to go around to the wineries and taste the half-finished wine from the barrels. At first that seemed like it was going to make wine tasting more difficult and crowded. And while that was kind of true, it also meant that we got to unofficially hone in on the event and try some wine from the barrels for the first time.
Strangers have a picnic at Foppiano Vineyards
Tasting half-finished wine is interesting–it is basically sweeter than it tastes after it is aged in the barrel. Some of it had a flavor that I associate with bad wine, that kind of bruised fruit, unfinished flavor you get in some bottles of $2 red wine. Other wine from the barrel didn’t taste half bad, although the nose (smell of the wine) was kind of funky. Anyway, it was educational in that it showed me what the barrel does to the flavor, but I honestly don’t know how anyone can tell from barrel tasting whether wine is going to be good or not. I guess that’s a level of knowledge I don’t have.
Diane Wilson, winemaker at the awesome Wilson Winery, siphons wine out of a barrel for people to taste.
We went to three places, Foppiano, Wilson, and Arista Winery. I was pleasantly surprised by Arista, which had lovely grounds and a friendly staff. They were also the only place that wasn’t doing the barrel tasting, so it was kind of a relief to get away from the drunken crowds. We spent quite awhile at a picnic bench at Arista, enjoying the pre-storm light and talking. It was a fun day.
Chairs at Arista. Inviting, no?
I got around to using the sausage attachment for my KitchenAid Mixer this weekend and made my own sausage. It was astoundingly easy. All you do is cut up the meat, add herbs, and run it through the attachment. I didn’t bother with casing since nine times out of ten I cut it off. I ended up with a mild Italian sausage that tasted awesome on this pizza:
A couple of weeks ago, Marcia and I were lamenting the lack of molecular gastronomy restaurants in San Francisco. What is molecular gastronomy, you ask? It is a branch of cooking where chefs use physical and chemical processes of cooking to create different, creative dishes. For example, they might use sodium alginate and peach juice to create faux caviar, which they would serve on top of oysters. Or they might print a menu out on edible “paper” that you are expected to eat. Or they might use liquid nitrogen to make ice cream. (Here is an article on the subject if you want to know more.) While there are only a few restaurants in the world that specialize in this cuisine, somehow it seemed like one them should be near me. This doesn’t seem to be the case, however.
I don’t have access to liquid nitrogen or edible paper, but I was interested enough in this to experiment with some of the easier-to-understand concepts. Therefore, the Molecular Gastronomy Dinner Party was born. We invited 10 friends to my house and treated them to a multi-course meal with molecular gastronomy-like twists. We served the meal tapas, or small plates, style.
It sounds very complicated but it really was just us having fun. At some point, Marcia looked up at me and said, “We are playing restaurant!” And that is what it was. We were pretending to have a restaurant and all our friends were the guests.
Marcia in my kitchen
Everyone who came helped out by making some food, loaning us their silverware or glasses, or by cleaning up. Sous-chefs! Here is how the party went:
Appetizers:
Reversed Martini. Kyle thought this one up. Since vermouth is a traditional aperitif for fancy dinners, we had vermouth aperitifs with olives touched (barely!) with gin. It was a twist on the American martini, which is gin with a touch of vermouth and a side of olives.
Deconstructed Pesto, which Justin and Stephanie made for the party.
Dinner Part I:
Drink: Champagne Cocktails with Creme de Casis “Bubbles,” which you can read about here and here. With the champagne, we toasted everyone’s accomplishments since everyone I know seems to be getting promotions or moving or making other life changes. We also had non-alcoholic ice tea.
Zucchini “Spaghetti.” Raw zucchini cut to look like spaghetti, tossed with olive oil, garlic, parmesan, pepper, basil, and fresh tomatoes. Everything came from the garden.
Nasturtium Flower, Grapefruit, Spinach, and Roasted Beet Salad.
Vichyssoise. A vegetarian soup (also from the garden) served in shot glasses. Here is Leona drinking it.
Salmon with White Chocolate Wasabi Sauce and Faux Caviar. The caviar are tapioca pearls that I soaked in soy sauce and vinegar and then rinsed in oil. This dish surprised me. The flavors were pretty good. (Did I mention that I hadn’t made any of these dishes before?)
Jalapeno Fire and Ice. We have a bunch of jalapeños from the garden, so we prepared them two ways: One, I made a spicy salsa and served it with veggie chips. Two, I made a jalapeño sorbet, which we served in frozen limes.
Dinner Part II:
Drink: Champagne Bellini with Peach Foam. Marcia got this cool contraption that lets you make foam using a pressure valve of some sort. I don’t know how it works, but it’s neat. We made the foam by mixing egg whites, peach syrup, and fresh peach juice together and poured it on champagne.
Veggie Bruschetta made by Krista
Cuban Cigars that Marcia made. The ingredients of a Cuban sandwich wrapped in phylo dough to look like a cigar.
Duck with Pear “Onions.” This was the only dish I didn’t come out as well as I would have liked. I had this plan to cut pears to look like onions and stack it on a duck breast. It didn’t work out, so I just ended up sautéing a duck in pear/onion sauce and serving it. It tasted fine.
Cheese Plate arranged by Troy
Fig from the cheese plate
After all this, we hung out and eventually had dessert: Strudel that Avi made and “Coffee and Cream,” Italian coffee ice served in coffee cups and topped with whip cream.
Then we played Rock Band.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking this dinner party sounds insane and you would never put yourself through something that elaborate. I confess that the next morning I woke up and thought, why did I just have a giant dinner party with all that weird food? I guess sometimes I do random, complicated things and drag my friends along with me. However! I the party was a big success and very fun. And I am so very grateful to Troy for helping with the dishes:
I am very into molecular mixology and molecular gastronomy right now. I don’t know why, since I don’t have regular gastronomy/mixology down, but whatever. Anyway, Marcia and I made these awesome champagne cocktail things with creme de casis “bubbles” last weekend. You can read more and try the recipe on Marcia’s blog.
Since there’s very little information on the web about these kinds of things, we had to semi-guess how to make them. I’m proud of myself because I’m pretty sure my doctored recipe is better than the original. Now I need to figure out how to make whatever this is.
I have been trying to do more activities not related to gardening, fixing the house, and eating food. I feel like all I’ve done the last few months is those three things. Oh, and sitting in front of a computer typing, of course.
So anyway, I plan to do more things this summer. Here is a list I made of upcoming activities:
A couple of weekends ago, I got with the summer program and went wine tasting with Kyle, Marcia, and Robin. Since Robin works at a winery, he picked the places for us to visit, and as usual, they did not disappoint. We went to: Deloach Vineyards, Balletto Vineyards, Hartford Family Winery, and Dutton Estate Winery.
Hartford Family Winery is a particularly beautiful winery
Inside of a winery with Marcia, me, and Kyle reflected in the mirror
Marcia being sassy while Robin looks on
Wine tasting is serious business involving pens and note taking.
Afterwards we came back to our house and grilled steaks (there always has to be food somewhere) and watched a movie. All and all, a good day.
Sorry I haven’t blogged. I can’t blog when there’s a heatwave. I can’t do anything during a heatwave except hide from the sun and moan about being hot.
But I have been meaning to tell you about our mushroom farm. We bought it at Maker Faire a couple of weeks ago. It looks like a molding loaf of bread in a plastic bag, but it is actually sawdust and rice bran that has been cured of bacteria and infused with water and mushroom culture.
We bought the organic Shiitake Mushroom farm for $19.98. The guy who sold it to us said that they guarantee one pound of mushrooms from the farm. I was a little doubtful, because $20 for one pound of mushrooms is pretty high. However, that is the minimum amount that they guarantee, and the farm is supposed to go through 3-5 cycles, and besides, it’s just cool to watch.
We took it home and put it on our kitchen counter. Within two days, lumps began to rise out of the farm. Within three days, something that looked like mushrooms began to emerge:
Within a week, we had huge Shiitake mushrooms coming out of the bag. We harvested 15 in all, over a pound of mushrooms, and we have 2-4 more cycles on the farm to go.
Even better, the mushrooms were fresh, tender, and clean in a way I have never had before. I guess like all other food, they are best when fresh. We had them in a mushroom ragu over pasta and then a mushroom strudel wrapped in phyllo dough.
Now the mushroom farm is supposed to rest for a couple of weeks before we get our next crop. Hurrah! If I get as many as I did in just the first cycle on the remaining cycles, I will definitely buy this thing again.
Last night I went out to Cajun food with Justin, Marcia, Stephanie, and Kyle. It was a lot of fun. I had never had crawfish before. Tiny lobsters! I enjoy food that takes a lot of work to eat. Justin has some pictures on his blog.
Crawfish from last night’s dinner. Photo taken by Justin Watt directly before consuming said crawfish.
Make lemon pancakes with homemade lemon curd.
This weekend I discovered that lemon curd goes really well on pancakes. It kicks syrup’s ass. It really does. Lemon curd is the new jam, yo.
Description of photo: Three pancakes, dab of lemon curd, pat of butter.
