Solstice Feast 2006

Tomatoes, about to be roasted. As was I. Yesterday was very warm and was only enhanced by the Viking blasting BTUs for a couple hours. But it was so worth it.

Here's what we ate and drank:

Apertif was the standard Green Olives with Orange Zest, accompanied by peach Bellinis.

There as an amuse bouche of shrimp, asparagus and lemon zest in Italian dressing with a

2005 Hogue Chardonnay.

(Don't you just love the idea of something to "amuse the mouth"...a mere taste of something, just for the fun of it? These were arranged on scallop shells and looked very pretty. See?)

We followed with a Mesclun salad with caramelized pears wrapped with prosciutto and a sprinkling of toasted hazelnuts in a maple syrup vinaigrette

The entree was Chicken paillards, dressed with lavender honey and sprinkled with chevre. This was served on a bed of baby spinach. On the side was a roasted tomato and ricotta tart and a melange of haricot vert, wax beans and baby carrots tossed with butter and dill. With the entree we drank Bonny Doon Vin Gris de Cigare, 2003 and 2005. (We liked the '05 best).

As you can see, there was a great deal of documentation going on. ("Did you get a picture of that for your blog?" The Spouse kept saying). And yet, the entree came and went without anyone thinking of pulling out the camera. This is what ChouChou's plate looked like afterwards, though.

I guess it was good.

There is a story behind dessert. The Boys always bring the pudding and a fine job they do of it, too. I don't tell this story to cast aspersions and you must understand that because I love The Boys, they are lovely people and nothing negative is to be read into this: they made a cake and left it at home. They also made vanilla ice cream and that came with them.

Fortunately, The Child had baked a hot milk sponge cake the day before. (She got the baking gene). So The Boys plated up slices of her cake with the ice cream and peach puree left over from our bellinis. It was delicious. They also served us a 2003 Canoe Ridge Late Harvest Gewurztraminer which was nigh unto ambrosia.

This was a happy enough ending but The Boys, as they were leaving, made noises about coming 'round with the double ginger cherry upside down cake that they had made so we devised a plan and they are coming back to dinner tonight. Ha!

We're going to marinate a little rack of lamb chops and grill those. We'll have shrimp cocktail to start and then the lamb with couscous & asparagus (and I'm thinking everything is going to be done on the grill because it's supposed to get into the 90s today) and a big salad and then the cake. All's well that ends well.