New Years Blast

For over a decade, Leslie and I spent every New Years in Santa Fe, exhibiting at John Morris Winter Antiquities Show.

With that show meeting its unfortunate end, our habit of late has been spending the evening and night together with our friends in Cardiff and Rancho Santa Fe.

This year nothing came together, emails and phone calls went unanswered and we finally decided to just spend a quiet evening together at home.

As luck and fate would have it, there was a last minute flurry and a bunch of my local buddies decided to cobble together a delicious meal at Reneé's. I am really glad that we did! What a way to bring in 2011.

And for the first time in ages, I would don the chef's hat and cook something. I am really not a cook and am frequently banished from my own kitchen, due to some early unfortunate culinary mishaps, but with the new year I decided to whip something up. I prepared an apricot, honey glazed duck with Grand Marnier. Quite good really, a serviceable duck.

The meal came together like this. Brigitte and Morgan started our dinner off with smoked salmon appetizers on pumpernickel topped with creme fraiche and lumpfish caviar. Squeeze of lemon and caper optional.

Leslie brought her signature artichoke tapenade and a delicious salad. She prepared a nice hearty grain mix with quinoa, orzo, lentils and garbanzo to accompany the sweet canard.

This course was followed by Reneé's rotisserie cooked prime rib. She liberated a Farberware rotisserie that she had received as a wedding gift 38 years ago from her garage and the thing is really trick. It gave the prime rib the most incredible crust and crunch. The machine itself is so 60's mod and just does awesome work. Accompanied her entreé with asparagus and yorkshire pudding.

Retha, a daughter of the south, then followed with the best gumbo I have ever tasted. Spicy and sophisticated. Wish I had had the nerve to ask her for some to take home.

Reneé then followed with an ollalaberry clofutti. The breaded topping was lighter than air and I don't think they ever served anything so fine at 21. The berry had the perfect tartness. Extremely classy, but what would you expect?

We drank rich coffee throughout the night that Jim and Janice had brought us from Kona that was both fantastic and also kept us old folks motoring on until midnight.

We washed the whole evening down with liberal quantities of champagne. Doug brought two great reds from his collection, a Papapietro Perry from Lira's Garden and a Nason. We all agreed that it was better to share a wonderful meal like this amongst friends than to eat at the finest restaurant. Many thanks to Renee´for once again opening up her home to us.

Leslie brought out the last of her fireworks stash from New Mexico and we lit off the explosives and squawked in the New Year with our noisemakers. A great meal with great friends, a perfect way to usher in the new year!