A couple friends joined us last night, so as an appetizer I made a galangal-blood orange sauce and poured it over some sautéed shrimp.
For the main dish, I made kabocha-pine nut wontons and spicy pork meatballs and served them in a soup made from the liquid I saved from the Moroccan chicken stew from a few nights earlier (about which I didn’t write, but see below) to which I added thai curry paste, tomato paste, white miso, wakame and sesame oil to drag it from Morocco to Thailand (sort of.) I sautéed some kale in the meatball fat and put it on top along with cilantro. Not bad. We had it with Valckenberg 03 gewurtztraminer, my favorite under 10 dollar Asian food wine, and then a Caymus Conundrum which also works really well with tropical and Asian flavors.
Today the remaining squash mixture went into some more of the wonton wrappers rolled into canneloni and baked with some leftover tomato sauce mixed with pesto from the deli.
The chicken stew was just chicken, mirepoix, herbs, olives, a lemon, herbs plus cumin and cinnamon cooked low in red wine along with sweet potato cubes.
I should also mention that I went to the opening party for my friend Mary’s wine store last week which was great fun and included such treats as a 2002 Chave Hermitage and lastly a 2001 Harlan Maiden drunk with a pizza very late indeed.