GUD BLOG: SINGLE POST
Dinner for Two
People with birthdays between December 10th or so and New Year’s Day tend to share one minor complaint: Their emergence into this world is ignored amid the hustle and bustle of the holiday season. My wife’s birthday is in mid-December, and while we don’t really do the “present thing,” we ensure the occasion doesn’t pass unmarked. I make a dinner each year — something fun, reasonably unique or elaborate — and we have some quality drinks.
We started on some scallops with a cilantro gremolata and served over a lime beurre blanc, a recipe I found on Epicurious. With it, I mixed up and served a Captain Handsome, a cocktail created at Vessel, the bar in Seattle.
- 1.5 oz gin
- .5 oz lime juice
- .5 oz creme de violette
- .25 oz limoncello
- Shake w/ ice and strain the drink into a chilled cocktail glass rinsed with absinthe. Garnish with a cherry.
Its lime juice base made it ideal with the lime zest in the gremolata and the citrus in the reduction used to make the beurre blanc. Vessel has a fantastic device that carbonates any drink without dilluting it. And while our version lacks the delightful prickliness of Vessel’s original, it’s an excellent, elegant drink with a nicely cohesive floral and citrus flavor that’s accented really nicely by the absinthe rinse. Doesn’t get much better, and it’s an excellent drink to showcase the Creme de Violette I’ve come to love.
For the main course, I served another recipe I found online, albeit tweaked here and there: pork stuffed with a morel-based mixture and generously drizzled with a demi-glace and morel stock-based sauce.
Part of me thought a fresh Joseph Swan pinot noir, which I’ve written about here previously, would do the trick of combatting the rich morel and veal flavors, but I wanted something more refined and nuanced. I had a gut feeling that a 20-year-old burgundy I’d been holding on to would do the trick. And indeed it did.
More specifically, the wine was a 1988 premier cru from Les Vaucrains (in Nuits St. Georges), produced Robert Chevillon. It was surprisingly vibrant with plenty of berry fruit and tannin left, but the real pleasant surprise was just how well this worked with the pork: Hints of leather, game, and even a Fernet-Branca-ish herbal quality evolved as we drank through the botttle.
The meal closed with a raspberry mousse. We elected not to pair it with any specific drinks, but afterward, I gave my new bottle of Plymouth Sloe Gin a try. I made Sloe Sambas for both of us, a fruity, pink, frothy concoction that I’ve approximated from a drink of the same name made at Nopa, a San Francisco gastropub.
- 1.5 oz white rum
- 1.5 oz sloe gin
- .5 oz lemon juice
- .25 oz Scotch
- A quick squeeze of simple syrup
- Egg white
- Dry shake to get a good emulsion and foam
- Add ice, shake, and strain into a chilled glass
2009.12.22 Evan Hansen at 9:40 pm
This entry was posted in GUD Blog and tagged cocktails, France, gin, liquor, pinot noir, wine. Bookmark the permalink.
2 Responses to Dinner for Two
My birthday is in April.
Todd, my birthday is right next to yours, on October 9. I'm sure Evan could combine the two and it would save him some effort.
You could say the effort would be evanescent.