Celebration Dinner with Lois and Jon

Thursday 24 October

Lois and Jon were coming through town on their way to see their first grandchild in Queens NY.  We greeted them with a pitcher of chimayo cocktails, which are becoming traditional for their visits.

While putting everything together, we snacked on tortilla chips and salsa made from orange and red tomatoes and red bell pepper, flavored with lime.

For their part, Lois and Jon brought a wodge of their local Vermilion river triple cream blue cheese and spicy Autumn Berry spicy jam, as well as i Clivi RBL, a natural sparkler, not re-fermented in the usual méthode champenoise to toast their 22nd anniversary this Saturday.

We picked the last ten of our own poblanos (some very spicy!), roasted them, stuffed them with colby and goat cheese flavored with cilantro, dipped and fried them into an appetizer of chiles rellenos, served with more salsa on the plate.

For our main course, we roasted a rolled pork loin, stuffed with lemon zest, parsley and sage.

This not being England, it had no crackly skin, but the top fat rendered it nicely brown, and our 2 1/2 lb butterflied pork loin only took about an hour total, while our own garden carrots roasted alongside.

With the meal, we poured two pinot noirs head to head, with Joseph Faiveley Bourgogne 2010 representing France and Evening Land Willamette Valley 2010 representing Oregon.

For dessert, Holt took the Black Twig apples we bought last week and made the Painless Apple Cake from Barbara's Fear and Loathing Cookbook.  Here it is:

1 stick plus 2 Tbsp. butter

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 1/2 cup peeled and chopped apples

1 tsp. vanilla

2 1/2 cups flour, unsifted

1 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

2 or 3 apples, cored and sectioned into thin slices

crisco for greasing the pan

2 Tbsp. strawberry jam

Start with the batter.  Cream the butter and sugar together; beat in eggs, then add chopped apples and vanilla.  Add cinnamon, salt, and baking soda to flour, then stir it into wet ingredients.  The batter will be thick and cookie-like.

Arrange the sliced apples around the sides of a well-greased 9" round, 1 1/2" deep cake pan.  Spoon in the batter and level off; top with remaining wedges concentrically from center, so they look like the petals of a flower.  Drizzle 2 Tbsp. of melted butter on top and bake at 350º for 55 minutes until done.

Let cool 10 mins., remove from pan.  Paint the top and sides with a mix of melted strawberry jam and a shot of applejack.

Served it with some Graeter's seasonal cinnamon and coconut chip ice cream, and went back to France for G. Chevalier Sauternes 2009.  
It topped off a perfect meal and a fun-filled evening.