2008 - out. 2009 - in.

Happy New Years everyone! For 9 years, with little exception, new years has been marked with a tradition amongst friends of midnight mass followed by a massive multi-coursed dinner party. This started on the event on the eve of 2000 at the Newman center at UW-Oshkosh, hosted my our friend Fr. Tom. He moved to the outskirts of Appleton, and so did our gathering. The tradition morphed over the years, usually with the continued realization that we couldn't tackle as much food between 2am and 6am as we wanted, and started to add a "sleep course" between diner, and lunch. One year our obligations prevented a new year's event, but dinner still happened the week prior.

This year, because of our obligations in Ohio, we weren't able to celebrate in WI. Fortunately for us our friends Keith and Christoper, home visiting from Torino, spend the week with us the new year. After an afternoon trip to Columbus to buy the freshest of ingredients at the North Market we spend the days cooking, and the evenings with delicious food, wonderful wine, and great company. As a caveat, to same on the labour of dishes, we served largely on Dixie over chargers...our photos are surely not to make this month's cover of Food & Wine as a result, but we'll survive.
A rundown of the menu is as follows:

1. Crepe with salmon and dill creme fresh sauce. Wine: CA pinot noir.

2. Pate de campagne (country pate) with homemade horseradish, mustard, and cornichons (pickles). Pate de campagne, made largely with chicken liver and ground pork (here veal) was a way for rural French to enjoy the delicacy of a pate at a fraction of what a fresh pate or foie gras would cost. Wine: CA Pinot Noir

3. Soupe - Tom Khagai - It's Thai, it's delicious (hence the photo mid-eating, because we were eager to get into it!) It's a chicken broth/coconut milk based coup with mushroom, lemon grass, and wonderful flavour. It was one of two welcome diversions from our otherwise French menu. Wine: WA Reisling

4. Pasta Amatriciana - originating from the town of Amatrice - it's a tomato based sauce with pancetta and with a bit of spice. Delicious! Wine: Alsacacian Pinot Noir (not common)


5. Coquille St. Jacquen en Surprise (with the ever-so-tacky transaltion of "scallop surprise!") This is Brian's specialty, made all but one of the past 9 dinners, made by Brian all but one of those. Sauce: sause a la saffron avec tomates fraiche (safforn sauce with fresh tomatoes) Wine: Alsacian Gevertztraminer




6. Steak au poivre - Here we got the finest ribeye cuts that were offered at North market, coated with fresh cut peppercorns, cooked and flambeed with cognac, and coated with traditional au poivre cream sauce. We were so excited to dig in, we realized only afterwards we didn't take the requisite photo. Here is evidence that the dish was indeed prepared. Wine: I can't remember!

7. Chocolate cheesecake with raspberry wine reduction (made with Door County Raspberry Wine) and served with fresh raspberries. Wine: shamefully, we had no port, but enjoyed some Poire William (pear infused Cognac).

Part of the dinner was joined by our friend Randy - also a native Wisconsinite. He prepared the non-french dishes. Sorbets were also a pineapple-rosemary, and a grapefruit-coriander (which tasted like gold bond powder). Keith blamed me for sleeping in and not preventing his damaging the sanctity of the grapefruit sorbet. Thankfully, there was enough juice for me to make a "normal" batch. As a side note - Keith is notorious for trying to make magical spiced creations with sorbet. Such flavours have been "tomato-garlic" and "wasabi." We are generally opposed to him doing this, but from time to time he still gets away with such cullinary...um...experiements.

More blogging to come. Janet's computer has finally bit the dust, and we're working on a replacement.