Passion for Cooking

Last night was a one-of-a-kind experience. Two trusting souls bought a wine-pairing/tasting dinner at an auction last year. For around $700, they bought 24 bottles of wine, and my love for cooking. Last night, I hope I did them proud.

Mary and I picked a date, and unbeknownst to me, it was the perfect date, because I had nothing to think about for the entire week preceding the dinner other than the dinner itself. I had a list of the wines, and set about looking for perfect pairings; in order to do that, I had to buy some of the wines! Darn! I was already familiar with a couple of them, so had a "leg up" as to what dish to prepare that would be the perfect companion to that wine.

I used my friends as guinea pigs, asking them to taste different dishes and tell me which was better. I tried tuna with two different rubs, a roast boneless leg of lamb, scalloped potatoes to die for (Julia Child calls them "potatoes Dauphinois"), a molten chocolate cake, and even a risotto with butternut squash and mushrooms.

I read lots of issues of "Food and Wine" to try to pick the right flavor for the right grape. I drooled as I thumbed through recipe after recipe, trying to find just the right combination of, well, food and wine. Ultimately, it worked. It worked very well.

Before I brag, however, I need to thank my good friends Kim and Kevin and Wendy and Rob. They were my kitchen help, serving the food when ready, picking up empty plates, and washing the dishes that I had to cart home. The evening was a success because these people, along with my wonderful and accommodating husband Max, worked their tails off to make sure the evening was a success. I would never have been able to carry it off without each and every one of them. On a positive note, we were able to snack and tipple in the kitchen while we were between courses. I think we each at one full meal, even if it was as we were standing around waiting for other people to finish their meals!

I cooked for two days straight before Saturday, figuring that the easiest thing to do would be to have everything ready to assemble on S-Night (Service Night). We carted pans, knives, dishes, glasses, ingredients, Tupperware, and odds and ends to the hosts' house, and we set up shop in their kitchen. We had six courses, six wines, six dishes to serve. Timing would be an issue. How long does it take one person to eat a salad, after all?

We began with a Riesling and a salad. The salad had blue cheese, walnuts, pomegranate seeds (thank you, Costco, for selling the seeds only), and sliced pears. The salad dressing used a reduced Riesling as the base. The salad and the dressing were yummy, even today after each had sat for 12 hours!

The second course/wine was Sauvignon Blanc. I read somewhere that a natural pairing for that wine is goat cheese, one of my favorites. So I did a bruschetta with goat cheese and sauteed mushrooms. I toasted the bread with olive oil and salt the day before; we spread it with the cheese and topped it with mushrooms right before popping the bruschetta under the broiler for a few minutes.

Third was the risotto. Timing was a complexity, because I had to begin the cooking process while my friends were serving the salad. I had roasted the squash and sauteed the mushrooms the day before, and I measured out all the ingredients to take with me; all I had to do was add the ingredients at the right time and stir. This course deserves a special note. Max and I tried this recipe and decided to buy the Chardonnay with which we were pairing it to make sure that the wine was not too oaky or buttery for the risotto. This pairing was, as far as I am concerned, the highlight of the dinner. It was almost perfect. Somehow, the wine's accents and tastes meshed with the rice, squash, and mushrooms, and the diners were in, as we say in southern Missouri, Hog Heaven. William Hill Chardonnay was the champion here. I will buy that wine specifically to drink with this risotto some time in the future. Amazing!

Next was spicy-sweet tuna. I found some rub recipe and thought it sounded interesting. Brown sugar was the main ingredient, and I believe cumin was also prevalent. I patted tuna steaks with the rub, mixed up a mango and red pepper salsa, and put the tuna in the skillet for a minute or so on each side. It was done very well - seared on the outside, bright pink and warm on the inside. And it went very well with the King Estate Pinot Noir, which is one of our favorite Pinots. I didn't want to mess up that wine, and from the comments, I didn't!

We did a palate cleansing with lemon sorbet, which we served in shot glasses that Max found. The glasses were the perfect size for a little bright citrus. This serving was a surprise, as I didn't tell anyone I was preparing it, but I thought it would be better to have a clear palate for the next fat-infused dish.

We paired Kanoonga Hill Shiraz with a roast boneless leg of lamb and potatoes scalloped with cream and Swiss cheese. The lamb also came with a red wine sauce that used veal demiglace. The demiglace cost more than the leg of lamb. It is SOOOOOO good and rich, though! This was the most disappointing dish to me, because the lamb was too well-done for lamb. It was not dry, nor was it flavorless, but I should have taken it out about 10 minutes before I did. I have heard that good gravy covers a multitude of sins, and in this case, it did. I was very grateful to Williams-Sonoma for selling demiglace.

Finally, the diners drank a white Moscato, and I prepared a sweet red wine ice cream. AFTER I had mixed the ice cream, I thought that it would be even better if I had added ground peppercorns to the custard. We added the pepper as a topping for the ice cream, and we served the dessert with a square of very dark chocolate. I brought along some raspberry sauce, but forgot to put in over the ice cream. It made no difference. The ice cream with pepper and chocolate. but NO raspberry sauce, was gone.

We stayed a little while afterward to relax and converse with the people who had enjoyed the evening, but we had the best time talking to the host, who is a wine lover, and who enjoyed the food - the risotto most of all.

After all the work, I can still say that I had a great time and will probably donate the same dinner to the auction this year. Not that I am complaining or anything, but Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa, donated lunch for six to a similar auction for a different organization. HER lunch garnered $100,000. I wonder if it made any difference that she was at lunch, as was Mariska Hargitay and Alec Baldwin? Well, we will start recruiting for next year's event. Who knows? Maybe we can find someone famous to show up - someone like, oh, someone. Maybe you!