This past weekend, Josh and I had family down to celebrate a birthday (my mom) and a retirement (Josh’s Aunt Barbara). It was a fun evening and unlike past dinners, I actually helped out a fair amount – besides doing the dishes that is.
We had some completely new dishes and some favorites. One of our new favorites, the pork belly from Christmas Eve returned. Josh is very imaginative. The pork belly has to be prepared sous vide with this type of sous vide machine and since we don’t have it, he came up with what we call “quasi- vide”- see picture to the right. Basically, he wraps the meat (in this case, the pork belly) is saran wrap, weighs in under water with a pyrex measuring cup, puts the candy thermometer in the water and away we go. It works like a charm – the pork has been cooked perfectly each time.
We also had blinis with “eggplant caviar” – a Thomas Keller recipe (in French Laundry). The pancakes were superlight and fluffy and the eggplant caviar had the perfect amount of garlic. This recipe is what set us off on Thomas Keller’s cookbooks. A little over 5 years ago Josh and I were looking for recipes for eggplant and I found blinis with eggplant caviar in French Laundry. We have made them a few times but I think this was the best version.
As a “pre-dessert”, Josh made “Egg” from On the Line – the book/cookbook about Marguy Le Coze and Eric Ripert’s Le Bernardin. The full name of the recipe is 
“EGG” Milk Chocolate pots de creme with caramel foam, maple syrup, amd maldon sea salt. The picture to the right shows the chocolate filled eggs without the foam, syrup, and salt. Josh cleaned out all the eggs and then cooked the chocolate cream in the empty egg shells. They were amazing – thank goodness there was an extra one – I had it for breakfast the next day!
Another great dinner with great company!
~Ingrid
