Yesterday I tendered my most sincere regrets for my first Geekquinox dinner since Pete started hosting them way back in 2011.
It couldn't be helped; the cold I am fighting settled into my chest, and even if I was feeling better, I would not risk infecting everyone else. So Audrey went without me and I went to bed before 11 and didn't wake up until the following afternoon.
But I was still up when Audrey came home and showed me the wee takeaway container Pete and Ellen had put together for me and I was very nearly overwhelmed.
And I know Pete appreciates seeing his excellent work commemorated on my blog, so I am using the frayed remainder of my faculties to put together my first takeaway Geekquinox post!
The theme this time was another "Best of" dinner, where guests were encouraged to reflect back over their favourite dishes from the previous thirty-odd Geekquinoxes (Geekquinoctes?) and submit their requests - a task as laborious as it was elementary. There are too many excellent dishes to choose from to make the decisions easy, and compound that with my own increasingly unreliable memory...
Surprisingly, my memory came up with a suggestion without delay, which I kept to myself, knowing the difficulty in preparing the dish. But when Pete re-entered the email thread looking for more suggestions, I ventured forth: "If you are going wide open, it is impossible for me to pass up the opportunity for Beef Wellington..."m a sentiment quickly seconded by another guest.
In case you are unaware, Beef Wellington is a notoriously tricky dish consisting of a beef tenderloin slathered in a mushroom and herb mince paste (duxelles), then baked whole inside puff pastry. It is exquisite, and possibly the very tastiest beef dish I have ever eaten. I have only had it once, and if Pete ever goes vegan, odds are I will never have it again, because I simply do not have the minerals to attempt it myself.
But he's a game fish, our Pete is, so he added it to the menu!
He even sent a picture of it the night before, showing it in its uncooked state!
Obviously less than half the menu was suitable for leftovery so I cannot comment on the hamachi shots (one of my all time faves as well) or the pear and pomegranate salad, but for a dinner party I wasn't even at, my takeaway box was substantial:
Inside you can see (from left) a robust slice of Beef Wellington, an atomic buffalo turd and three different types of compound butter.
I started with the ABT, a crowd hit that, blessedly, returns periodically and is more welcome than the swallows of Capistrano. A halved and seeded jalapeno pepper, stuffed with cayenne-enhanced cream cheese, topped with a piece of smoked sausage, wrapped in bacon and smoked on Pete's Big Green Egg before being drizzled with homemade barbecue sauce.
Reheating it in the microwave meant I lost a little bit of the cream chese filling - maybe misplaced is better than lost, as even the attempted runaways were apprehended and devoured. The filing tasted a little spicier than usual to me, but not unpleasantly, although perhaps this wasn't the best thing to break my fast with? Whatevs. Still one of the most delicious appies out there.
While I waited for the beef to heat up on a foil-wrapped tray in the oven, I turned my attention to the compound butters and the two dinner rolls that had accompanied them. The honey was delicious, even though I am more of a savoury than sweet guy, the garlic was amazing, but the blue cheese remains my favourite.
By the time I was done using a bun corner to mop out the buttery end of the dish, the oven timer beeped and I removed the foil, putting the tray back in to give the pastry a fighting chance after a night in a fridge and 20 minutes under aluminum..
This seems to have worked as the beef was well heated all the way through (and it was a bit of a slab) but the pastry maintained a bit of crispiness as well.
From an experimental point of view, I probably should have tried a bit of the beef from the centre by itself, to see if the flavour from the duxelles permeated that far on its own, but in truth, I just could not be arsed. Each fork was a careful composition of beef, pastry and delicious mince, in a variety of concentrations, and all of them were exquisite. Like, I don't want to oversell this, but from my perspective, Beef Wellington is a perfect balance of texture and flavour. The rich sharpness of the duxelles complements the pastry precisely, and the beef was a tender medium rare that a man with no teeth could have enjoyed. Amazing!
I paused in my writing to take the Key lime pie from the refrigerator and eat it. As expected, it does not disappoint! Tart, swet, tangy and creamy on that classic graham cracker crust. The only disappointg part was that I neglected to photograph it before demolishing it. Delicious!
So here I sit, a day later, still ill, but comforted by delicious homemade food. I lament not catching up with my friends and the stories and jokes that were no doubt shared, but take even more contentment from the sentiments of the other guests (and hosts!), and knowing we will all be together again before too long.
Thanks again Pete and Ellen!
No comments:
Post a Comment