Dinner #11: Andersummer

Menu
August 4, 2018

Appetizers
Zucchini Corn Cakes
Sweet Corn and Crab Poppers

Course One
Summer’s End Salad

Course Two
Mint Pesto Pita Pizza

Course Three
Ajo Blanco

Course Four
Stacked Salmon

Course Five
Apricot and Pistachio Cake with Brown Sugar Ice Cream

Beverages
Peach Bourbon Arnold Palmer
Selection of Fine Wines

Summer! Days are nice and long, so many things are in season, and even if it I'm adult now and that means I still have to work, summer can still be a celebration. 

For John, summer was something a little different. Summer was a re-entrance back into the work force for a little bit with a summer internship, but apparently AJRB had garnered a reputation among his classmates so we decided to do one for some of his school friends (I know "school friends" makes it sound not so sophisticated but colleagues sounds so formal!). 

We were really jazzed about our appetizers - Zucchini Corn Cakes and Sweet Corn and Crab Poppers - until it came time to actually making them and we realized they were both hot appetizers....which we'd never done before. And with that in mind, let me back it up into a memory a little bit. 

When John and I were moving in together, we had to get a U-Haul and pack up all our stuff and move it from Orange County to LA. We first packed up John's stuff in his apartment and then went to my mom's house where I was living and packed up my stuff. We asked one of our really good friends, who happens to be one of the strongest guys we know, to help us move and (like true hero), he said yes. Being the strong guy that he is, he has apparently helped a lot of his friends move. As we were packing the U-Haul up, when we were at my mom's house and it was getting rather full considering how much stuff I still had to get in there, he described this phenomenon that he had seen occur many times. He said that in the beginning, when you first start filling the van, like the first third or so, you think you have loads of space. The second third, you are like uh oh, is all this stuff gonna fit? And in the very end, it's like see, I knew all this stuff was gonna fit - nothing to worry about. So he told me not to worry. 

Back to the appetizers. John and I don't experience AJRB so much in "U-Haul thirds" as I think of it but it does kind of follow the same format. In the beginning, it feels like we have loads of time, who knows, maybe we can even nap that day - then the morning of an AJRB, it is totally frantic, maybe we will have to cut stuff off the menus, and then only in the last hour does everything get done. So imagine if that last hour is suddenly different than every other time you've experienced it? 

Yeah, so all of that is to say, two hot appetizers were a big deal. 

But they were also some of the best appetizers we had ever had...so there was also that....

Course One was a Summer's End Salad, which was a vibrant and beautiful salad that was super colorful. Course Two was a Mint Pesto Pita Pizza, with homemade pita which turned out way bigger than we expected them to be so there was a little bread to topping ratio which was rather unfortunate. Course Three though. This is John's most quoted AJRB dish.

Every time I hear him talk about AJRB to someone who doesn't know about AJRB, he talks about this course - Ajo Blanco. Personally, I thought it was, well, weird. It is bread soup. Literally. And when we served it, I was not sure how many people were going to like it because it tastes like, well, bread. But in soup form. It is heavy, and pretty gluggy. But I've also not really had anything like it before, so that was pretty awesome. 

Course Four was a Stacked Salmon dish and Course Five was my showstopper - an Apricot and Pistachio Cake with Brown Sugar Ice Cream. The ice cream, admittedly, was all John. For our six-month engagement anniversary (yes, we are those people) we splurged and got an ice cream machine we had been eyeing for a long time so it was homemade and divine. My cake was really fun - it involved two different types of buttercream, a drip effect, and edible florals...still one of the prettiest desserts I've made to date.