Near perfection

Beth and I had a dinner party last Saturday night. Beth loves to entertain and I love to cook, so it works out well.  To excite the palate, we had a cheese plate with five variations of goat cheese and a blue cheese.  To compliment the cheese, I added  pistachios, almonds, craisins and a whole grain mustard.   I made a rustic ciabatta bread to go with it, the bread recipe was a challenge to pull off, but I decided it was well worth it when I was rewarded with some of the best bread I have ever eaten*.  I will include the recipe here eventually, but I want to get better pictures before I post it.   To accentuate the cheese and to clear the palate, we served sparkling pomengranate juice, sparkling blueberry juice, and a sharp ginger brew.  It served its purpose perfectly and instigated some interesting drink mixing.  I was very pleased with this portion of the meal.
*The bread ruined my dinner.  I had eaten a half of a loaf before our guests even arrived.

For the main course, I made an authentic molè*, Spanish millet, and refried beans.   The Molè was pretty good, I was pleased with it.  I began it the Tuesday night before the party and worked on it nearly every night leading up to it.   I didn’t really follow a recipe, but if you would like a general outline of how to make a molè,  just e-mail me.  The Spanish millet turned out better than I had hoped, I will include this recipe here soon.  Its a great way to add variation in your grain consumption.  The beans weren’t good, I just cooked them as an afterthought and guess what, they tasted like an afterthought.  I was disapponted with this part of the meal, possibly beacause I was full of bread and cheese. Our guests provided a great salad to go with the meal and some very tasty chocolate soufflès for dessert. Both were wonderful and complimented the meal perfectly.
*This is not a pozterisk about molè, it’s a pozterisk about the hidden potential of your keyboard.  Check this out:   Φ
Pretty neat.  I did it by holding down the Alt key and pressing 232 on the number pad.  I was attempting to make an è which is holding Alt and pressing 0232 on the number pad.  Here are some more accents. Here are some other thingies. ©©©

So, that was the big dinner.  Now onto planning the next…