Gourmet Club – April 2007

It was our turn to host the Gourmet Club this time. Most of the couples start testing potential menus about a month before the actual night. We had an idea for an entre that we got on our mini vacation to Springfield. It was for breaded tuna steaks. We loved it but the more we thought about it, the more squeemish we became because we were sure some of our friends would not like the almost sushi aspects of it. We decided not to have that and as it turns out, we decided correctly. We talked about it at the dinner and those who we expected might have a problem confirmed that they would, indeed, have had a problem with the rareness of the fish. So back to the drawing board. Karen started relentlessly scouring our back issues of Bon Appetit, but as the day drew nearer, we got more and more nervous. We tried a delicious chicken recipe but it just did not seem fancy enough. Then we tried the pork tenderloin recipe that we eventually had so at least we had our entre. The gratin came a day or two later, but we still needed the appetizer, salad, and dessert. The week before the dinner I got the flu and couldn’t stand the thought of eating anything so it wasn’t until about the Wednesday before that I felt well enough to try some of the other things. As luck would have it, we liked everything we tried and the menu was set.

The Menu

Most of the time I show an actual scan of the menu. What you see below is just a summary of the menu because the actual menu was an elaborate affair with all the entries being on separate pages. Karen had been to a conference in Seattle and got a sample of an academic project that worked perfectly for a menu layout.

The Presentation

If you look closely, you will see that I had a little nibble of the dessert before I remembered to take the picture. Ah well.

Mini Vacation Revisited

I referred to the tuna recipe we had on our mini vacation in the first paragraph of this entry. It can finally be shown.