May 12, 2013: Dinner and drinks with Lisa!

Last night, Akemi and I played host to my old Stargate pal, Lisa.  Wow, it feels like just yesterday I was strolling down the hall of the Production Offices to chat with the gals from accounting (and put off writing that script).  Our evening in pictures…

Lisa arrives, looking sassy.

Her earrings = less sassy and more, well, hooty?

We were expecting five for dinner – Akemi, Lisa, Lisa’s husband, my buddy Cas, and myself.  Alas, her hubby canceled so we ended up with a fair amount of leftovers.  I ended up sending Lisa home with an extra steak. For her husband.  I assume.

P.E.I. rib-eyes – I heavily salted them and let them sit for an hour, then rinsed them off, patted them dry, and seasoned them with thyme.  I then vacuum sealed them with a little olive oil and crushed garlic and cooked them in a  sous-vide bath at 56 degrees celsius for 3 hours.  I finished off by pan-searing them over medium-high heat for 30 seconds on each side, then let them rest for five minutes before serving.  

I seasoned the salmon with salt, garlic powder, pepper, and a little yuzu powder.  I placed a baking tray filled with an inch of water on the bottom rack, set the oven to 200 degrees, and then put the salmon in on the top rack.  After 20 minutes, I turned off the oven and let it sit for another twenty minutes.  I finished with a little chopped chive from the garden.

I used Scott Conant’s Scarpetta spaghetti recipe for this one.  Some of the highlights include using a potato masher on the stewing tomatoes and using an olive oil infused with basil, garlic, and chili. 

Veggiest (not pictured): purple cabbage with maple balsamic, and (unintentionally) crispy stir-fried broccoli (which I forgot to take off the heat).

In addition to the dessert Lisa brought…

A cream puff assortment from Beta 5.  Flavors included chocolate, vanilla, the ever-popular salted caramel, creamsicle, pistachio and sour cherry (one of my faves), strawberry-matcha, and raspeberry- Earl Grey.

And, finally, we capped things off with booze.  We tried a little chartreuse, had some of that terrific root liquor with ginger beer, and, of course…

A scotch and whisky assortment.

As I mentioned in a previous entry, I’ve never been a big scotch drinker – but have had my interest piqued by the Prohibition-ear gangsters running all that tasty-looking whisky on Boardwalk Empire. So, I picked up a few bottles for a tasting.  Five out of the six are scotches – so-called because they were produced and aged for at least three years in Scotland.  The lone dissenter, Nikka, is a Japanese whisky.  The five scotches were surprisingly different.  The 10 year old Laphroaig is the boldest, smokiest of the lot.  The 14 year old Oban was, in my opinion, the easiest-drinking scotch.  I couldn’t really pick out the almond and vanilla notes supposedly present in the Sauterne cask-aged 12 year old Glenmorangie Nectar D’or.  The 12 year old Cardhu was a treat.  Apparently, it’s so popular in Japan that it is purchased in bulk, directly from the distillery, making it a hard “get”.

Everyone else had their scotch on the rocks but I find the ice dilutes the flavor.  I opted for a drop or two of room temperature water instead.

The results?  If I had to rate them in order of preference:

1. Nikka, 2. Oban, 3. Lophraig, 4. Cardhu, 5. Glenlivet, 6. Glenmorangie.

But, really, they were all very good.  And, by night’s end, I was feeling a lot like Bubba here…