There are few friends in whose company I can enjoy both a bucket of hot wings and an outrageously involved dinner with all my family . Martha and Stephen are such friends. And I've been lucky enough this year, living just outside of San Francisco, to be able to call them in the afternoon and say, "hey, still wanna come over for dinner?" And luckier still to hear them reply, "oh crap. Was that tonight?" and then, "yes."
We've had many an impromptu gathering this way around a table of food and wine, but it never gets less exciting for me to have them come over. Tonight, we started with tiny quail oeufs en cocottes with garlic panko topping. Glyn made cold sesame soba noodles with cucumber and spicy pork, a dish we had at a Schezwan restaurant months ago that, I think, he made better.
Finally, an experiment after hearing a lot about beet in desserts: chocolate, orange, and beet trifle. I used the chocolate cake recipe from a few days ago but replaced the caster sugar with icing sugar and baked it as a sheet--which worked beautifully. The cake was soft and tender, really moist, but not sticky at all. It cut easily into disks to layer between the orange cream and top with beet jelly. As Martha pointed out, the beet flavour was very subtle, but it worked with the orange and chocolate. Definitely needs more time in the lab before being tested on our favourite guinea pigs again.
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