July 6, 2012 Dinner – BD Party at Lisa and Mike’s  Gravad lax salad and Vegetarian penne pasta

It was Mike’s BD on Friday and we had discussed having a party, especially since Kipp and Jean Claude were in town from France.  As it turned out another friend of theirs, Michel, was also visiting the States with them and there was a total of 10 around the dinner table in the garden. 

We brought lovely wines, a Chateau Ott and an Elk Cove Pinot Gris.  The Chateau ott is a rose from Bandol and considered one of the best roses in the world.  The Elk Cove was amazing; crisp and fruity with no residual bitterness or tannin after taste.  Kipp loved it.

The French guys liked the smooth Chateau Ott also.  Jean Claude brought a small vineyard mixture of sauvignon blanc, chardonnay and chinen blanc from Tournaise; the region his family is from and where they retain their family home.  I had forgotten that the French are always connected to the their family’s region of origen although they often work and live most of the time in Paris, as do both Jean Claude and Michel.  So when Michel invited us to visit him if we visit the south of France, he means that his family was from the South of France and they have retained their family ties to that region and they spend their weekends and holidays in the South of France the way Lisa and Mike maintain a house in Taos.   

 Others brought wonderful wines, Lisa and Mike opened a magnum of premier Cru Chablis and for dinner Lisa opened a number of great reserve Rioja reds from Ray Vigil’s Iberian Imports. 

The diner was quite simple.  Lisa had coated three logs of goat cheese with coatings like blue berries and red chili and there was a plate of shrimp.

Then Suzette and I made a salad appetizer with baby greens from Costco on which we laid slices of gravid lax and orange and fresh thinly shaved fennel and then we drizzled the salad with basil infused olive oil and an orange and mayonnaise dressing.

This salad was discovered by us in Chicago at a wonderful Italian restaurant across the street from the Drake Hotel called Spiagia.  I had made the gravid lax with the King Salmon from Ta Lin ($5.95/lb.), so it was soft and tender and we had zested orange peel into the sugar and salt mixture. 

Gravad Lax

1 3 lb. piece of fresh never frozen salmon, fileted with the skin on and descaled

2/3 cup salt

½ cup sugar

1 tsp. finely crushed fresh black  pepper

2 bunches fresh dill weed

Zest of one orange

Remove the back bone and flippers from the fish.  Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl

Use  a  pyrex dish that will hold it snuggly and is deep enough to hold the fish and all the liquid that will be produced.  Lay a layer of fresh dill in the bottom of the dish.  Then coat the outside of one of the two salmon filets with dry mixture and lay the outside side down on the layer of dill.  Then coat the inside of that filet with the mixture and a layer of dill.  Then coat the inside of the other filet with mixture and lay it on the filet side already in the dish so they are mirror images of each other then put the rest of the mixture on top of the second filet and add a layer of dill.   I usually cover the dish with saran and then weigh the salmon down with bricks to compress the fish into the mixture.  I put it in the fridge for 12 and then turn it and let it sit for an additional 12 hours so both sides will be submerged in the liquid produced by the curing, although you can cure for longer periods of time.  I actually did the salmon for this dinner party 36 hours.

When the fish is cured, I washed the curing medium and dill and pepper off the fish, patted it dry and wrapped it in saran and kept it in the fridge.

Dressing -  the traditional dressing is Swedish mustard and olive oil and a bit of sugar to taste.

In this dish we made a basil infused olive oil by blanching fresh basil leaves for a couple of minutes and then processing them in a Waring blender with olive oil for a few seconds until the leaves had been slashed into thin pieces.  We poured the infused olive oil into plastic bottles with spouts, so we could squeeze it out easily.

Suzette did the same for the orange/mayonnaise dressing.  She squeezed fresh orange juice and mixed it with mayonnaise into a smooth, creamy consistency and put it into a plastic squeeze bottle.  We bought a plastic carton of fresh fennel bulbs at Trader Joe’s on the Saturday before the party, so I simply cut the leaves off the base of one of the bulbs and thinly sliced the leaves into thin strips with a vegetable peeler.  

Suzette sliced one of the cured salmon filets into slices a little less than ¼ inch in thickness by placing the skin side down on a wooden board and slicing  through the meat to the skin and then turning the knife and  pushing the flesh away from the skin.

We assembled the dish by laying a mound of fresh baby greens on each plate, then four slices of salmon and three or four slices of orange, then five or six slices of fresh fennel and then a drizzle of orange mayonnaise and a drizzle of basil olive oil.

I drank Elk Cove Pinot Gris with my salad and loved it. 

Lisa made the main course which was Penne pasta tossed with a vegetable mixture that included red chard, pesto, mushrooms, red and yellow bell peppers and small tomatoes that she had sautéed.  The dish was amazingly delicious.  Lisa is what I call a natural Italian Cook.  Her lineage is Italian on one side of her family and she has an instinct for cooking Italian that one who is not raised in an Italian family will never have.  She continues to amaze me with her skill and dexterity.  This meal for example was cooked after a day of hard work as a lawyer,  she had the ingredients prepped and just threw them into a pan and cooked them quickly and tossed them with the penna for a hot fresh delicious pasta diah.

The light but earthy red Rioja tempranillos went well with the vegetable mixture.

For dessert we had a Costco Apple pie with Hagen Daz vanilla ice cream.    Costco Apple pie seems to be the dessert of the season.  Lisa and Mike served the dessert with Chevaulier? Sauternes from Trader Joe’s ($12.95). This meal is a great example of how one can create a delightful dinner party without spending hours in the kitchen.  It takes some shopping and prep time, but the final cooking time is quick and easy.

The secret to the fun of this evening was the wide assortment of lovely wines and interesting people.  Another friend named Janet also had a BD, so three of the 10 people were BD celebrants.

A fun evening dinner party in the garden with pleasant talk and wine and food that was not at all heavy.

Bon Appétit