A Yeoman’s Effort!

We cooked from the Bar Tartine cookbook for this dinner.    Or I should say we “efforted” from this cookbook that made Everything from scratch…including the yogurt, the sour cream, the spices, the whatever!  It contained recipes where each ingredient refers you to another page so you can dehydrate it, ferment it, jam it, etc. yourselves.   TBH, not many of the recipes even appealed to me but there were some surprises in this dinner.

We started with Janis’ Pistachio Dip with Flax Crackers; my first surprise.  It was delicious and I’m not a big fan of the pistachio flavor so that’s Delicioius with a capital “D”!  If you click on the recipe name above, you’ll be able to find it on Google books.   Janis tried the Flax Cracker recipe several weeks ago and was very disappointed in the results.  The crackers crumbled and did NOT taste good.  For our dinner, she found some flaxseed crackers at Whole Foods and they did the trick.   The dip was very interesting and had ingredients that are not often combined together:  green onions, a lot of garlic, shelled raw pistachios, pumpkin seeds, chiles, lime juice, cilantro, nori (seaweed), radishes, cilantro all binded together with grapeseed oil.   She also brought some other types of crackers to see which one went better with the dip and the flaxseed crackers were the best.  The recipe also calls for the dip to be served on a plate or platter but she wisely opted for a small bowl for the dip and artfully arranged the radish slices around the edge.  Bill chose a Franck Bonville nv Champagne Brut Rose to complement the dip and the Brut Rose was the best choice.  It had enough body to hold up to the forward flavors of the dip.   YUM!

We then sat down and started with our first salad that Annie prepared.  Smoked Trout with Summer Bean Salad.  And, no, she did not smoke the trout herself.   As you can see from the photo, it’s more of a main course dinner salad.  It’s a very hearty salad with chunks of smoked trout, with scattered cannellini beans, green beans, sunflower seeds (and no, she did not toast these herself either!) marjoram, dill, oil cured black olives, cucumbers, garlic, lemon juice and curly parsley all softened with Greek yogurt.  There is no “salad dressing” per se, but it’s definitely a salad!    Bill chose a hearty 2011 Private Reserve Chardonnay from Beringer that was unctuous and worked well with the smoky flavors of the trout and herbs.

 

Sandi W prepared one of the more ambitious dishes of the evening.  Grilled Eggplant with Tomato Jam and Spiced Hazelnuts.  This dish required ingredients that take 6 weeks to make, such as the preserved limes and tomato jam.  It too had yogurt, used as a bed for the eggplant slice.   The tomato jam was more like dried tomato jam and had very concentrated tomato flavors that added a blast of flavor to the mild eggplant.  The other side to this dish that is not picked up in the title of it, was the preserved lime compote.  It was very spicy (i.e. not wine friendly) and did little to highlight the eggplant.   The Spiced Hazelnuts were scattered about the dish as accent notes to the paprika flavor.   We all (including Sandi) felt that the lime compote could be deleted from the dish in the future.  The grilled eggplant, tomato jam, yogurt and spiced nuts were very enjoyable.   Bill wisely selected a very hearty 1990 Topolo Zinfandel from their Rosso Ranch in Sonoma to go with this dish.  The zinfandel actually held up against the heat in the dish and because of its earthiness,  went well with the eggplant and tomato.

 

Michelle took us to Japan with her Tuna with Black Beer Ponzu and Radish.  She even purchased the tuna from a Japanese market!  She chose a non-hoppy stout to make the ponzu sauce and used daikon ( pronounced “die cone” BTW) instead of the watermelon radish called for (none were to be found anywhere!).  The tuna was seared perfectly and the whole dish was very Japanese-y, especially with the daikon substitution.  Bill served a Rochioli 2010 Chardonnay from the River Block vineyard in the Russian River Valley in Sonoma.  It was delicious, definitely.  What’s not to like about a Rochioli Chard?  But the tuna dish stomped all over it, and I was wishing we had some sake for this entré. 

 

For our main course, our host, Jeffrey, made Beef Gulyas with MarrowToast, that he said was basically a Hungarian goulash: meat, potatoes, onions, paprika, green bell peppers, lots of garlic, marjoram, Serrano chiles and some bacon.  The Gulya was pretty unremarkable but the marrow toasts were divine!   Totally not good for us but oh so rich, flavorful and decadent!  Jeffrey has a private purveyor who raises cattle from whom we was able to get very large marrow bones.  He toasted some slices of ciabatta bread from Acme Bakery and we all slathered all the marrow we could dig out of the bones on our slice.   Bill chose a Rhone wine to go with this hearty stew and marrow toast.  Chateau Cabrieres 1998 Chateauneuf-Du-Pape.   As Rhones tend to be earthy, this was the perfect choice to complement the goulash stew.

We are now moving towards the sixth course of the evening and needed something lighter to cleanse our palate and get us ready for dessert.   Sharon brought a refreshing Chicory Salad with Anchovy Dressing.    It was just what we needed at this point in the dinner.  She couldn’t find any chicory lettuce so she substituted frisee, and other salad greens (radicchio, escarole, etc.).  It was also very herby with dill, green onions and parsley and again, earthy by using daikon, radishes, fresh horseradish and fennel.   The cookbook authors and chefs of Bar Tartine, seem to move towards these ingredients:  lots of garlic, dill, & marjoram.   It all came together with the Anchovy dressing that used fish sauce, as well as oil packed anchovy filets.  What surprised me was that the anchovy flavor was not very pronounced.  I detected the 1 tsp of fish sauce more than the anchovy taste in the dressing.   This dressing, as well as many of their recipes, had heat in it.  This one in the form of hatch chile powder or spicy red paprika powder.  Most of their recipes called for some kind of chile.   Some of the heat was pronounced and some of it was just a note of heat but it was present even in their desserts.  Bill brought a 2013 Pine Ridge, Chenin Blanc Viognier blend from Napa.  It was a bright , clean wine that was, once again, the perfect pairing for this salad.  Thanks Bill for contributing all the wines for our dinner and thanks to Jeffrey for pulling a chardonnay from his cellar as a backup to Bill’s wines.  I also contributed a baguette from Manresa Bread shop as well as some European Butter to have with the salad.  It's hard to resist spending some money in this shop, everything is so good!  And, now they are open 7 days a week! Bad news for the calorie conscious.

We all commented that the Bar Tartine book was not a “go to” cookbook that we will neither buy nor use much, if already bought.  The amount of work put into each dish was not evidenced in the outcome.  BUT, as Willie stated, we are all such good gourmet cooks that we had a wonderful meal in spite of the book. . .a yeoman's effort on everyone's part.

Michelle also made the Strawberry Hazelnut cookies.  And remember when I mentioned heat in all of their recipes.  These cookies had black pepper in them AND no flour.  It was very difficult of make the hazelnut butter.  After toasting the hazelnuts, which makes them drier, it took a lot of effort and two food processors to make enough of the hazelnut butter to create the cookies.  Michellle stated that the dough was very sticky and hard to manage.   The strawberry filling was made from dehydrated strawberries (and yes, she dehydrated them for days!) and very dense.  The cookies were very big and could be meal unto themselves.  Because they are very rich, most of us opted to eat a third of our cookie last night and eat the remainder the next day.  They were pretty good though.  I enjoyed my cookie even more today than I did last night.  Thanks Michelle for bringing two dishes for the evening! 

Bill chose a 2001 Chateau Lafleurie-Peraguey Sauternes for the desserts this evening.   I’m not sure it went well with either dessert but it sure was delicious on its own!

I opted to make a Strawberry Tart with Flakey Pastry.  The flakey pastry takes 3 hours to make: rolling, folding, refrigerating repeatedly and then baking with a weight over the dough so that it doesn’t rise in the center.   This is a recipe out of the Tartine Bakery cookbook so I confess, I cheated!   I just felt we needed a lighter dessert to end the evening on and really liked this recipe.  The great thing about this recipe is that once the dough was put together, I only needed half of it so I have the other half sitting in my freezer, waiting to be baked.   The whipping cream had Grand Marnier in it but it wasn’t very evident.  I think I’ll increase the amount next time.   The strawberries were from Kika’s Farms in Watsonville who sells their strawberries at the Saratoga Farmer's Market on Saturdays and the Mountain View Farmer's Market on Sundays.   They are picked very ripe and are sweeter than other varieties.  Eat them quickly because they are so ripe they spoil within a day.  The BEST strawberry jam strawberries, bar none!

And, so we end another evening enjoying the company and the great view from the top of the Saratoga hills.  The evening was so pleasant that we dined outside, no wind, no bugs and no night chill.  Perfect!

Our Annual Holiday Buffet will be on Saturday Dec. 12.  You may bring any dish from any of our cookbooks to date.   We tend to do appetizers and desserts but if you want to make a main course, just remember that we have small plates so make them bite-sized!   Bring suggestions for our next cookbooks.  Benu has already been suggested by Jeffrey and a retro to Greens by Sharon.  Bring ideas too (like a coffee tasting event by Reid)!   AND, of course, your kitchen-oriented White Elephant or $15 or less kitchen gift.  Don’t forget our crowing coq mascot!

Time of buffet TBA so stay tuned!

Cook on!