Thursday, February 21, 2019

Last night was fabulous. Contrary to what we thought was going to happen there were fourteen of us in the restaurant, all as guests of the chef. No one except the chef did any cooking and what an amazing meal we had. He did all the cooking on a two burner cooking plate in the sitting area of the restaurant. He had a GoPro camera set up so we could see a close-up of the pans as they were cooking on the stove but for the most part I only watched him in action.

We started out with some prawns, fresh off the boat. Although they weren’t shelled (which we prefer) we dug in with our fingers and the four of us at our end of the table finished off a bowl of them. They weren’t included in what he planned to make – just something to get us started in case the last two people showed up.

The appetizer course was a roasted radish salad – none of us had ever heard of roasting radishes. They were roasted in oil, salt and pepper and the process took all the heat out of them; Pat thought they tasted a bit like brussels sprouts. The dressing on the salad was made of a couple of types of mustard and sour cream and a bit of this and that spicing.

Next up was a mushroom tart made with about five different kinds of mushroom cooked with a generous quantity of white wine and served on puff pasty with asparagus stems.

For the “main” course we had duck. Duck is the last thing I would ever order in a restaurant and I have to say I wasn’t looking forward to it. He told us how he prepares the duck – they sit in a dry salt brine for three days before being rinsed, dried and stored in their own fat; apparently they can be stored this way for up to six months because the meat at this point is cured. The roasted duck was served with bok choy and the sauce on the plate was made from a bottle of red wine, reduced down, with cranberries and blueberries added at the end. The results were amazing – not only amazing for duck but it is one of the best meat dishes I’ve ever had.

For dessert we had ice cream and blueberry sauce for dessert – this sauce was basically made with butter, blueberries and wine.

We’ll definitely be back for more! And the bonus is that the restaurant is just at the bottom of our hill.

I was off to stitching today. There is still a lot of snow around Gail’s place and I parked half on the road and half in her driveway just to be sure I could get out again. I was stitching the binding on my Farmer’s Wife quilt – more than half-way around now.

Tonight I’m off to my 100+ Women Who Care meeting. More snow predicted for tomorrow.