Fresh Tart

Here's the perfect way to kick off summer: Get yourself invited to Debbie & Stu the Wine Genius Williams' home for dinner.  There is no lovelier place to be on a first-summer's-blush evening, on the patio in their lush back yard, chatting with them as well as Sue & Louis Ainsworth, sipping incredible wine, eating beautiful food, celebrating the end of another Minnesota winter.  It's over, it's really, really over!  Those leaves are real, those flowers smell like heaven, I am wearing sandals, and it will not snow for at least five months.  Cheers to that.

Drinking wine with Stu is an honor and pleasure.  He delights in sharing the unexpected, the fascinating, the obscure, collecting our reactions and observations like a child collects toys.  He remembers what his guests like and dislike, then reaches into his cellar for something new and interesting the next time we get together.

Yeah, he thinks like that.  I wish I had one-eighth of that talent, but it is not so.  That's OK.  I accept my limitations and happily sit back and enjoy the ride.

A ride that includes food worthy of the wine.  Debbie & Stu always pull together colorful, fresh-from-the-market meals, this time grilled Scottish Highland beef, Boer goat, and St. Croix lamb from Blue Gentian Farms in New Richmond, WI (available locally at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market).

Alongside new potatoes with fresh morels and grilled asparagus, it was a spectular meal.  Especially bookended by foie gras sprinkled with black Himalayan salt and Rustica Bakery rhubarb tarts.  Yeah.

What we tasted:

Pierre Peters Cuvee Reserve Blanc de Blanc NV Champagne

Pierre Peters 2001 Brut Cuvee Speciale Les Chetillons Champagne

2006 Nicholas Joly Les Clos Sacres Savennieres

2005 Domaine Vincent Girardin Mersault Les Narvaux

1975 Chateau Montrose

1975 Chateau Pichon Lalande

1977 D'Oliverias Reserva Terrantez Maderia

Rare Wine Company's Historic Series Charleston Sercial Maderia

Hello summer.

So, as I mentioned below, BIG food weekend.  John and I kicked it off all by our lonesome with another killicious din in the lounge at La Belle Vie.  If you go, order a cocktail (with alcohol or no) - they're all gorgeous and tasty.  And then, feeling jazzy and chic, with ice cubes clinking merrily in a graceful glass, order the lamb burgers, pommes frites, the mache salad with artichokes and yogurt, and perhaps a tasty off the restaurant menu (you are presented with three menus in the lounge - the famous dining room tasting menu, the dining room a la carte menu, and the lounge menu; all rock).  Sit back, enjoy the elegant room, stare inconspicuously at people closing their eyes and moaning as they eat (the food is that good), and be grateful to be in such a pretty spot on a Friday night.

Sunday afternoon, John, Nathan, and I attended a neighborhood pig roast, put on by the Bennett's and Anderson's.  We arrived just as the 100-lb. pig was laid out on a big table, crisp and glistening, apple in mouth (but of course), looking very, graphically porcine.

I admit, I winced a bit as Ed and Bob sliced into the beast, but my guilt melted away as I was presented with a bite of crisp skin.  Holy Porky Cow, so intensely good.  Soon the roast was pulled into pieces and presented alongside soft buns and several different styles of barbecue sauce.  With a 1/2-block long table groaning with potluck sides (salads, bars, cookies, cakes), we definitely made ourselves a meal.  (Thanks Pam Van Ert for the pics!)

And last night, night of the tomato tart with Parmesan crust (below), we were invited to dinner at Sue & Louis Ainsworth's for a Summer's A-Wastin' Party, along with Ana Scofield & Rudy Maxa, Genie & Joe Dixon, and Debbie & Stu Williams.  We drank beautiful wine and ate gorgeous food - gougere, grilled shrimps, boned leg of lamb, ratatouille, salad, olive bread, cheeses, and raspberry cake for dessert.  What a way to end a beautiful Labor Day weekend!  (Pics here are from the party.)

And today....  Kind of a bust, today.  Due to an irrigation system malfunction, part of our back yard is not just wet, it's basically a swamp.  A puppy-loving, dig-30-second-holes-in-the-mud kind of swamp.  Bad.  So, I drove all over the metro area to find a temporary fence, and installed said fence with Nathan (no easy task, 75 feet of fencing!), only to discover that even more of the yard is seriously wet than I realized, and Louis just dug a new mudhole on this side of the fence instead.  Sigh.

Good thing he's so cute...  Anyhow, we weren't done with the (useless) fence until almost 6 pm, ack, so dinner, which was going to be post-shower veggie share new potatoes in some sort of yummy hash, was instead...sweaty Domino's pizza.  Ah well.

And now - bedtime.  Sleep tight, y'all.