Caroline
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| Winter 2017 |
Inspired by an article called
Black Magic from a back issue of Food and Drink magazine, I chose
black as the theme for our October lunch. Yup, black and nothing to do with Hallow's Eve. As the date approached, I amassed a number of black ingredients to build my main. Fermented garlic jam, mullet and herring roes, black truffles, black fermented garlic, French blood pudding, charcoal sea salt from Spain and cuttlefish ink (commonly known as squid ink).
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| Black is the colour... |
A lot of thought, planning and testing goes into the preparation of our Epitourists lunches. After much thought, I settle on an amuse-bouche and a main to utilize as many black ingredients as possible.
Menu
Amuse-bouche of pan fried French blood sausage with black garlic jelly
Mexican black bean soup
Squid ink risotto, seared scallops, wild mushrooms
with all sorts of bells and whistles
Dilano's Black Lemon cheese and Leinala's Bakery potato bread
Ginger cake and lemon curd whipped cream
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Amuse-bouche of Pan Fried
French Blood Sausage with Black Garlic Jelly | |
Who would have thought that this unlikely combination of sweet and savoury would be so tasty not to mention dramatic. A quick flash is a hot pan was all that the sausage needed to be ready. A smear of jelly on a plate, 1, 2, 3 morsels of blood sausage and let your taste buds be amused!
Kaarina delighted us with this delicious black bean soup with
sophisticated toppings. First the dried black beans were soaked 12 hours
and simmered for 3-4
hours along with chopped onion, 2 garlic cloves and salt. She excluded
the chorizo, used two Poblano peppers, half a
jalapeño and toasted corn kernels instead of tortilla strips.
En
route to our Epitourists' lunch, I got word that a friend was offering a
pound or so of freshly picked, wild mushrooms for our lunch. How
exciting! How exotic! How wild! How wow! I was thrilled to detour in his
direction.
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| Wild shrooms! |
After
many oohs and aahs over the wild mushrooms, we cleaned them as best we
could, sliced them and fried them in olive oil, seasoned with
charcoal sea salt and finely sliced green onions. After
removing the lovelies, the pan was deglazed with 1/4 cup of sherry and a
generous cup of veal stock. Once reduced to half, I plopped in a
heaping tablespoon of butter to finish. Now, for the rest of the main...
I had decided on
Black Squid Ink Risotto with Seared Scallops topped with
Charred Shallots and
Black Garlic Aïoli. And for a splash of colour, a slice of lemon dotted with mullet and herring roes. Phew!
My
lessons learned: 1. Risotto is not photogenic. 2. The Thermomix is not
risotto's best friend. 3. "...less can be more and abundance can still
be achieved with fewer ingredient." ❧ Yotam Ottolenghi 4. The mixing of
too many exotic ingredients can cause certain tummy malaise.
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| The not-so-photogenic risotto and his friends |
Paired wines:
Anselmi San Vincenzo, a Garganega blend from Veneto, Italy and
Colomé, a 2017 Torrontés from Argentina.
In keeping with our theme, Laura brought a wedge of
Dilano's Black Lemon
cheese which, as the packaging states, was "excitingly different". I
think we would agree that it was so more in look than in taste. And to
keep the dutch gouda want-to-be company, Kaarina offered some lovely sour rye from
Milbree-Viking in Newmarket.
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| Rye and charcoal! |
To finish, Laura plated an elegant dessert of moist
ginger cake topped with lemon curd whipped cream — David Lebovitz recipes which I will definitely be making this holiday season.
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| Elegant! |
