Wintry Mixed Media
- gougères ❧ vanilla pecans ❧ Linda’s retro onion dip ❧ lavender cheese thimbles
- Whiter shade of ale: cream of cauliflower soup garnished with creme fraîche and smoked pistachio brittle
- Frivolity and wisdom: ravioli nudi with chard and Bennington artisanal ricotta in sage butter sauce
- Field work: roast leg of lamb (rubbed in roasted garlic and rosemary) with mushroom sauce ❧ bread pudding with caramelized onion and goat cheese ❧ lentils in champagne ❧ roasted shallots
- Red hot and cold: cherry jelly ❧ mai tai jelly ❧ pecan pie
- Clotilde’s chocolate biscuits ❧ coffee
For a change, I actually managed to make (and remembered to serve) all the planned dishes, and prep went about as well as it could. Some of the dishes took a surprising time, mostly because my stock reserves are low. The mushroom sauce entailed a chicken double stock, the lentils needed a vegetable stock, and those caramelized onions in the bread pudding took the better part of five hours. Once that was out of the way, I could get down to business. All’s well that ends before dinner time, broadly construed.
The huge Colorado leg of lamb (the checkout clerk at the store asked if it was a goat) worked really well.
We used just about every spoon and fork we possess, and could have used more.