Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Gypsy Dinner

We got to attend our first Gypsy dinner last weekend. What a great experience! (What's a Gypsy dinner, you ask? I can't really tell you, but a Google search might help...) Peche, Peche, Quack, Quack was the theme -- all about peaches and duck. Well, who can argue with that? A couple of memorable dishes, including a duck taco with spicy peach taco sauce, which matched marvelously with a nice spicy Argyle Pinot Noir. (Now I think I'm going to serve Pinot with tortilla chips and fruit salsa, just to confirm that the toasted corn goes as well with it as I thought that night.) The first course -- a peach-scented consomme with a poached quail egg, a couple of little cubes of smoked duck, and a preserved-lemon tortellini -- was a marvel of textures and tastes. It was fun to watch the faces of diners who were unfamiliar with preserved lemon. Boy, were their mouths surprised! I knew what to expect but it was still such a great counterpoint to the quail egg. And the wine pairing, a Scheurebe, was very interesting. With all the different tastes going on, the wine seemed to be different with every sip. Too bad these dinners are seemingly always oversubscribed -- I sure hope we're able to get in on another one. It was so great to be at a communal table where everyone else cared about food as much as I do.

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