It's been a while since I last posted something, and I have a reason... I was working on Allie's birthday menu! About a week ago, I asked her what she wanted to do for her birthday dinner. She could choose a restaurant, fast food, her favorite meal, or what I called "Chef Joe's Tasting Menu." Like any good foodie, she chose the tasting menu. I put a decent amount of time and thought into the planning of it, and here you can read all about what I chose. She also had no idea what she'd be eating until the day of.
I went with a seven-course tasting: amuse-bouche, soup, appetizer, first course, main course, cheese platter, and dessert. The goal was to make it well-balanced without any single course being too filling. Full recipes for some of the dishes are on their way (eventually)!
Amuse-Bouche
For the amuse-bouche, I adapted an Asian-inspired meatball soup from Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking. I made tiny pork meatballs mixed with ginger, sesame oil, salt, and pepper. The broth is chicken stock mixed with soy sauce, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, star anise, and fresh ginger. Some baby spinach is also wilted in the broth.
To serve, I took the wilted spinach out of the broth and piled it on an Asian soup spoon. I placed the meatball on top of the spinach, poured some of the broth over top (enough to fill the spoon), then topped the meatball with either scallions or pickled ginger. I think this was Allie's favorite course (she was freaking out a little bit).
Soup
For the soup course, I made fresh pea soup. It's surprisingly simple, yet oh-so-delicious. Basically, you sauté a small onion and a leek, then boil them and a bag of peas in chicken stock. Once the peas are soft, toss the ingredients in a blender with a few tablespoons of créme fraiche, some salt, and some pepper (to taste), and blend until smooth. I topped the soup with chives and homemade croutons. Simple.
Allie says that this was her favorite part (which is kind of surprising since she's basically a straight-up carnivore . . . veggies have no place in her life). Give it a shot, it's worth it.
Appetizer
The appetizer was a simple shrimp cocktail. Of course, I made the cocktail sauce myself. It's a simple mixture of ketchup, prepared horseradish, lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, and a few drops of Frank's Red Hot. All of these ingredients were to taste. It's definitely worth it to make your own cocktail sauce . . . you can make it personal, and a bit more flavorful than most of the jarred stuff.
First Course
This is where I started to get fancy. If you remember the post from a few weeks ago, we went to Gotham Bar & Grill in NYC, and Allie fell in love with the mushroom risotto. Well, I tried to replicate it (at least mostly). The risotto is a chantrelle mushroom risotto with pancetta and Gruyere cheese.
To make it, I fried some pancetta, added some butter and the mushrooms, then the rice, wine, and broth (with a few minutes between each new ingredient). When the risotto was just about finished, I added Gruyere cheese. The result was pretty spectacular, if I do say so myself. My recipe doesn't hold a candle to Chef Portale's, but it was still pretty darn good.
A few differences certainly came from the wine choice and specific ingredients. I went with a white wine because it's what we were drinking, while Gotham's risotto is made with sherry. I also used rehydrated dried mushrooms instead of using fresh ones. If you don't have access to fresh chantrelles, dried will certainly suffice. Just make sure you rehydrate them separately from your risotto.
Main Course
Now for the really good stuff (this is where I may have lost control of portion sizes a bit . . . oops!).
For the main course, I went a little wild and made Beef Wellington with a red wine reduction sauce. Wellington is a filet mignon surrounded by duxelle (mushroom paste, I tossed some truffle powder in there too), prosciutto, and puff pastry. This dish takes some serious planning—you need to have time to cook several ingredients separately, cool them, build the Wellington, then cook it again.
This wasn't my first time making it (maybe my fourth?), so I knew what I was in for. A similar recipe can also be found in Gordon Ramsay's Home Cooking (you may have noticed, but I like his book a lot).
On the side, I made a simple but delicious cauliflower purée (similar recipe here). It was steamed using chicken stock, then puréed with créme fraiche, salt, pepper, and some milk. I'd recommend adding some butter, but I didn't this time. I originally was going to make mashed potatoes, but decided that it would be too heavy for such an elaborate meal. This was a good alternative.
Cheese Platter
There's really not much to say here except: choose what you like, serve your cheese with neutral-flavored crackers (nothing too rich or flavorful, but nothing bland), and garnish with something sweet (I normally go with jams). At this point (partially because of my failure at portion-size control), we were pretty full. We were 5 hours into the meal, and ended up having one piece of cheese each (gotta have room for dessert!).
Dessert
And now for everyone's favorite part: dessert! I'll admit, making dessert did not go well . . . until the end. Then it was fabulous.
I originally planned to make a fruit tart with mascarpone filling—but the mascarpone curdled. I managed to save the tart shell though. So, on to idea number two. I tried to make a salted caramel and chocolate tart—but I burned the caramel (my first attempt ever, so no big surprise there). Naturally, that had to go in the trash.
Finally, I had the idea to make a chocolate ganache tart. And oh my was that successful. The tart is bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate ganache on a vanilla crust (homemade, of course . . . I have the scars to prove it! On a possibly unrelated note, food processor blades are much sharper than they appear . . .), and topped with sea salt and hazelnuts.
The recipe for the tart shell, from Sally's Baking Blog, can be found here (along with my original dessert plan). The ganache is similar to my recipe for chocolate truffles, but using slightly less chocolate. I used 6 oz of chocolate (a mixture of bittersweet and semi-sweet) with 1 cup of heavy cream, and a splash of vanilla extract. It was a sweet end to a challenging culinary work-out!
