Sunday, July 24, 2011

dinner 32

strawberries have gone and only a week or two left for local peaches and blueberries... now we start to see figs and melon file in. it's a short window for these seasonal fruits to come together for a nice light salad, so we put together a local fruit salad.
goat farm figs, blueberries, iowa prosciutto, parmesan cheese, basil and lemon vinaigrette.
we offered an amuse bouche of this sandwich a while back, and it was so good that we decided to offer a whole of it. pearson farms peaches, melted sweet grass dairy's green hill, basil and grain mustard on butter toasted bread. a "side salad" of heirloom tomatoes and green beans came along for the ride. normally i am an un-oaked chard kind of guy, never really been one for big over extracted malolactic fermentation bombs going off on my palate, but we served this course with a wine called "butter". unreal. use your imagination! this course is for my brother scott.next up, carbonara. housemade noodles coated in a rich egg yolk sauce, adorned with bacon, parmesan cheese, locally foraged chanterelle mushrooms, black pepper and arugula.
two repeat courses from our last dinner. first, the duck meatballs served with a lentil salad, tomato marmalade and sunflower sprouts.
...and while "dirty cookies" conjure up the image of a hand full of animal crackers pulled from a toddlers pocket after a hard run on the play ground, the picture below should put you at ease. housemade short breads stuffed with chocolate ganache and drizzled with caramel, chopped pecans and sea salt.
oh no, tin foil to-go animals!

lets just say if all else fails she has a future in packing to-go food with staplehouse. thanks kerry!
the crew. thanks to traci, don, elizabeth, jonathan, kerry, greg, dyan, derek, christina and neil! and a special thanks to ben (far right) for taking a day out of his vacation to come hang with us!