Not exactly takeout pizza

I had THE most unbelievable meal last night.

When we got to A's house there was a giant ice sculpture loaded with seafood. There were giant shrimp/prawns, cracked king crab legs, split lobster tails, and raw oysters on the half shell. I had some of everything. (Oysters are not rubbery or tough or gross, like I thought they would be. I had two.) Really, check this out:



I laughed with A's mother because there is no way she decorated that fireplace... the funny thing is she doesn't cook either so we were teasing her husband that this is the most cooking that's ever gone on in the house. It has a tiny little kitchen, the chefs must have been out of their minds tripping over each other.

There were also sushi rolls(I had more caviar, too) , a fruit and cheese plate with crackers and such, and some little skewered/grilled thing with beef and red peppers. (I cannot eat red peppers, they don' like me.) They also passed some sort of cheese/potato puff that was great.

During this period were were served a sparkling wine from Italy. Honestly, they could have just done this food and it would have been a fantastic party. I was enjoying the seafood and trying to not eat it at the same time because I knew there were so many courses yet to come. (We got to-go containers later of shrimp and so on. Yummy. That's what I'll be eating tonight.)



We were seated for the meal and they set this lighted glass before us, (crappy picture, lights were down low for effect, sorry) - it contained an asian-style chicken wing on a bed of seaweed salad. Yummy. I think we had pino grigio with that. (Wine Guy told us all about the wines but no one else wanted to listen so I may have to call and get the names of all the wines we had.) Bobby - my friend's brother- wanted a plate of wings and some beer. Pfft. Men.

Soup next. The bowl had a yin/yang sort of design with carrot soup and celery root soup. There was truffle oil sprinkled on top. (At this point I am tempted to put words like "effing" in front of "awesome" "delicious" and "amazing" to describe it ALL. So just remember that I pretty much felt that way about all the food.)

I think we had a spanish rose' with the soup. The chef would come and tell us about the food and remind us "take a bite, take a sip of wine, take a bite". You could see this guy absolutely loved his job and was so proud of the meal he'd put together. What I also liked was that the regional president of the company (who we'd met at the test kitchen) was there working as a waiter and washing dishes and just generally right down in the trenches with his guys. I had a great deal of respect for that.

After that I believe we had the pasta course. It was tricolor pasta that Chef laughingly referred to as "mother in law's tongue" which Mr. Carly of course had a field day with. It was in a bolognese sauce with veal and pork and plenty of cunks of tomato and onions and so on. Great visual when they put it in front of us, so many colors and textures.

For the sorbet (which was mango, YUM) we each got a carved block of ice put in front of us with the scoop of sorbet on top.

The main course was a filet mignion WITH bone at the edge. There was a remark from the chef about how there are only two per cow, and that set of a round of joking that I can't recall verbatim, (by this point I was somewhat inebriated, obviously) but the people I was dining with are extremely funny and I have known the whole family for many years.

The meat was arranged on a bed of various beans like kidney/fava etc. Medium rare, just the way I like it. This was served with a red wine that was a blend of cabernet sauvignon and something else (I'll have to find out because we really liked this wine).

The chef then said he was going to cleanse our palate again and I thought "excellent... more mango sorbet..." but no. We got a salad. It was the only part of the meal that I wasn't completely bowled over by, because it was some artsy greens, some proscuitto, and.... a soft boiled egg. Bleah. I thought it was fresh mozzarella and that would have been better in my little brain just then. Truly this was the only thing that wasn't out-of-this-world fantastic.

I have to show you dessert, which was served with a nice port wine:



Tiramisu, some sort of custard in a pastry shell, and the chocolate volcano cake. A little snack on top of a light meal! The port wine was delicious and I was stealing people's rolled white chocolate stick (it's draped across the chocolate cake)

By the way if you're wondering if I drove everyone crazy taking pictures, the answer is "I hope not" and I tried to not do every course, and I took pictures of all of the guests because the hostess couldn't find her own camera with everything going on.

Only in America can you eat yourself insanely full and drink wine all night and say to yourself "I did it for charity". But my friend's husband did make a large contribution to the charity that had auctioned off the party, so that's my lame excuse.

So, in summary, this is SO what I'm making for dinner next Christmas. Hahahahahaha.