Monday, April 23, 2012

Culinary Fact

Today I had exactly 15 minutes between getting home and having to pick up Jen at the train station.  This gave me just enough time to get rocking on a few things, dash out the door, and return home to serve up dinner.

Spring Vegetable and Ricotta Tart


With 15 minutes I didn't have enough time to bother with recipes or measurements.  I made a quick tart dough out of butter, flour, salt, sugar, and a little milk.  I was pretty sure I'd ruined it by adding too much milk but I threw it in the oven and headed out the door.  I turned the oven off before heading out because I'm too scared to leave the oven running while I'm out of the house.  When I returned home I was shocked to find that it had browned up quite nicely.  I added some of the ricotta mixture that was leftover from the rollatinis the other night and topped it with leftover chopped asparagus and baby squash.

This turned out way better than I'd expected.

Potato Leek Soup


I chopped a leek and tossed it in a pan with some crushed garlic and butter and cooked it as long as I could before adding some chicken stock, leftover mashed potato, milk, salt, and pepper.  I pureed it all with the new immersion blender my boss had gotten my for Christmas.  I topped it with yet more of my mother's chives.

Dogfish Head Noble Rot


For beer I opened this Noble Rot from Dogfish Head.  I've had this in the fridge for a few weeks just waiting for the right opportunity.

This beer was very tasty though I hesitate to call it beer.  If you had poured this for me and told me it was sparkling wine I wouldn't have given it a second thought.  It was very interesting and had a very heavy flavor of white wine, grapes, and apple.

I have often lamented on the difficulty of pairing beer or wine with soup but I believe I've found a good match in sparkling wine (or in this case, Noble Rot) with potato leek soup.  I am winding down my cellar and I felt this would be a better match than one of the many barleywines or stouts that have accumulated in my fridge.

This was an important discovery for me.  Rich, creamy, pureed soups actually match very nicely with white sparkling wine.  Or beers that taste exactly like white sparkling wine.

And that, my friends, is a culinary fact!

1 comment:

Steve M. said...

We'll have to try the soup 'trick' at some time. Looks delicious.