Sunday: What's for dinner?

[Jenise]

I woke up this morning feeling like a family feast kind of dinner, so I invited five couples and we're having:

Cherry confit on goat cheese with toasted baguette
All-day roasted pulled pork
Grilled corn on the cob with green chile compound butter
Roasted potato salad with fennel and celery
Tomato, pepper, zucchini and eggplant torte torte (if Bill Spohn looks on, yes I made two yesterday)

For dessert, a guest is bringing angel food cake with fresh raspberries (our county will supply 65% of the nation's fresh raspberries over the next two weeks)

We're going to dine al fresco on the beach, it's warm but with lots of clouds, should be very comfortable.


The wines will be whatever people bring.

Tomatoes. My favorite producer was supposed to open today- her crop is a bit late, so she was closed. However, she took pity on me and gave me half a dozen gorgeous heirlooms out of her own stash. I figure caprese, naturally, but we'll probably do a theme.

homemade pizza and a green salad

Leftover salads and a chickpea/green bean/kidney bean salad, with an Iranian yogurt/raisin/cucumber/dill soup.

Prosecco throughout the meal.

[Robin Garr]

The garden is in full flower, and all the local farmer's markets have stuff far too tempting to ignore, so it's definitely some kind of veggie dinner tonight. I'm thinking draw down the yellow summer squash inventory a little with a batch of crispy squash pancakes, and maybe some small lamb-burgers made with some fresh ground local grass-fed lamb I picked up at the Beargrass farmers market yesterday. Slice some beefsteak tomatoes, but I think just au naturel with a little oil, I love caprese but we've used up all the fresh mozzarella on it.

Wine? Depends on whether I go with the lamb or go all veggie.

Aglio Olio - a Rachael Ray recipe. It was tasty, even though I didn't have quite enough anchovies left from making La Tagliata the other night.

We marinated chicken breasts in lime juice, Adobo seasoning, and EVOO; then grillpanned them (there were T-storms outside), and had brown Basmati rice and spinach with them. Excellent with T.James '05 Reserve Chardonnay.

Crabcakes, grilled romaine wrapped in prosciutto, and grilled Alaskan sockeye salmon washed down with Babich Pinot Noir. Very nice!

[Jenise]

Crabcakes, grilled romaine wrapped in prosciutto, and grilled Alaskan sockeye salmon washed down with Babich Pinot Noir. Very nice!

Mike, tell us more about the grilled romaine wrapped in proscuitto. I've grilled endive and raddichio, but romaine? No, so I'm intrigued.

Crabcakes, grilled romaine wrapped in prosciutto, and grilled Alaskan sockeye salmon washed down with Babich Pinot Noir. Very nice!

Mike, tell us more about the grilled romaine wrapped in proscuitto. I've grilled endive and raddichio, but romaine? No, so I'm intrigued.

Nothing complicated or original. During recent golf trip to San Diego area had dinner at Piatti's in La Jolla. The grilled romaine was a salad offering that two of us had and thought was very good. Cindy liked the description I gave upon returning from the trip; we have now made it twice and are both fond of it as a different approach to salad. So I've been experimenting at home trying to find an optimal prep method. General instructions follow.

Trim head of romaine as appropriate to remove undesirable leaf portions. Wash romaine and dry as well as possible. Cut the head in half vertically (lengthwise) leaving the root attached to hold each piece together. Brush with olive oil. Season to taste with salt (lightly) and fresh ground black pepper. Wrap one or two pieces of prosciutto around each half head of romaine. (Early experiments indicate paper-thin slices don't work well.....restaurant had slightly thicker slices.) Grill romaine about 2 minutes on each side. Serves 2 as a pretty big salad depending on the size of the head.

Have been experimenting with heat...high temp and direct is too much, you can end up blackening the leaf-ends. Medium fire, indirect probably works better, may also require a little more cooking time at the lower temp. Alternatively, could probably cook in a saute pan or on a griddle.

Also, the fatter the head of romaine, the longer each piece of prosciutto needs to be......I'd say 8 inches is probably good.

I would think that the simplistic preparation leaves room for everyone to customize and experiment. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[Jenise]

Mike, thanks for the description. That sounds quite intriguing--lettuces like romaine have a sweetness to them that heat brings out and I can imagine how appealing this combination would be, not to mention very attractive. One could get a deli counter to slice the proscuitto a little extra thick, or even use some that comes in packages but use, say, three slices without separating them. Under heat, they should fuse. I'll have to try this soon.

Made eggplant parmagiana (or some version thereof). It included a couple of types of eggplant and some squash. The red sauce that went into it had some Italian sausage and porcini in it and had cooked way down the day before. I thinned it with some Muir Glen roasted diced tomatoes before throwing it in with the eggplant, ricotta, Reggiano, etc.

Very nice.

Hell, I forgot.

rwj