“It’s not the end of the world, but you can see it from there.”
– Pierre Elliott Trudeau
I was contacted by a local representative for Bodega del Fin del Mundo, the Winery at the End of the World, about trying their wines, some of which I’ve had before. Some of them are good, some of them just okay, and of course, I was hoping to try more of the former. In the mix of the conversation the idea of offering a winery dinner came up, and after considering it, I decided it might be fun. I got to pick which wines they would feature and the menu to pair with them, and they were to supply the wines at a discount and provide someone to come and hang out at the dinners and make a little presentation and answer questions over the course of the evening. From their side, the former happened, but the latter didn’t, which I was a bit disappointed in – Friday night the rep scheduled another tasting to do and informed me about a week beforehand that he wasn’t available, and Saturday night he simply didn’t show up. Good thing that I still liked the wines or this would be the last I’d be dealing with them. I’ll be posting tasting notes on the specific wines in an upcoming post.
In terms of the menu, since I wanted the focus for the eve to be on the wines, I decided to compose the menu out of some dishes that I’m already quite happy with from our repertoire, rather than get all experimental on them.
This sole tartare dish has gone through a number of iterations since first presenting it. Most of that has been to spice it up a bit and give it more of an influence from the Peruvian causa that we like so much around here. So the potato layer at the bottom has a touch of lemon and ají amarillo along with olive oil. The tomatoes are tossed with salt, pepper, and fresh basil, the chopped eggs are now under the fish and are mixed with piquillo pepper mayo. The fish is cured for about 15 minutes in fresh lemon juice, stone-ground mustard and salt. Lumpfish caviar replacing that odd kelp based faux caviar (which was never intentional in the first place). And, a streak of some more piquillo mayo aside. It’s nearly to where I want it, I think maybe a touch more heat in the curing liquid for the fish, maybe I’ll finely chop a rocoto into it.
The other dishes were much the same as past presentations – tahini chickpea and falafel soup; smoked herring risotto – with the addition of a bit of smoked trout pate into the finish of the risotto and replacing the pecorino cheese with a fresh, spreadable goat cheese; my reinterpreted chicken marengo – replacing the bell pepper and spinach in the chicken roll-ups with a duxelle of portobello mushrooms and garlic, along with the shrimp; and, caramelized St. Maure goat’s milk cheese with peaches (no Crottin available, so I just did two slices of the St. Maure).
