Mount St. Helens EXPLODES… in the Kitchen!
My Sunday Night Dinner Club took on a new form this past weekend – it was a task that we’ve not undertaken in quite sometime. What was supposed to be a nice quiet dinner for twelve turned into a debacherous affair for twenty-four. But what a night it was. If you are familiar with my Sunday night dinners then you will know they are themed, like last weeks picnic, for instance. Our spring tour continued with our good friends Summer Camp and his ladywife hosting (they are available for all future Sunday night dinners).
This past Sunday was the 28th anniversary of the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington State, and with Summer Camp being from Washington he thought what better way to celebrate this than to have a meal dedicated to all that is volcanoes. We planned the menu meticulously, and ensured that most, if not all, ingredients came from a region with a volcano.
To start we served a white bean and herbed crostini; we had Korean inspired lamb, albeit from New Zealand; and Japanese and Peruvian inspired miso garnet sweet potatoes, courtesy of our resident chef, T2. There was also a tomato and mint keftedes from Greece and last but not least, a Pacific-rim Fuji apple salad. Not forgetting dessert we created an amazing chocolate molten cake from Mexico (not really from Mexico, but we claimed that region for the dish). We even sought out Assyrtiko wine, which is made from a grape grown in volcanic ash in the Santorini region of Greece.
The lamb, keftedes and molten cake were simply amazing. I have included some pictures after the jump and more details re the lamb.
New Zealand Lamb
Above, we have the lamb seasoning in 20 cloves of garlic, thyme and oregano with lots of s&p.
In this picture we are slightly browning the lamb in evoo.
Here we have the lamb basking in its juices with onion, stock and garlic. This was roasted in the oven for 3-4hrs on a 375f temp.
Here is the finished product. The lamb fell right off the bone but we decided to keep some of the meat on the bone for presentation.
Tomato and Mint Fritter
Molten Chocolate Cake
i want to know more about the tomato fritters. also, what makes something officially a “fritter.”
We kinda called it a fritter as opposed to a keftedes as keftedes’s are generally in balls, but we didn’t do that. It was just batter mixed with mint, tomatoes, herbs etc. If you want i can locate the full recipe, they were very much like a pancake and AMAZING!
okay… I’m glad the lamb looks less like a chopped up and peeled human corpse once it’s cooked. That pile of raw meat really scared me a little (chopped zombie brains was the description that came to mind). Those fritters look frackin fabulicious!
just letting you know, maid, you can say *fucking* on this blog, you dont have to say *frackin*
–ES Swear Enforcer
love that this is the one thing we police our commenters on – their failure to curse.
Yummy Yummy Yummy. And frackin is just fine if you’re a Battlestar nerd. 🙂
Grape grown in volcano ash? Um, seriously?
But what if people find out my real identity and then track down all my blog comments and blast me for having a potty mouth? I might get fired! and my political career will be over.
Hey, I have several vials of Mount St. Helen’s ash that I scooped up from along a roadside in Eastern Washington. Next time you make a meal to commemorate the event let me know and I’ll ship it to you. It would make a lovely condiment… hey, it gets it out of my attic.