Joey's Birthday

While my parents were visiting in October, we missed Joey's big birthday party up in Healdsburg. Actually, we ran into Joey, Brad and his mother and sister in Oakville Grocery after a day of wine tasting in the Dry Creek Valley with my parents, but we couldn't join them for the birthday party Brad and his mom planned for him. Instead, we offered to have Joey and Brad over for dinner a couple of weeks later.

We planned a menu made up of a few dishes neither one of us had made before, along with a couple of easy, tried and true dishes that would not take as much time to make.

To start, we served hand packed Spanish sardines with thinly sliced celery, salt and pepper and freshly squeezed lime juice.

As a second course, Lou improvised on a recipe from the El Bulli cookbook. Instead of making asparagus lollipops with truffle cream, he made brussel sprout lollipops with truffle cream. Lou changed from asparagus to brussels at my request, since I claimed that there would be no way to find fresh, local asparagus at this time of year, even though it would be easy enough to find asparagus at Whole Foods. He gave in to my locavore leanings and switched the recipe. It was a fairly complicated recipe, which he executed flawlessly. I don't remember every step, but he cooked and then liquified the brussels, made whipped cream infused with truffle water (hand made) and then piped the whipped cream onto baking sheets and carefully filled the piping with the liquified brussel sprouts. He then froze them until we served them. We can see the lollipops in front of Joey in the picture above. All in all they turned out pretty well. The sensation of eating the frozen brussel sprouts and cream together was a little strange, and later on we added some truffle salt to the lollipops and they tasted much better. Brad joked that we should start a savory lollipop stand.

For the main course, I pan friend trout with juniper berries, salt and pepper, and laid them on a bed of hot potato foam, which Lou had made by cooking the potatoes and liquifying them with milk and cream. The trout is always a winner, and the potato foam was a wonderful compliment to the salty, piney flavor of the trout.

For Joey's birthday cake, I made a Sachertorte. Honestly, I had no idea of the significance of the cake. Lou nearly chose is for his own birthday cake, and that was the first time I had ever seen a Sachertorte recipe. Joey, on the other hand, immediately grasped the significance of the cake and he seemed delighted about it. He told us about tasting various Sachertortes while in Vienna a few years ago.

The cake turned out pretty well, I'd say. The cake includes two delicious elements--citrus syrup, which I made in the same manner as simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water, boiled) with the zests of lemon and orange, and a layer of reduced apricot jam. Then, for the toping, I made a simple chocolate glaze, made of melted chocolate, sugar and water. I tempered the glaze for at least twenty minutes by repeatedly running portions of the glaze along our marble slab with a metal spatula while the glaze cooled. The tempering is suppose to allow the glaze to cool without developing any air bubbles, thereby keeping the glaze smooth and glass-like. The glaze turned out well, especially considering that it was the first time I'd ever made it. The cake itself ended up a little uneven. Perhaps I should have cut it down to make the sides of the two pieces flush, but I simply glazed the cake and let it be. I must say that it tasted deliciously rich, chocolaty and infused with citrus and fruit.

Bon Anniversaire, Joey!