Holiday food porn

[oyceter]

I have decided to chronicle fancy restaurant food porn, largely because I discovered, to my great dismay, that I cannot actually remember every single fancy restaurant meal I have had. This puts me at a disadvantage during family conversations, which can often revolve around "Do you remember Such-and-such restaurant and how good the such-and-such special was?" Then I feel sad because it was probably an amazing meal, and really, I would very much like to remember and savor the memory.

We went to a fancy French place for Christmas Eve! Yay! We were also going to go to another fancy place for Christmas, except my mom had accepted an invitation from one of her friends last minute. So we ended up going there. The food was pretty good, but it was one of those family friend things in which I have never met the kids my age and so had to struggle through tiredness to socialize. I ended up falling asleep in front of the TV for hours!

Anyhow, fancy French place!

There were three amuse things (is that how you spell it?), the first of which was a spring onion broth with foie gras on the bottom. I adore how fancy places serve soup amuses in the teensy-eensiest little espresso cups! So cute! Also, the soup was incredibly good. Tasted like sweet onion, pure onion, and then, at the very bottom, there were cool smooth pieces of foie gras that lent a bit more saltiness to the sweetness. And... it was just so smooth and tasty. The second one was a raw oyster (I always think I misspell that now) topped with a slightly warmed over hollandaise, and it was also smooth and silky, with a wee bit of salt and sea flavor, and the contrast between the hollandaise and the oyster. I really like raw oysters. Yum.

The third one was also really good! Soft-boiled egg (still in shell! hee!) with a touch of maple syrup and sherry vinegar (and some sea salt sprinkled in, I think). The waiter told us to try to get all the layers for the first bite, at least, so we could taste everything at once. You know, I didn't think it would work, but it really did. The maple syrup was cool and sweet, and then there was the soft egg white and the slightly runny yolk. And the yolk was set off by the warm vinegar, with just a dab of salt at the very end to make things interesting. I have no idea how people come up with these ideas!

Also, I like eating things out of eggshells. Though my sister cracked her trying to get to the very bottom ;).

Then there was a squash soup. They plated it in such a nifty way too! The bowl was oblong, with corners at the edges, like a boat. And in the very middle was a bit of Gravenstein apple butter with a dollop of marscapone cheese and a wee herb leaf sticking out from the top. It seriously looked like a little apple butter boat inside of a boat. Then the waiter came around and poured the squash soup into the bowls, just covering up the apple butter boat until all you could see was that little tip of marscapone and the leaf. It was really neat, but I felt rather bad for the apple butter, which I kept imagning was drowning.

Possibly I should not anthropomorphize my food so much.

But it was sweet and rich and squash-like, and such a lovely winter soup. And I liked how the marscapone melted into a cool swirl of dairy in the middle of the squash. Also, I liked how my sister dislikes squash soups (she says she doesn't like pumpkin soup!! Dismay!) because she gave me the rest of hers. Muhahah!

Then came the fish. Monkfish in a truffle cream sauce, with mushrooms (I think they were strips of morels) and baby carrots and baby onions. When I say baby carrots, I don't mean the precut carrots in supermarkets, but tiny spring carrots, the green bits at the top still so tender that you could just pop the whole thing in your mouth. And they were only about an inch long, and so fat and cute! I almost couldn't bear to eat them! The fish was very good, especially with the sauce, but it was just the teensiest bit on the not-quite-melt-in-your-mouth side. But! This was completely made up for by the sauce and the mushrooms and the carrots and the onions, which were so fresh and wonderful and fresh and sweet and fresh and lovely. And fresh. Yes. OMG vegetable love!!! I ate my dad's carrots too because they were so good. And the onions! They tasted like solid versions of the sweet onion soup opener! Ok, that is a silly thing to say when obviously the soup was liquid onion, but.. it was so purely sweet onion! Mmmmmm. Ohhhhh I miss the farmer's market now.

The main course was a duck and foie gras torte, which was unfortunately much too salty for my taste. And the mashed potatoes on the side were just on this side of gummy, which was also sad. But it was saved by having some vegetable thing that I couldn't identify (I look at the menu and google and now realise that "salsify" is a vegetable and not a cooking method or something). Anyhow, it was salsify. The texture was sort of soft, but with a fiber grain running through it, and it was rather light in flavor. It's hard to describe. And the outside was browned and caramelized in the duck sauce, so there was a lovely brown, sweet-and-salty exterior and very delicate inside. Yum.

Then there was "artianal cave aged roquefort: refined and perfectly mature." I quote the menu because I thought it was funny. How does one tell if a cheese is perfectly mature? Does one put it in trying situations and see how it extracts itself? Is it some judge of character? Anyhow... eh. Blue cheese is unfortunately not my favorite type of cheese, and this was a very, very, very, very, very strong cheese. I manfully ate about a third of it just for the "refined and perfectly mature" bit, but it actually made my tongue to numb. Yes. That was rather unpleasant.

And dessert! Roasted pears and tonka bean ice cream on top of a lovely almond gateau (tart thing?) with vanilla cream inside. I love how the outside was just a bit crusty and the inside was melty and warm, and then coupled with the ice cream, it was just wonderful. Mmmm. Usually I lean toward the chocolate or the fruit desserts, but this was just so good and warm and cozy a dessert that it was hard not to like it!

And then, my sister and I cooked up a storm today, after many encounters with Murphy at the supermarket(s). My sister was dead set on making tiramisu, since it now seems to be her signature dessert (I'm not complaining! She feeds it to me whenever I visit!). Alas, Andronico's did not have the brand of marscapone that she normally uses, and she judged the ladyfingers as slightly too expensive.

By the way, I have just completely fallen in love with Andronico's grain aisle. Grains! In bins! Semolina flour! Brown rice! Corn meal! Orzo! And.... new things that I am trying to learn how to cook, like quinoa and bulgar and wheat germ and all that fun stuff! My sister stared at me rather strangely because she did not quite understand my excitement about grains. But... quinoa!! It just sounds nifty, doesn't it? Sadly, there were no steel-cut oats in bins, though they had rolled oats, so minus a few points for that.

Anyhow, we ventured on to Trader Joe's, who was just out of marscapone, and then to Safeway, at which we found marscapone (still the wrong brand, but by that time, we had about given up). Then we couldn't find ladyfingers, so we ended up substituting with pound cake. I personally thought it tasted ok, though the sister was rather irritated about the marscapone not settling correctly and the very faint butter flavor to the tiramisu. I just don't think the stars were aligned for tiramisu, or something.

So we ended up making three times too much food for everyone, and this is after I cut out about half the planned menu ;). I made heres_luck's white bean and rosemary soup and inaugurated my blender (it was really, really tasty. And it smelled heavenly. And really, really tasty.) Alas, I did not get to experiment with dried beans, given how long it took us to get all the ingredients, but the canned worked fine. Then I made coffeeandink's yogurt sauce and fried eggplant (really, really good, though mine were not as crispy as hers... I think mine were too thick). Also, popping oil scares the bejeezus out of me. It started splattering everywhere (note to self: do not keep laptop on kitchen counter when frying things), and me and the sister sort of panicked and ran around like chickens with our heads cut off, because it wouldn't stop! Not even after I turned down the heat! Finally, she yelled at me, "Get a lid!! Get a lid!!" and I ran around like an idiot some more before realizing that the lid to my white bean soup pot fit. It was quite an adventure.

I also made my sister make my applesauce cake and hummus and jicama/avocado/radish/orange salad (courtesy of heres_luck again). The sister complained about the hummus being too lemony, but when it was paired with the eggplant, it was really very good. And yogurt sauce is my new favorite thing ever (well... one of them, at least). Perfect for chips too, heh. And I made twenty-clove garlic chicken again, except this time with yams instead of potatoes. I have decided that yams are infinitely better than potatoes. OMG. Soooo good.

I am now stuffed and have about four lunches worth of soup stashed in my freezer, along with a very packed fridge. I think raw black radish is also too spicy for me, because it overwhelmed the jicama, which made me sad. And I was really surprised by how well the salad worked sans dressing! Yum.

Alas, we had too much food and I was too tired to make heres_luck's squash and leek curry and spicy green beans. But we bought the ingredients, so maybe the day after tomorrow!

And tomorrow, sushi! Whoo!