Saturday, January 15.
Cooking For The Auction Winners.
It seems as if I just finished cooking one of my nine-course spectaculars for one charity, and now here I was working on another one. This go-round was especially challenging. I have ten people to feed instead of the usual six or eight. The guests formed a syndicate to buy the dinner, and so managed to get the bidding up to $3300. How does one deliver something worth that price? Finally, these folks have bought my dinner twice before, so I must come up with dishes they have not seen before.
Nevertheless, this one didn't seem quite as difficult as past dinners. After cooking a dozen or so of these things over the years, I have my strategy distilled into a detailed checklist, and I have a set of cookware ready to be packed up and taken with me specifically for the dishes I'll be cooking.
All of this efficiency--so foreign to the rest of my life--is something I learned during the nine years I have been a Retro Scout. Packing up for days in the field with Jude and the Boy Scouts required thinking and planning in advance. That skill is second only to the great father-son times among the benefits I've taken from my Scouting experience. I know all this strikes some as very corny, but there it is.
A great advantage in having cooked this dinner twice before for Nick Landry and Stephanie Schultis (both obstetricians, and married to each other) is that I now know their kitchen. It's a nice one, with a professional-style stove with six burners and lots of counter space for me to spread my fantastic mess. It also helps that we know each other well enough that I don't feel I'm walking on eggs when I rustle through cabinets looking for stuff.
I started the dinner with beluga caviar served inside small red boiled potato halves, hollowed out, chilled, and filled with sour cream and chopped shallots before the caviar went on. That was a pass-around, accompanied by Jacquesson Brut and Duval-Leroy Cuvee de Paris Champagnes.
My favorite dish of the evening was something new I've been thinking about. It's a take on the Red Fish Grill's mis-named barbecue oysters, which themselves are a take on Buffalo chicken wings. The sauce started with Louisiana hot sauce (some off-brand from my overstocked shelf) and white wine, reduced down quite a bit. I then whisked two sticks of butter, a little at a time, into that, to get an orange, creamy sauce. I drizzled that over fried oysters, sprinkled crumbled bacon and blue cheese over it, and sent it out. I can tell you I loved the taste.
Then came an asparagus cream soup with lump crabmeat and asparagus tips--simple and elemental. (I have a tradition of serving these people green soups.) The fish course was redfish broiled with a sheet of prosciutto over it, then topped with hollandaise--which, frankly, was a bit too eggy.
This time my pricklypear sorbet worked. I froze one part syrup to two parts water, then scraped it to make a sort of granita.
The entree was classic steak au poivre, with pink peppercorns. And Mary Ann's hash browns. (Thank goodness she was there to help me all evening.) The wines with this were my best of the evening: Cakebread Cabernet Sauvignon and Flora Springs Trilogy, both from the 1984 vintage. Both were just right, except for the crumbling cork on the Cakebread.
After a salad with cheeses, I baked some shortcakes and sent them out with Ponchatoula strawberries and whipped cream. And Chappellet Moilleux, a late-harvest Chenin Blanc. After that went down, I brought out the port: Quinta da Roeda 1983. I finally sat down with the guests, who were talking about why the Saints had to stay in New Orleans. I kept my mouth shut, as much out of fatigue as from desire to avoid disagreement.
I finished cleaning up the kitchen at about eleven. A long day. I don't know how chefs do this for decades. I find it murderous. And the worst part is that I know I will leave something at the host's home, and that Mary Ann will chew me out about it.
