Melissa put together a nice plate of nibbles for the beautiful evening we spent mostly out on the patio. Double cream brie, drunken goat cheese (soaked in red wine), a little left over cambozola and a great emmenthaler; seasoned cherry tomatoes; smoked salmon with cracked pepper; arugula from the garden and fresh bread. Just the thing after some not-so-impressive bar snacks at happy hour.
Before hatching this plan for Friday evening, we had arranged to have Evan around on Saturday night for dinner and drinks. Melissa had issued him a challenge to bring a mystery ingredient upon which she would subsequently base the evening's dinner. Evan rose to the challenge and showed up with a large butternut squash and two green papayas. The papayas weren't really ready to eat (we all had to look up how to tell when they're ripe), but the squash was immediately put to use in a dish that seemed to take Melissa no time at all to formulate.
Mel has used butternut squash roasted and mashed in Thanksgiving dinners, pan roasted in large chunks as part of a roast vegetable medley, and in an excruciatingly fantastic butternut squash soup. This time she decided to roast and stuff it. First she halved, cleaned and roasted it flesh-side down in a roasting pan with some olive oil until it softened all the way through. In the meantime, she made a pork mince in the food processor with pork tenderloin, cumin, fennel seeds and half a tomato. A quarter onion was chopped and sauteed, then the pork mince and fresh chopped fennel (leaves and stem) were cooked together with the onions in the same pan. This mixture was spooned into the squash bowl and the whole thing was put back into the oven for about another half hour.
Melissa topped it off with crunchy croutons she made from some frozen bread pan-fried in butter, and a dollop of Fage Greek yogurt. I've mentioned this before, but this stuff is completely fat free and tastes wonderful -- look for it in your supermarket. Garnished with fennel frond and served up as open-face quarters. The squash was so well roasted you could almost eat the skin without even noticing, and the seasoned pork stuffing with Greek yogurt on top was rich with the aromatic fennel flavor. The croutons were a nice touch. We had a 2005 Jovly Vouvray Chenin Blanc with this dish, and the floral and honey notes of the off-dry wine worked out quite well with the aromatic and ever-so-slightly spicy character of the stuffed squash. After we finished this bottle, we went to a 2006 Monkey Bay Unoaked Chardonny (Marlborough, NZ) which, while it was entirely different from the chenin blanc (less floral and more fruity with peach and citrus notes), also worked quite well with the dish.
While divvying up the remains for second servings, Melissa decided on a better presentation for this dish:
Monday we had what I think was the best beef curry that has ever come out of our kitchen. Steak tips were chopped, coated in curry spice mix (see Melissa's approach to curry mix in a previous post) and seared to seal in the flavor, then stewed in a tomato base with garlic, fennel seeds and finely chopped almonds. Pretty simple (not that I could have come up with it), but the flavor was really special. Melissa says it was the way she made the tomato curry base: she cooked down a can of diced tomatoes (after she pureed them) in the pan she had used to sear the meat, with the slivered garlic and more curry spices, allowing the mixture to reduce dramatically and caramelize slightly on the bottom. Then the meat, some potatoes and extra water is added back and the entire stew was simmered until it became melt in the mouth tender. To this she added the almonds and a handful of fresh parsley just before plating it with some jasmine rice.
We always like to have a nice aromatic wine with Indian-inspired dishes, and this time it was a 2005 Sacred Hill Whitecliff Riesling from Marlborough, NZ. They do a lot of things right in Marlborough...
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