Chocolate
Last weekend, we had a barbecue, and then another barbecue.
Dessert the first night was a chocolate pecan tart. It begins with a big 8oz chunk of Valrhona's Manjari chocolate, roughly chopped by hand. Boil 2 cups of heavy cream, pour that over the chocolate, wait five minutes. Then stir in 2 egg yolks, a little vanilla, and 5oz of just-toasted pecans.
Pour the mixture into a baked tart shell (thereby hangs a tale for another day, since this was my first attempt at a tart crust) and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Seriously chocolate.
Also effective was the appetizer of grilled flatbread, topped with garlic-chile oil, grilled dates, and a little goat cheese.