The Omnivorous Fish

Well, the seal is broken. I had people, real people, over for dinner for the first time in the new place. True to form, I was butchering as people walked in the door.

The apt wasn’t ready, the kitchen wasn’t ready, I was barely ready, and we did it, and it was good. Here’s what we ate:

Amuse piqui (ok, that’s just a French way to spell picky. sue me.) Salted radishes with champagne vinegar on levain baguette with sweet butter

1st: Creamed Sorrel Soup, cold, garnished with chopped strawberries, served in demitasse cups, which makes me all giddy. Feudi di San Gregoria Falanghina 2005 This was barely a course, with people lounging around, whimsically sipping their soup. This is so cool.

2nd: Fresh Tagliarini with Asparagus, Cream, Sage and Black Pepper. In a rare moment of showmanship (tee hee), I hand rolled a table-sized sheet of pasta for everybody to order. The nice thing about pasta this fresh is that it is completely light, and cooks instantaneously. Little purple sage flowers are beautiful on dishes like this. It also got a last minute grating of pecorino romano.

3rd: Poele of Chicken with Bacon and Green Garlic, and Firecracker and New Fire Lettuce Salad (this is a combo dry-moist heat cooking technique, look for more on this soon) Qupe Syrah Central Coast 2004 The salad was dressed with champagne vinegar, mustard and extra virgin olive oil.

4th: Crepes with Swanton Farms Strawberry Jam and Shuna’s Magic Bergamot Orange Jam Royal Tokay Wine Co. 5 Puttonyos Tokay

And I served chunks of non-regulation chocolate with our coffee. Somebody made me feel so bad about having this brand of chocolate in my house that I chopped it up for coffee. Jeez.

Listening: NPR, BBC World Service