Dec. 28th, 2002 10:05 pm
Foodie foodie foodie!
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muckefuckBacchus, what a day!
It started out unpromisingly enough. I'd stayed up too late the night before indulging my shameful LiveJournal™ habit and wasted much of the morning trying to sleep in. About ten, I more-or-less gave up and called my brother to solidify our plans to meet at Meinl. Monshu had some shopping to get in and it looked like it would be a convenient place to end up.
The shopping never happened. We napped about one and I woke up with barely enough time to shower and make it to the rendezvous.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bunj's good parking karma gained him and e. a space half a block from the café and they walked in just about the time I realised I hadn't had anything more substantial than a slice of pound cake all day. Nuphy had sung the praises of Meinl's soup and sandwiches to me, so I order a combo with my Melange. The ham sandwich wasn't all that, but the bacon-clam chowder was rich enough to line a coffin with. Oddly, the coffee tasted more bitter than it had on my last visit--was it just the contrast with the heavy cream content of my soup?
No matter. The large mocha I ordered next was exactly as I remembered it, even in the company of a gâteau Saint-Honoré. Despite the presence of Dobos-Torte, I had to order that, since I had read about it for the first time in the Larousse the night before. It was, apparently, a little unorthodox, being made with a little less caramel and chocolate rather than vanilla Chantilly cream.
But, by this time,bunj and I, coffee-neophytes both, were practically vibrating. It was the first time I'd seen him and e. after Christmas, so we naturally fell to dissecting some of our family's holiday behaviour. The caffeine buzz allowed me to shout them down with my most generous rationalisations of my parents' bad behaviour. Dad, I told them, isn't so much selfish as just needy. It fits my "black hole" theory that he naturally turns to his grandson, who is about as perfect a source of unconditional love as you'll ever find, to fill himself up whenever the tyke is available and wants the company of me and my brother to top him off in the remaining hours.
And,rollick, any misconceptions you might have about the foodieness of my family would've been settled in an instant by e.'s expression when I told her the question you asked. We savaged my mom's Christmas eve pork tenderloin. It was apparently inspired by a marinade e. told her about, but rendered so unrecognisable by her "improvisation" that bunj--who usually makes the marinade at home--didn't even realise that's what Mom was aiming for when he helped her fix the meal. "She thinks she's reached the stage where she can experiment [instead of following recipes], but she's not," he lamented. I recalled wincing when I saw the panful of drippings that had been abandoned rather than rendered into gravy and again when I tasted how thirsty the pork was for gravy or jus.
But all that was a distant memory by this point. Between us, we'd had seven coffees, four pastries, and three savouries. We concluded the Kaffeklatsch with the unveiling of Monshu's New Year's gift: A bottle of 30 year-old Laphraoig. (Now it should be clear why I heard from my Visa card's fraud-prevention department!) I was dying to taste it as much as he was, but he made sure to thank me again once we were home before breaking open the bottle. "I know this set you back a pretty penny!" he said. "Thank grandma," I replied, "her Christmas money covered 4/5s of the cost!"
And? As I toldbunj on the phone, "It's a single-malt scotch you can drink like brandy." Every bit as flavourful as the 10 or 15 year-old, but without any alcohol aftertaste. Smooth as my butt and twice as perky. I was hopping around the room, still on my caffeine buzz, telling him, "You need to make more money!"
After all that, dinner had to be a more modest affair. It still ended up awfully rich, though: I took yesterday's bleu-cheese mashed potatoes and gave them a gratin of bacon and kasseri. Meanwhile, I sauteed Vidalia onion in the rendered bacon fat (don't tell Monshu!) and simmered it with balsamic vinegar and smoked sausages. I considered pouring the resulting liquid over the baby spinach--one of the nicest salads in the world is fresh spinach wilted with hot bacon fat and vinegar--but, in the end, I just served it up straight. Eating it last really helped to cut the richness of what went before.
After dinner, I had to try the bittersweet chocolate we'd bought at Meinl. It's only 58% cocoa, so not the richest available, but velvety smooth. I matched it with a little Banyuls, French Catalonian fortified wine that goes better than almost any other with chocolate because of its slightly chocolaty taste. By then, I was positively glowing with self-satisfaction at my decadent bourgeois lifestyle.
It started out unpromisingly enough. I'd stayed up too late the night before indulging my shameful LiveJournal™ habit and wasted much of the morning trying to sleep in. About ten, I more-or-less gave up and called my brother to solidify our plans to meet at Meinl. Monshu had some shopping to get in and it looked like it would be a convenient place to end up.
The shopping never happened. We napped about one and I woke up with barely enough time to shower and make it to the rendezvous.
bunj's good parking karma gained him and e. a space half a block from the café and they walked in just about the time I realised I hadn't had anything more substantial than a slice of pound cake all day. Nuphy had sung the praises of Meinl's soup and sandwiches to me, so I order a combo with my Melange. The ham sandwich wasn't all that, but the bacon-clam chowder was rich enough to line a coffin with. Oddly, the coffee tasted more bitter than it had on my last visit--was it just the contrast with the heavy cream content of my soup?No matter. The large mocha I ordered next was exactly as I remembered it, even in the company of a gâteau Saint-Honoré. Despite the presence of Dobos-Torte, I had to order that, since I had read about it for the first time in the Larousse the night before. It was, apparently, a little unorthodox, being made with a little less caramel and chocolate rather than vanilla Chantilly cream.
But, by this time,
bunj and I, coffee-neophytes both, were practically vibrating. It was the first time I'd seen him and e. after Christmas, so we naturally fell to dissecting some of our family's holiday behaviour. The caffeine buzz allowed me to shout them down with my most generous rationalisations of my parents' bad behaviour. Dad, I told them, isn't so much selfish as just needy. It fits my "black hole" theory that he naturally turns to his grandson, who is about as perfect a source of unconditional love as you'll ever find, to fill himself up whenever the tyke is available and wants the company of me and my brother to top him off in the remaining hours.And,
rollick, any misconceptions you might have about the foodieness of my family would've been settled in an instant by e.'s expression when I told her the question you asked. We savaged my mom's Christmas eve pork tenderloin. It was apparently inspired by a marinade e. told her about, but rendered so unrecognisable by her "improvisation" that bunj--who usually makes the marinade at home--didn't even realise that's what Mom was aiming for when he helped her fix the meal. "She thinks she's reached the stage where she can experiment [instead of following recipes], but she's not," he lamented. I recalled wincing when I saw the panful of drippings that had been abandoned rather than rendered into gravy and again when I tasted how thirsty the pork was for gravy or jus.But all that was a distant memory by this point. Between us, we'd had seven coffees, four pastries, and three savouries. We concluded the Kaffeklatsch with the unveiling of Monshu's New Year's gift: A bottle of 30 year-old Laphraoig. (Now it should be clear why I heard from my Visa card's fraud-prevention department!) I was dying to taste it as much as he was, but he made sure to thank me again once we were home before breaking open the bottle. "I know this set you back a pretty penny!" he said. "Thank grandma," I replied, "her Christmas money covered 4/5s of the cost!"
And? As I told
bunj on the phone, "It's a single-malt scotch you can drink like brandy." Every bit as flavourful as the 10 or 15 year-old, but without any alcohol aftertaste. Smooth as my butt and twice as perky. I was hopping around the room, still on my caffeine buzz, telling him, "You need to make more money!"After all that, dinner had to be a more modest affair. It still ended up awfully rich, though: I took yesterday's bleu-cheese mashed potatoes and gave them a gratin of bacon and kasseri. Meanwhile, I sauteed Vidalia onion in the rendered bacon fat (don't tell Monshu!) and simmered it with balsamic vinegar and smoked sausages. I considered pouring the resulting liquid over the baby spinach--one of the nicest salads in the world is fresh spinach wilted with hot bacon fat and vinegar--but, in the end, I just served it up straight. Eating it last really helped to cut the richness of what went before.
After dinner, I had to try the bittersweet chocolate we'd bought at Meinl. It's only 58% cocoa, so not the richest available, but velvety smooth. I matched it with a little Banyuls, French Catalonian fortified wine that goes better than almost any other with chocolate because of its slightly chocolaty taste. By then, I was positively glowing with self-satisfaction at my decadent bourgeois lifestyle.
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