Search This Blog

Saturday, January 17, 2009

Tonight's Menu

I'm excited about the dinner that I'm serving for a small event tonight. Thank you Ivan from the Pritchard Ave. MLCC for the pairings.



Appetizers
• Fresh Oysters with Mignonette sauce
• Ahi Tuna Udon spoons
• Blue Potato latkes with crème fraiche and golden caviar
• Morel and Porcini mushroom bouchés


Appetizers and Salad Pairings

# 158493 Segura Viudas Brut... a dry sparkler from Spain. Nice fruit and not overly toasty.
# 6799 Emeri Moscato Sparkling..... a slightly sweet sparkler. The moscato grape has a slight orange / mandarin tone to it, which would be a nice compliment to the salad.
# 73783 Erban Spatlese QBA.... a revived German white that we had a few years ago, that got relisted. Slightly sweet with a great nose and round mouth feel.

Salad
• Roasted Golden beet with Spring baby greens and pomegranate vinaigrette

(photo by Desmond)

Surprise
• Pesto escargot

Entrees and Side Dishes Pairings

# 5793 Chocolan Carmenere ...... a merlot on steroids! Big and bold. Loads of dark cherry, spice and some smoke.
# 313825 J. Lohr 7 Oaks Cabernet or # 587956 Trius Cabernet Reserve.... I gave you two because the first may be out of stock. Either is great. Good backbone, smooth tannins and loads of fruit.
# 865634 A-Mano Primativo..... an Italian from the southern area. A direct cousin to the Zinfandel, spicy mid bodied and a bit peasant like. The tannins would be smoothed out by the Osso Bucco.
# 574236 Erdinger Dunkel Wiesbier..... a German porter style wheat beer. Has a sweet aftertaste and body that will compliment the side dishes and highlight the main .


Entree
• Elk Osso Bucco
• Imam Baldi (Turkish eggplant dish)
• Roasted sweet potatoes


(photo by Karen)

Dessert
• Dark Callabaut Creams with Pavlova and Manitoba Strawberry sauce

Dessert Pairings

# D.D. Leobard Iced Strawberry Dessert Wine.... will compliment the berry.
# 4976 Schmitt and Sohne BeerenAuslese..... a close cousin to an icewine. Sweet, creamy and really fruity. A fair bit of honey on the mouth. Will go with anything.

Cheese course

• Bleu des Causses
• Brillat-Savarin
• Cave-aged Gruyere
• Trappist
• Fresh Dates and Green apple slices
• Baguettes

With the cheese plate, you must go with a port. Nothing else will do! I suggest two styles.... # 271585 Bin 27 LBV Port or # 801209 De Bortoli 8 YR. Tawny. The Bin 27, the more traditional, has got great flavour and style and will match the robust cheeses with a sweet nature. The Tawny will be more woody and the " burnt " nature will bring out the texture and flavour of the selections.

3 comments:

Elatia Harris said...

What lucky people! How do I get invited next time?

Tell me what you think of this idea. In Normandy many years ago I had some of the classic Normande cheeses paired with hard cider. It was in someone's house, and just perfect, although I would not have thought of it and have not done it since. Would it be a hard sell on a festive menu?

Karen Food aka Bistro Arkadash said...

It sounds absolutely festive! The dark beer that was paired with this menu was perfect. The hard cider is wonderful with those cheeses. Was it a summer event?

Unknown said...

Thank-you Karen for a fabulous evening! We all really enjoyed it.