Category: Other People’s Food

May 3, 2007

This time at Rick and Julie’s house, where they’ve been playing with sous-vide cooking, using a vacuum sealer and a hot water bath to slow-cook meat and fish so that they’re perfect all the way through. In this case, New York strips that he had dry-aged for a month in a special fridge, then cooked at 128˚ for 4 hours, each in its own bag, then seared up in a pan to put a good…

May 3, 2007

We went to visit Jeff, Eve, and their two boys for an early dinner on a beautiful day. It was at their house during grad school that the tradition of epic dinners really embedded itself in my psyche as an essential component of life. Good ingredients, improvisation, and great people all combined to make some meals that I’ll never forget. Jeff had made his trademark grilled squid, and pan-roasted salmon in a sauce of puréed…

March 19, 2007

I finally made it over to Kris and Ken’s place for dinner, and it was great. Sujit and James joined us, but alas Mary and David did not since his flight from Paris was so late due to bad weather. In order, the courses that Kris prepared were as follows: first, sea bream with celery root purée and caramelized garlic, enjoyed with a 1986(!) Pouilly-Fuissé “Les Reiss” from Ferret which was fascinating, and then a…

January 30, 2007

A fantastic party, up at Allaire studios, on top of a mountain, on a freezing night. Colin from The Tasting Room in NYC came up to make about 20 of us a crazy dinner, and we brought wine to go with. The meal began with oysters, then crostini of smoked trout, accompanied by Sine Qua Non’s “Backward and Forward” which tasted like mutant Sherry, as well as some Kistler Chards, and then we sat down.…