Six Course Tour de Force

I wanted to do something special for Matt and Karina to celebrate their recent engagement so I decided to prepare dinner for them.  An engagement is a pretty big deal so I decided to pull out all the stops for our intimate dinner party.  I planned a six course dinner and somehow managed to time each course perfectly (someone up there was looking out for me).  

The people at Eataly should love me because I bought all of the ingredients for dinner there.  It all started because I knew I wanted some of their fresh pasta and the menu just grew from there.  Most of the dishes I made were simple (after all, I had to prepare the whole meal in only about an hour and a half on a Friday after work), but I made sure to use all high quality, fresh ingredients.  When you're working with great products, sometimes simple is best to let the ingredients shine.  After the dinner and two bottles of wine, I think Matt and Karina enjoyed themselves and hope it showed them how happy we all are for them.

Table setting - yes, those are menus tucked into everyone's napkin

Close up of the menu

Seared shrimp bruschetta with avocado, grapefruit, and pistachios

Heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella, and prosciutto - this is one of Karina's favorite things so it had to make the cut.  I sprinkled coarse salt over the top and I think it made all the difference - it brought out the sweetness of the tomatoes.

Chilled corn veloute with crab and Asian chile oil - this was probably my favorite dish of the night and actually the easiest to make.  After boiling fresh corn, remove the kernels from the cob and mix with milk (1 cup for 3 cobs).  Puree and then strain through a fine mesh sieve.  The result is a thin thin soup.  Of course you could thicken this right up with yogurt or cream, but I like leaving it like this.  Why?  Because it looks so good when you serve it by pouring it tableside over the mound of crab (I mixed mine with chives) in each bowl.  Drizzle with the chile oil for a little heat and voila - a fancy dish worthy of any restaurant.

Course number four was an intermezzo.  I'm not sure if I have ever been at an event where an intermezzo was served but my Mommy always told me it is what they do at only the fanciest of dinner parties.  Those fancy people always do wacky things like serve a sweet sorbet in the middle of the meal instead of the end and give it a fancy Italian name.  I like a little wacky so I decided to adopt the tradition and served two flavors, white peach and fig.

The entree was pork tenderloin, roasted with garlic and sage.  I served this alongside roasted asparagus with truffle oil and pea ravioli with cremini mushrooms, brown butter, pine nuts, and fresh pecorino romano.

When it came to dessert, I had a little problem.  We all know I don't bake, but for once I didn't want to pick up something store-bought.  If I was going to make a six course dinner, then I was going to make a six course dinner, so I went through my cookbooks until I found something easy that I could still pass off as something I prepared.  I took amaretti cookies (and the ones I found were nice and light - not dense like biscotti) and topped them with fresh ricotta that I mixed with confectioner's sugar and lemon zest.  After five courses, it was nice to have something light to end the meal, and since I let the ricotta chill in the fridge for two hours during the meal, the lemon really infused the cheese by the time we were ready to eat.