Dinner at Gena's

Gena is one of our friends in the industry. We don't really hang out as much as we should. Over the holidays, we saw her at a party and she commented that we should get together for dinner. When it came to setting it up, she said she had a great Walter Hansel she wanted to pair for dinner and decided on pork to go with it. The rest of the meal flushed itself out with Tim, who would be sous cheffing with her. Josh planned to cocktails and a few wines to match.

If you are wondering what my part in dinner was, it was as a consumer only. I had had a very long week at work with longer ones to come.

We started off with a trout salad. Gena showed us a trick for quick marination having to do with a plate and tightly-pulled saran wrap. The trout was live when Tim bought it, but it had already been gutted at the market. They filleted, skinned, and sliced it, then marinated the slices with some freshly squeezed grapefruit juice.

We had brought some French breakfast radishes from our McMullan CSA and those were thinly sliced and also marinated with the grapefruit juice.

Meanwhile, Gena had roasted some red beets and sliced up some shiso leaves. When the salad was composed, it was topped with just the grapefruit juice and salt. It was light. It was delicious. And it was easy to make.

Our soup course as a delicious, super creamy parsnip soup. Apparently, the vitamix really is the best thing ever. There's not much to say about it except that some of the parsnips were roasted and some boiled, and they both added their own to the soup. It was topped with a crispy carrot chip.

Dinner was a "shake n bake" pork rack which Tim frenched. The rub was something including coriander and some other stuff. It was very light but delicious. Sometimes I find rubs are kind of strong but this one went really well.

There was also a butternut/kabocha squash roasted mash, some roasted fennel with blue cheese (delicious), and collards with secret ginger and white soy adding a touch of umami.

Dessert was a tarte tatin topped with some of Josh's apple-infused bourbon whipped cream. Yum.