farewell dinner for Taylor

Farewell dinners are always sad, especially when it's for a great new friend you wish you'd gotten to spend more time with this summer, however, if you're gonna send a girl back to the grind of law school (at Harvard no less!) you may as well make sure you send her off with a good meal.  So when it came time to make a goodbye dinner for Taylor this past Saturday night, T and I decided to do our best to make it one to remember.  

Saturday morning T decided to be awesome and procure some fab raw materials for our meal.  He got swordfish and scallops from BlackSalt, perhaps the best fishmonger in the DC area.  The first time I used their scallops, on Degustation Day, they looked so beautiful and smelled so fresh and perfect that I wanted to eat them raw.  But I resisted (although I think they would be divine in ceviche) and so course one of our dinner for Taylor was my bacon-wrapped scallops with serrano chile and garlic sauce.  They turned out delicious, as always.  I generally try to avoid patting myself on the back but I really do love this recipe.  If I had to pick one dish that I'd want to represent the best of my culinary skills with, this would probably be the dish.  They are smoky, sweet, salty, and spicy.  

As a great pre-dinner drink (and also along with our first course), I picked up a bottle of 1 + 1 = 3 Cava.  This sparkling wine is from the same producers of one of my favorite rosés.  It's light and refreshing, not sweet, but not super-dry and intense like some champagne.  And, more importantly, it's the only sparkling wine I've ever seen T drink and enjoy.

But enough about that, on to course two!  So T decided to prepare the swordfish by searing it with a fantastic spice rub and three different sauces.  The first was a delicious relish of corn and roasted red pepper that was smoky, sweet, and super light.  It complimented the fish without competing against the spices in the rub or the meaty texture.  The second sauce was a mushroom cream sauce made with matsutakes.  The mushrooms were dried and then rehydrated which made them a bit tough but the flavor they gave to the cream sauce was smooth and earthy.  The third sauce was the real standout.  T made a gooseberry gastrique that was tart, spicy, sweet, and basically heavenly.  He used similar spices to the mix I put in strawberry rhubarb sauce from Degustation Day since we discovered that allspice, star anise, and cinnamon together with fruit is a wonderful thing.  This gastrique's slightly sweet, tart flavor complimented the spice rub on the fish in a phenomenal way.  I could have had double portions of just the fish and that sauce it was so good.

As amazing as the fish was, we did pair it with two sides.  The first was a salad I made of tomatoes, basil, a sauteed shallot vinaigrette, and chunks of the always amazing fresh mozzarella from Blue Ridge Dairy (yay local producers!).  This is a take on one of my favorite summer foods, insalata caprese.  A traditional caprese salad is usually just tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella arranged and drizzled with some very good olive oil and a bit of salt and pepper.  However, I decided to give mine a bit of a twist by making a shallot vinaigrette.  I minced some shallots and sauteeed them in a bit of butter and olive oil until translucent and soft.  While I let them cool down, I whisked together some dijon mustard and champagne vinegar.  To that mix i added some salt and pepper and then streamed in oil (I was using canola since we were low on olive oil) in the classic vinaigrette ratio of about three parts oil to one part vinaigrette until I achieved a nice emulsion.  To finish, I tossed in the shallots, whisked some more to combine and then poured the dressing over the tomatoes that I had cut up and put in a bowl with some basil.  I let the tomatoes and basil sit in the fridge and soak up the vinaigrette and just before serving I added the chunks of mozzarella.  It's a simple salad but really fresh and it tastes like summer in a bowl.

Our other side dish was one that T made.  He made divinely smooth chipotle mashed potatoes that were creamy and rich with a subtle hint of smoky spice.  But we couldn't stop there.  With the deep fryer sitting on the counter just calling out to us we decided to experiment.  I kneaded some flour into the mashed potato mixture and fried small bite-size balls of the mashed potatoes.  They were the perfect bite and definitely something I would not mind having as an appetizer with any meal (we filed that one away for our restaurant menu).

Once dinner was done it was time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the rest of our time with Taylor.  T fired up the hookah and we enjoyed a serving of one of the most sublimely smooth dessert wines around.  All in all, a fantastic meal and a great evening.  Now we'll just see if it can be topped when Taylor comes back to visit in October.

summertime...and the livin' is easy

Okay, so it's not quite summer. In fact, it's only April and this morning weather.com told me that the temp was 42 degrees. However, there have been a few days of late that felt like a hint of summer come early. And so what better way to celebrate the occurrence than with a meal fit for balmy nights and al fresco dining?

I find that some of my favorite meals are meals that are associated with summer. I think this is because, growing up in Florida, summer meant long, lazy nights of eating dinners outside with my parents by the pool, drinking wine, and talking for hours. Everything I loved about living on the Gulf Coast can be summed up in those nights: warm weather, soft breezes, fresh seafood, and a life that was just more relaxed and uncomplicated. Or at least it seemed uncomplicated while sitting outside with great food and wine. So needless to say, anytime the thermostat creeps above 70 degrees, I get to missing life on the coast and feel a need to recreate it. Sadly, I can't bring the soft gulf breezes, white sand, and emerald water up to DC. But I can do my best to recreate the flavors of the cuisine.

To create a meal that would remind me of summer on the Emerald Coast, I wanted, naturally, to use seafood as the centerpiece and compliment it with some intense flavor. I chose sea scallops because their light, sweet flavor would be the perfect base for some of the bolder tastes I planned on using. I started by mincing two serrano chiles and tossing them with some salt, paprika, black pepper and olive oil. I let the scallops "marinate" in this mixture while I worked on prepping the rest of the meal. I knew I wanted to wrap the scallops in bacon so I decided to cook the bacon until it had rendered some fat but was still pliable enough to be wrapped around the scallops. Once the bacon was halfway-cooked, I removed it to some paper towels to absorb the excess grease.

At the store I had picked up an orange bell pepper, a yellow heirloom tomato, some baby arugula, an avocado, and some watercress. I tossed the bell pepper over the open flame of one of the stove burners until the skin was charred. Once the skin was completely blackened, I placed the bell pepper in a bowl and covered it with some plastic wrap to let it steam and loosen the skin. Meanwhile, I tossed the arugula and watercress with some vinaigrette and plated it. After the pepper was done steaming, I rinsed it under cold water to remove the skin, took out the seeds and ribs, and then chopped the roasted flesh and placed it on top of the greens. To that I added some sliced avocado.

But I wasn't entirely sure what to do with the tomato. I have a good number of food quirks (I hate celery) and one of them is that I hate raw tomato in green salads. I don't mind it in Insalata Caprese or tossed with some red onion, feta, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. However, nothing bothers me more than chunks of raw tomato on a green salad. So I knew that I wanted to cook the tomato. I sliced it and set it aside, figuring I'd know what to do with it when the time came.

Once the salad was ready, I went to finish the scallops. I drained all but a tablespoon or two of the bacon fat from the frying pan and set it over medium heat. I removed the scallops from the olive oil and chile marinade (reserving the oil and chile mixture) and wrapped them with the bacon and then slid them onto skewers. I laid the skewers in the pan and cooked them until the scallops had browned nicely on each side and were just cooked through (about 4 minutes on the first side and about 3 minutes on the second side). I removed the scallops from the pan and plated them alongside the salad.

With the scallops done, I deglazed the pan with a little bit of beer and then tossed in the tomatoes and the reserved olive oil and minced chiles. I sauteed this mixture until the tomatoes were tender but still retained their shape and the beer had reduced into a spicy chili glaze. I plated the tomatoes and spooned the sauce over the scallops. The final accompaniment to the meal was some sliced baguette toasted with raclette cheese melted on top.

Despite the fact that it was created on the fly and without a real recipe for guidance, this meal is one of my new favorites. The sweet scallops work perfectly with the salty, crisp bacon and the spicy sauce. And the light salad, sauteed tomatoes, and cheese bread were the perfect additions. I will definitely be recreating this meal again.

So even though the mercury has returned to late winter-ish temperatures, this meal was a great way to take advantage of the small summer preview we got. And more than that it was a fantastic way to be transported back home to the Emerald Coast.