“Cheese” Dinner
23-Jun-2007
The last couple of weeks have just flown by. Last weekend I had family members in town for four days and did a ton of cooking – which I loved! Cooking for big groups is always fun but does take a bit of time and recovery when you’ve done several big meals in a row. Unfortunately I didn’t take any photos but I will tell you that for one of the lunches I cooked a whole copper rive sockeye and it was heavenly!
The family left Tuesday morning (one of my nephews had high school graduation on Monday night) and then I was busy getting the house back to normal and catching up on work. Then, last night, it was time for a "payback" dinner!
When I took the French Cheese Tasting course during the Seattle Cheese Festival, I had been riding on a friend’s ticket when he came down sick. So M and I had decided that we’d do our own version of the tasting to let him get a an idea of what he missed. I changed it up a bit though and decided that we’d do some actual cheese tasting but in addition I"d do a light meal where everything was made with cheese.
We started the evening on the deck with Gougères and Veuve Clicqout NV Rosé Champagne, a very French wine for our tasting. I "discovered" this champagne last October at a class at Gourmet Institute and immediately fell in love. Upon my return to Seattle I happened upon it one day while at Esquin and snatched up a bottle. While not priced for everyday drinking it’s a very nice special bottle of champagne.
We continued with our conversation on the deck and added blue cheese and walnut crostini drizzled with honey to the food options. Unfortunately, soon after the crostini the wind picked up and the clouds blocked the sun, just temporarily but long enough to chill my guests. So we moved inside.
After a bit of a rest from the first two nibbles, I made the mushroom and egg dish that I’d had at the Harvest Vine class. It was very good! I love this dish as it really could be anything from breakfast to dinner and combines sweet and salty tastes with several textures for a delightful and comforting meal. By this time we’d switched to a couple of red wines, a lovely Bordeaux and a delightful Rhone, that C had contributed to the evening. Our final dish of the evening was a cheese plate with bread and cherries. We had our choice of Humboldt Fog (from M), St Agur (from C) and a triple cream, Delice de Bourgogne, which is actually more like butter than cheese!
We finally pushed away from the table somewhere around midnight. It was a fun, long and lingering meal. Quite lovely.
Culinary Fool 
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