SOUTHERN EUROPE SPRING
(number 65. late spring.)
2016 was a year where much of our team's efforts were pulled in other directions, and we were technically on hiatus for much of the time. But a few "normal" SR events did happen. The rule from the beginning has always been that we won't do a dinner if it isn't fun. This project has never been an obligation to anyone. It is a platform for us to become better and better cooks, and to share the outcome.
After doing 2 dinners in the style of Secret Restaurant Portland for backers of the Kickstarter for Myrtlewood in April (see the documentation for 4/9 and 4/23 over here – lots of fun pictures and writing! More sparse, less blah blah blah!), we were eager as a team to regroup and do a fun, packed-house, regular-format supper club event.
Drinking entire cases of our favorite canned wine, with Spanish, Southern Italian, and Southern French inspired dishes seemed like (and was, in practice) a fantastic time.
1:
Baked sheep's feta
Harriett sheep's cheese
Spanish pickled peppers
Castelvetrano olives + more
Spanish sardines, octopus, and anchovies
Trifecta boulé
Armenian cucumbers
These drinking snacks were laid out in abundance amidst full branches of cherries (all perfectly ripe, and available for picking off between sips of wine), freshly "pruned" from the untended cherry tree in S.G.
2:
Grilled Walla Walla onions, new potatoes, spring turnips, padron peppers, baby zucchini, baby fava beans, asparagus, walnut bread with aioli and romesco
More snacks, mostly from the late spring vegetable bounty, grilled to tenderness, with the best sauces in the land.
3:
Garden salad (Bloomsdale savoy spinach, oak leaf lettuce, frisée, and sorrel, purple asparagus, celery, and borage/salad burnet dressing), crispy bread crumbs
A lovely, light garden salad, created entirely from S.G., with the exception of the asparagus and the bread crumbs.
4:
Spaghetti and fish balls.
Fresh saffron spaghetti, green sauce (assorted herbs, mostly parsley, lemon), fish balls made from salt cod/ rock fish/ new potatoes. The most fun!
5:
Cherry/chocolate semifreddo on a fudge brownie hazelnuts and whipped cream and red gooseberry jam with Ethiopian coffee from Water Avenue.
Boom shaka-lacka!
WINE IN CANS from UNDERWOOD. Pinot Gris, Pinot Noir, Sparkling Wine. Elderflower Cordial from Groundworks Organics to mix as a on the fly champagne cocktail.
