Event #21: A Wedding Anniversary
Menu
July 5, 2020
Appetizers
Brioche Feuilletee
Course One
Mussels and Clams with French Bread
Course Two
Zucchini Pasta with Roasted Tomato, Garlic, and an Egg
Course Three
Scallops with Potato Pancakes and Creme Fraiche
Course Four
Cheese and Charcuterie
Course Five
Chocolate Raspberry Wedding Cake
Beverages
Tom Collins
Pence Winery Chardonnay
As life in the time of COVID-19 continued on, we realized that we would be having many more mini AJRBs so we planned our next one to celebrate our anniversary. As before, we got to think about the kinds of food that we would want to eat and enjoy - and remembering how quickly we got full last time even though we had tried to scale back, we attempted to scale back even more (even I think most people wouldn’t be able to tell by the menu).
For me personally, the hardest course was actually going to be the appetizer which we were affectionately calling “crispy bread.” It was based on this delicious bread we had at our three Michelin star dinner on our honeymoon and - shockingly - there was no recipe to be found to recreate it so we had to settle for something else, which I’m sure, is much more doable - Brioche feuilletee (or flaky brioche). Since I would not be doing the dessert (I’ll get to that later) it left me plenty of time to work on this tricky little pastry but it was well worth it when John said it was his second favorite brad that he’d ever eaten - second only to the original “crispy bread.”
Now why I wasn’t working on the dessert is because, for our anniversary, we decided to go back to the bakery that made our wedding cake and order the top tier of our wedding cake. They had recommended that we come back and get a fresh tier, rather than one that made have sat in our freezer for a year and we were happy to oblige and come back for some fresh delicious cake.
Back to dinner! After our crispy bread appetizer and a Tom Collins for our cocktail, we had a delicious clam and mussel dish with a white wine (from Julia Child’s cookbook) with (more) fresh bread (from Nancy Silverton’s cookbook). I knew I was in for disaster when I was already getting full after Course One.
Course Two was Zucchini Pasta with Confit Tomato and Garlic, and an Egg. It was meant to be light and refreshing and I was very thankful because it was. The egg was perfectly cooked and the confit-ed vegetables were delicious - savory and sweet and perfectly cooked.
Spoiler alert with Course Three - this was our tipping point of the evening. Even though we only had three scallops with three small potato pancakes with creme fraiche, it was so fulling and rich, we had to skip course four altogether. Yep, we skipped the whole course and in doing so, we realize just how much we must torture our poor guests by stuffing them full of food and resolved to try some new things when we are back in person (like smaller but more interesting plates, working on presentation more, maybe doing things more made to order so there is more rest time, etc). Anyway, Course Three was our Scallops with Potato Pancakes and Champagne Caviar Sauce was everything we wanted it to be (except the sauce didn’t really turn out but turns out, we didn’t really need it).
We finished the meal with a big slice of wedding cake - which was really fun because at our wedding, we had actually served three different flavors but only got to try one. So for this tier, we ordered our favorite, the chocolate raspberry, and it was every bit as delicious as we remembered it being when we had tried it at our tasting (if not more) almost a year and a half ago.