Dinner #1: Egg Yolk Ravioli Miracles

Menu
June 12, 2016

Course One
Pistachio & Goat Cheese with Dates

Course Two
Caprese 2.1

Course Three
Uovo in Raviolo

Course Four
Beet & Avocado Salad

Course Five
Non-Traditional Flatbread

Course Six
Duck with Blood Orange

Course Seven
Semifreddo with Raspberry Bliss

Eight hours for cooking, for someone who doesn't cook a lot, seems like a long time. Especially when we had gotten all of the ingredients the day before. How hard could it be? 

How hard could it be felt like the theme that had gotten us started on this - a dinner that was meant for one guest and had turned into nine. At least John was a cook. All I knew how to do was follow a recipe. 

We had been together for about 6 months and we'd cooked together a couple of times, but nothing like this, nothing like a seven-course feast where John had to bring more chairs from his apartment because we didn't have enough at Mom's. She had brought out her best crystal goblets for this. But even as we had plotted the menu together, seven courses didn't seem insurmountable if we started at 10AM and the guests were coming at 6PM. That is a whole working day! And there would be things that we would be completing in between courses. 

How hard could it be?

The answer was really hard! As 6PM arrived, with guests, I was still printing menus, cutting them to size and unshowered. Dressed in the dress I had picked out for the occasion, but unshowered, my hair greasy from a day bent over a hot stove and peering into ovens. The printer kept jamming and I was thankful that the table had been set the day before so at least that looked nice when I didn't. The first course, the pistachio and goat cheese with dates (a last minute substitution when we couldn't find fresh figs in stores), were out on the table and we realized one of us would have to play host/hostess...which means we would be one down in the kitchen. 

Course two went well (the foam wasn't perfectly aerated but c'mon, who is really counting) but where we really ran into issues was course three. 

Uovo in raviolo. Egg in Raviolo. 

It was as John was rolling out the pasta dough that his pasta machine broke. Yeah, that's...not ideal. So with nine people waiting for the star dish, we have no pasta dough. As the time between courses grows, the situation is becoming a little desperate. We are sweating it, figuratively and literally. It is time for desperate measures - it becomes a "make your own ravioli" class. 

1 hour later, course three is served and we are back on track. 

As a rather unattractive Course Four, beet and avocado salad, is served, course five goes in the oven. The beets had stained the avocado, making the whole salad very dark, and in the continuing darkening room of a very lengthy dinner, not ideal but Course Five comes out hot and on time. 

This is where we begin to hit our groove. On the momentum of a relatively successful Course Five - a non-traditional flatbread - comes the other star dish: Duck with Blood Orange. It was perfectly cooked and served with shallots and a blood orange sauce. 

And for our last course, John's famous chocolate semifreddo with raspberry (bliss) sauce and a sprig of mint. 

It was 11PM, on a Sunday evening, by the time everyone left. It had been a 5 hour dinner (yes five hour dinner) - and we still had a lot of dishes and clean-up to do. Some courses were successful, some were not, but as John and I lay, flopped on the couch with our feet hurting and complaining that even after all that food, somehow we were still hungry, we were also already planning our next one!

So basically, the answer to how hard could it be is really freaking hard.