Marcus Samuelsson dinner

Restaurant Eugene hosts book signing dinners. I don't feel like they are very well publicized because I am heavily invested in reading food news in Atlanta, and I barely hear about them until after they have passed.

Anyway, Josh got an email about the Marcus Samuelsson dinner and just happened to be by his computer and emailed me about it. And I just happened to be looking at my email too and he made the call immediately. When we arrived at the event, we learned that there was a 150-person waiting list.

The book signing for Marcus Samuelsson was for his recent published book, Yes, Chef: A Memoir. I wanted to be sure to have read it before the event, so we picked up a copy from Amazon. Truly, his story is fascinating.

The dinner itself is a collaboration between Linton Hopkins and Samuelsson. Apparently a series of chefs agreed to host dinner that were inspired by Samuelsson's book after reading it.

The hor d'oeuvres were kolo, which is toasted barley and peanuts, which I totally admit that I didn't have any of because they were in germy community bowls. I did try some of the country ham which Hopkins was hand slicing. It was pretty good.

The cocktail was "the apprentice's cocktail" which had, among other things, aquavit, ginger ale, dolin white vermouth. You would think I would remember because we were standing near the guy serving it and he said it at least twenty times in my presence.

But that is the problem with waiting to blog on the weekend.

The first course was rice & chickpeas, the description of which said carolina gold rice roll, shiro paste. Apparently, rice rolls are traditional in Africa and H&F is one of the only places to still make them. Huh. Shiro is common in Ethiopia also and is a chickpea puree which is thicker than hummus. We were served two kinds: one more mild and one spicy. The spicy one had a bit of heat, but both were nicely spiced. Our table got into the spirit of breaking bread and dunking, which was fun.

I forgot to mention this was served with kurt angerer, kies, kamptal, austria 2011. I have to admit that I don't remember much about most of the wines we had except that they were all delicious on there own and went excellently with the food. And at the end of the night, I was thankful for all my training with drinking, because I felt completely sober.

The second course was snapper & shrimp, berbere, shrimp head powder, citrus, shaved fennel, toasted benne seed. This was a very light dish which I enjoyed very much. Josh said the clear flavor of shrimp came out from the powder. I confess that I tasted more of what I think was the berbere.

Served with terre del barolo, gavi, italy 2011. This was damn good.

Third course yardbird & vegetables, lady pea and cherokee corn succotash, spicy stewed greens, hot peppered butterbeans, stewed tomato & okra, injera.

By this time, the wine had loosened Josh and me up enough that we joined the general conversation at the table. I was sitting in the middle of the table, and I could see that they had purposefully positioned people so that you were exposed to other people easily. I was able to turn and join either side of the table's conversations which were enjoyable all around.

As the injera arrived, the conversation talked to Ethiopian food in general and the preparation of injera.

As the sides arrived, there were oohs and ahhs. Samuelsson and Hopkins got up and talked about how Southern food's roots are taken from Africa and it's certainly easy, after reading through Samuelsson's cookbook even, how similar they really are.

All the sides were tasty, but the greens were pretty spicy!

And then the yardbird itself came out, chicken prepared three ways: fried (which was so damn good), poached, and then shredded, which tasted spiked with curry to me.

I loaded up my plate and sat back to enjoy. And enjoy I did. With the domaine les aphillanthes, cotes du rhone, france 2010.

Dessert was labeled as land of honey, kudzu honey, georgia peach mousse, carrot meringue. Overall, I felt this was the least successful course because way way sweet. That isn't to say that I didn't eat it all.

It came with an Alsatian gewurztraminer, andre sherer 2010 .

The last course was coffee & cornbread which also came with a delicious sherry (?) alvear's pedro ximenez solera 1927, montilla mortiles, spain.

It's traditional in Ethiopia for them to drink their coffee with spiced butter instead of cream or sugar. It was pretty good -- and rich -- even though I had to ask for decaf. The regular coffee did taste better -- the Ethiopians always serve coffee by first roasting the beans to flavor.

You can see (barely) the glint of oil on the top of the coffee.

Lastly came little savory cornbread madeleines. Yum!

As chef came around to greet people, my tablemate to the left asked him for a photo, which all of us chimed in for our own also.

We also picked up a copy of his The Soul of a New Cuisine. I wanted this one in particular because I wanted to see how he would inscribe it for me. It says "Cook African tonight!" And the recipes look great. Many of them call out to me, but first it's the jerk chicken, shrimp piri piri, and bass with chermoula!