Sunday, April 06, 2008

Potato cakes and smoked salmon/Pow-wow in St. Catharines

Friday 28 March

H: Came home to an empty house without a plan for dinner. I still had some nice bits o' lox, so made some cute little potato cakes, topped with sour cream (for which I had a secret ultimate purpose), and salmon. Shudda topped with chive blossoms like a ladida poofter, but there aren't any in the garden. Not much of anything in the garden yet, except sage (of which more anon).

Pow-wow in St. Catharines

After Barbara's talk, four friendly folks from the Brock Classics Department took her out to Pow-wow (which bills itself as "a new world grill") downtown. It's a nice, noisy, bistro-type place, and there was lots of good talk over the good food. We sipped a Niagara unoaked chardonnay, Coyote's Run 2006, over shared platters of mezes (lemon-dill hummus, tzaziki, roasted red pepper spread, huge heads of roasted garlic, and flatbreads).

For her main, Barbara chose an oven-roasted rack of lamb - two nice chunky three-rib chops - with mashed potatoes and fruity chutney of roast pear, grilled onion, and cranberry, on a puddle of pomegranate-infused demiglace. Pinot noirs are coming up in the Niagara region, and the Kacaba one we had, though it opened with a shocking scent of acetone, turned into quite a decent drop once it had breathed a bit. So thanks again to the Brock Classics Department for its hospitality.

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