Dinner for 5

It's been a long time, so I forgot most of it, since the last post. I took the rabbit out of the marinade and threw away the marinade. The rabbit went quite good. I caramelized it a little bit in oil, threw away the oil, put it in an oven pot, added onions, a bit of chicken buillion (I made that too, I'm now sold on home-made buillion instead of cubes, its much much better, if you can afford the 5-6 hours it takes), 1 cup of wine, 3 cloves, a pinch of cinnamon, a pinch of nutmeg, a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar, and of course lots of love :), and I let it in the oven (in low heat) for about 3 hours. I think it was quite good, because there was nothing left.

But, first things first. The menu for the day:

1. Aperitif: stuffed cherry tomatoes (2 kinds) and salmon/avocado wrap.
2. Entrée (i.e. appetizer): Bruschettas with various toppings (too easy, I know, but oh well...)
3. Salad: pretty standard, green, dressed with mustard and honey vinaigrette.
4. Main course: rabbit with onions slow-cooked in the oven.
5. Intermission: lemon & rose-water sorbet (see last post)
6. Dessert: Chocolate-mocha cake with "framboise" (raspberries) on top.
   

OK, now in detail (as far as I remember, that is).

Apéritif
I would have 4 guests, so the goal was 3 tastes for 5 people. I got about 15 cherry tomatoes, washed and uncapped them so that the cap stays connected but "opens" up. I used a teaspoon and carefully emptied the interior, as best as possible, without breaking the tomato. Kept the interiors/seeds, and put the emptied tomatoes upside down on a paper to drain from liquids for a few minutes. Then, I took black olives (about 10-12, not sure), took the core out, and chopped the flesh very finely. I also took 1 achovie, took out the bones, and pressed it into a pulp with the olives. Don't worry, it only works as a flavor enhancer and substitutes salt, it doesn't stink like fish. Added pepper, 1 tablespoon of cognac (brandy), 1 tbsp of olive oil, basil, and 5-6 capers, also pulped. Mixed everything together, to make olive paste. I stuffed 5 of the tomatoes with olive paste, and set aside. I then took a bit (1/2 tablespoon) of the olive paste that was left, and mixed with fromage blanc (I think that's like yoghurt). Then I crashed a bit (1/2 piece) of garlic, and mixed it in, and stuffed another 5 of the tomatoes. I was out of tomatoes by now (even though I got 15 from the market), because I crashed 2 on the way home, I also ate 2 through the process, and I accidentally opened one all the way down when trying to dig into it with a teaspoon, so I ate that one too...
OK, so the goal was 3 different bites, with 3 different tastes for aperitif. And I couldn't make a 3rd stuffing for cherry tomatoes, so I opted for a salmon bite. I got two slices of smoked salmon (1mm thick), and an avocado. I opened the avocado, took the pit out, and spooned the inside into a bowl. Added a bit of lemon juice, salt and pepper, and mashed everything together. Then I took the paste, and layered another 1mm of it on the salmon slices.

I rolled the salmon slice and avocado together, pinched it with toothpicks, and cut at bite-sized distances. That was easy, and it yielded about 12 bites. I ate two, of course, and had 10 for two bites each later. I put every aperitif on a plate and in the fridge.

Entrée
I got one of the big baguettes (they call them "flutes") from the bakery and sliced it diagonally to get 0.5inch thick slices. I got 1 piece of garlic and sliced it in very thin slices, as thin as I could, and with my knives, that's quite thin. I put a teaspoon of olive oil on every bread slice, and topped some of them with 2-3 thin slices of garlic. Then I got a bit of reblochon cheese (that's the smelly-feet, soft one that melts), a bit of another creamy cheese (not sure about the name, think of brie, only smellier, but not stinky feet), and a bit of hard yellow cheese (not sure about the name again, think Gryviere, only nuttier, fuller taste, I should be noting the names down, but I'll recognize it when I go to the market next time). I put a bit of cheese on some of the bread, not mixing cheeses. I kept some bruschettas without cheese, one of my guests doesn't eat dairy stuff. I also sliced a bit of "saucisson sec" (french, hard, dried sausage) and sliced it thin, 0.5mm slices. I used these to top the bruschettas so that I got lots of combinations. I also chopped and used the cherry-tomato seeds and interior for some bruschettas, under the cheese (why waste it?). I put it on a wide oven pan and set aside. I put them in the oven for 5 minutes, just when I took out the aperitif, and by the time we each had 4 bites of aperitif, they were ready.

Salad
Lettuce from the farmer's market. I got two kinds green and red, the french call them "salades," quite fitting. I tore these by hand roughly into 1inch-wide pieces. I personally prefer finely chopped lettuce (it gets more dressing on it), but I learnt this is how they do it here, so "when in Rome..." I chopped 2 green onions (these by knife, not by hand) into 1mm thin slices. Added dill, parsley, and half an avocado (I had it lying around, why not..), finely chopped. I made a vinaigrette with 0.5tsp of honey, red wine vinegar, mustard, olive oil & salt (not in that order...) and warmed it up to thicken it a bit but not too much and make everything dissolve better, and set it aside. Just before serving the salad, I chopped half an apple in small bits (last moment, so it wouldn't oxidize and go black), poured the vinaigrette on top, and mixed. Simple salad, no fancy tricks here, the parsley, dill and vinegar work as a kind of a palate cleanser. I won't use honey next time, a palate cleanser shouldn't be very sweet I think, except before dessert. Well, nobody complained, so OK.

Main course
I described that, I'm not going over it again, here's what it looked like.


After main course
Sorbet, a palate cleanser before dessert.
I got this recipe from Elise, thanks! (My sorbet wasn't as perfect, but I'll keep trying.) Probably a chocolate dessert doesn't need a clean palate as much as a lightly, subtly flavored dessert does, but I had all the spices, wine and onions in the main course, and I didn't want interference, and also I like sorbet anyway (and got to eat the rest later by myself). Maybe next time I should also use a "coloring agent" for the sorbet, lemon and rosewater don't have color, and it looked like just snow, someone said (and then "hmmmm, it has taste").

Dessert
Chocolate cake with mocha cream filling, covered in ganache and with "frambois" (raspberries) on top. This was quite an improvisation, but I think I'll keep it. I made the cake mix: butter, sugar, eggs, cocoa, flour, milk, baking powder (I usually use baking soda too, half and half, but didn't have any), and vanilla extract. I beat everything in a bowl (start with sugar & butter, until fluffy, butter should be soft and sliced, then add eggs, then dry ingredients and a pinch of salt). I put this in the oven in medium heat (until a toothpick at the center comes out dry). Then I sliced it in half to get two layers, and set aside to cool down.

For the filling, in between the two layers, I made a mocha creme. Milk, sugar and vanilla, set on low fire, bring to a slow boil. I made a cup of strong coffee and added it in. Meanwhile, I mixed a bit of cold milk, flour and corn starch, and as soon as it boiled I poured it in and mixed, turning the heat off. It thickens pretty quick. Set aside to cool down a bit. I also made a syrup: mix sugar, cocoa (even parts) with water, and set to boil. It looks almost thick (but not really) after simmering for a couple of minutes. Set aside to cool down a bit. Of course, I made everything at the same time (although I wouldn't recommend it, it could go awfully wrong, has in the past...), but somehow I managed to keep stirring two boiling pots, mix cold ingredients and cut a cake in layers, with no major accidents, so all was well after all. When the chocolate syrup cools down a bit, I added a bit of brandy in it, and then spoon by spoon I fed it to the cake. Be careful, the cake is VERY easy to break after it gets soaked, and unfortunately I couldn't can't feed the syrup to the second layer after putting it in place, because it doesn't have "holes", it's smooth from baking it. So I put the syrup in while it was flipped, and then *very* carefully flipped it on the rest of the cake. Next time I might just "shave" off the shiny part and make it easy to add the syrup without moving the cake afterwards, because it's very susceptible to falling apart when wet. I didn't want to put the shiny side down on the creme either, because I wanted to maintain the "risen, swollen" shape of the original cake. OK, the cake absorbs the syrup and becomes ready to melt in your mouth (hehe) and very unstable.

Then I poured the ganache on it. For the ganache, I melted 1 and a half bars of chocolate, and mixed it with whipping cream (not whipped, liquid). It was a big overkill, because I could have covered the cake top with melting half a bar of chocolate probably, but no worries, chocolate ganache is a nice leftover, I poured it on some fruit, and had it the next day (It's strange I'm not 200lbs, not yet). Anyway, I poured the ganache on the cake top, spoon by spoon, letting it run to cover the whole top surface. It even dripped around making a nice effect.

Then I got the raspberries, and drew a circle of them on top of the (still liquid) ganache.

Then I put everything in the fridge to help the chocolate solidify, and make everything a bit more stable.

Next time, I'll use more fruit on top, and maybe a layer of raspberries (or other berries, or cherries) in the middle. But then it'll be like a black forest, without the white part... Well, there's nothing wrong with that. Here's what the cake looked like when cut.

OK, that's all folks. Luckily my guests were satisfied, or at least they were polite enough to fake it.

Oh, I almost forgot the drinking... Oh, the drinking. When the first two people showed up, we started with a light red wine (Côte du Rhône) while waiting for the others to arrive, and finished the bottle. When everyone was in, we had some nice belgian and czech beers with the cold fish-aperitif and also with the hot bruschettas (a bit unorthodox, but it mixed well with cheese and sausage toppings...).

Then everyone switched to chilled white wine with the salad, and we finished the bottle (it doesn't take more than 1 hearty glass for each if it's five people, so bottles were easy to deal with). Then we switched to a serious red wine with the main course. This one I had bought from the local Cave, suggested by the old granpa-looking owner as very good to escort my "lapin aux oignons" (rabbit with onions) dish. That wine wasn't kidding, you could tell it wanted meat for company. Naturally, that bottle was easy prey too, bringing the total wine-bottle casualty count of the evening to 3, not counting the half bottle I used in the food. OK, OK, I used only a cup of that to make the food, and the rest to "escort" my cooking...

It was time we "cleansed our palate" with the sorbet (which did have a bit of raki, but was only very subtly alcoholic, I don't think one could tell after a glass of wine). So, after that we cut the cake, and well, serious dessert wants a serious "digestif", (the brandy in the cake doesn't count), so we had a shot of raki to help digest. We then had a second shot of raki just to make sure, and, by the end of the night, the 1-litre raki bottle was empty, and I think at least two of my guests promised themselves never to drink again (until next time...)