What to say, what to say, what to say?
We're having another gourmet club dinner in two weeks, and I've been going through my old food section from the newspaper (I've finally reached 1999. My husband keeps asking me when I'll reach the Bush administration.) So I've been thinking about food.
Sometimes, you have a meal that doesn't neccessarily promise much, but becomes, through some legerdemain, extraordinary, something you remember ever after. I was thinking about when I went to see my friend Paul, oh, about 9 or 10 years ago. It was summer, so we went to the Farmers' Market in Madison to get the vegetables for dinner. There was a recipe I wanted to try from Food and Wine (which got really, really foofy when they got some dip editor from Vogue in there a few years back, so I don't get it anymore) - scallops grilled with bay leaves and a grilled tomato sauce.
Anyway, we made the scallops, and served the sauce over roasted spaghetti squash, with a side of Honey and Pearl sweet corn, picked that morning. Paul's kitchen was about the size of a bathroom, if that. The grill was some tiny Weber hibatchi. The kitchen equipment was your basic, after-college assortment of "starting to get good stuff, but still mostly college leftovers."
My God, that was an amazing meal. Every part perfection. I've tried to recreate it, on my big honkin' gas grillmaster, with my fancy-pants tools. It's never as good.
Was it the ingredients? The company? Memory, and a lack of sophistication triumphant over actual events? Or just alchemy? Dunno. I really don't care either, because it's a fine memory to consider on a winter afternoon.
Posted by at March 09, 2003 09:08 PM