Thursday Feasting

Constraints: no meat, school night, some guests travelling hundreds of miles might arrive late.

• Mixed appetizers
  • slices tomatoes, sungolds, coarse salt, balsamic
  • smoked trout (brushed with ginger syrup, thyme in cavity, 20 min. over alder)
  • grilled fresh figs, boucheron
• mushroom focaccia (shitakes and button mushrooms, cantal, goat cheese, and artisanal ricotta)
• pancakes and eggs and toast
  • eggs in purgatory
  • corn fritter pancakes
  • Ruhlman’s buttermilk dinner rolls
• blueberry lemon-curd tart
  • homemade blueberry and peach ice cream
  • candied, smoked pistachios

The meal proves that you can have too much food, even without meat. We drank vinho verde, which goes with the weather, and beaujolais, which goes with the mushrooms and maybe with the figs. The fritters were a failure: fritters must be fried to be worth eating, but I was deluded by a cookbook that suggested the pancake approach.

I got badly weeded in late prep and so the eggs in purgatory lacked their breadcrumb topping, and we've already discussed the pistachio brittle misadventure.