Oct. 6th, 2007
Tyler gives us some of our best challenges. In addition to commissioning Battle Grape, he requested his birthday dinner be the one used for the framing story from Stephen Brust's Dzur. And so, a Night at Valabar's:
This should have been more difficult than it was. I can't abide coffee, but had recently discovered an adulterated version that finally tasted the way coffee smells. A little Mexican Fonda called "Tu Y Yo" in Davis Square makes Cafe de Ollo, and that became our klava.
Thin baked bread with garlic - Not very difficult, simply a good quality flatbread heated up and served with some local heirloom garlic.
This was by far the most difficult dish, mostly due to the hardware requirements. Lacking a tray-size marble slab, or other aesthetic heat-retaining device, I brought out hot grapeseed oil in ceramic, served with tartar-grade thinly-sliced marinated beef, and the requisite sauces.
Just like the book says.
I interpreted this as a boursin with water crackers.
The description sounded like asparagus to me, so that's what I used, steamed and served with a simple lemon-butter sauce.
I took a little liberty with this one and made a terrine of poached chicken with ginger and scallion sauce, layered with mushrooms, scallions, ginger, and cashews. First time making a terrine....boy, that's difficult! Layer, layer, layer, ingredient combinations, water bath, aspic...whew! It came out tasty, if not as pretty as I'd like.
Our patron selected this for his main course, which made me happy, as I wanted to make pepper essence, then soak it up in spaetzle. For this dish, I found a recipe for pork tenderloin stuffed with andouille sausage and corn bread, and served it on herbed spaetzle.
layered crepes and jam, cut into cake-wedges, using a friend's homemade jams. The trick is to use complementary jams on each layer.
The duty on imports from Dragera being what they are, I served Tokaji.