What happens when you are part of a Wine Buyers Collective and a Wine Appreciation Society? A lot of wine to drink with a lot of people.
Kate and Rahul, who are esteemed members of both organizations, thus found themselves with about two cases of wine. They invited us over for dinner where they would provide the wine; Meredith, a trained chef, agreed to coordinate a dinner to go with the wine.
The menu, as put together by Meredith, was as follows:
- Mushroom paté
- Bitter greens salad with shallot-dijon vinaigrette
- Coq au vin over potato puree
- Quince tarte tatin
I was responsible for the mushroom paté, which recipe you can find here. It’s one of the few dishes I’ve made that requires more than two kinds of mushrooms (three kinds of mushrooms?!? A double boiler setup?!? Chilling afterwards for six hours?!? It was only the day of that I realized this dish was significantly more labor intensive than I had anticipated.)
But the mushroom paté turned out surprisingly well; actually, all the food turned out extremely well. The coq au vin, made with love and care by Meredith, was supremely flavorful and tender, with some caramelized onion and carrot that hit me like sweet/umami bombs. The greens were a fine balance between bitter and buttery, and the quince tarte tatin was like something out of heaven.
Vinicultured: A Wine Blog 