New Years Eve, Reprise

The swans did swim and the fish flew in tandem, joining our wintry sommers' eve in the court of the jesters...

La Dolce Vidá. This was almost the New Years Eve that wasn't. Life conspired to thwart us this week at every turn. We originally had big plans at my friend, the hyphen's home. She came down with the killer bug. R & D and a few others made alternate plans which also included a brief hospitalization. Kind of messed up.

I ended up getting a fierce cold. Everything was setting up so nicely. We managed to left our heads up and cobbled together a few close friends and made plans to share the dawn of the new year at C & D's lovely palace. I guess that I must once again mention the duck.

I had big plans for making duck soup. We were going to use this vietnamese recipe from Epicurius. Sounded good. I love duck but didn't ever remember having duck soup. Melissa gave us four fat, juicy, wild duck carcasses when I was in the bay area, shot at the ranch. Leslie cooked them down and made an intense stock early in the week. We had planned to do an early test drive but couldn't get around to it with all of the holiday commotion and her busy store. Antoinette gave us two organic whole ducks to roast.

All of the cooks got to doing their thing around 7. I wandered in a short time later, not exactly allowed in the prep area but hanging around the periphery sharing wry witticisms.  J % J made a beautiful salad with his father's patented dressing. L & B lived in Spain for much of their life and made a spanish potato frittata which is called a tostada. It had a saffron sauce and was filled with arugula from her garden and mushrooms. Subtle, complex and wonderful. Not that I could taste much with the cold but it was still great. She has promised to make us one her famed paellas one of these days, hopefully soon.

D followed up with a thai shrimp toast. The shrimp is made into a mousse in a processor, painted on toast and then fried in a skillet. Another fantastic effort by the culinary master.

The J's brought over a 20 year old magnum of a superior red california blend. After wrestling with the cork, we tried that vin and it was delectable. Ww were a bit worried about the age but it held up perfectly. We need to drink a lot more of J's stash this year so that it does not go bad. As a public service.

We walked down to their petanque court, a french version of boccé. We set off a few fountain fireworks that I had picked up the last trip through Bluewater, New Mexico and played a few games of petanque. It is like being in tuscany, being at their incredible home, the art, the ambience, the petanque court being situated next to their small merlot vineyard. Definitely one for Sunset Magazine.

We returned to the kitchen and Leslie prepared her outrageous wild boar tacos. Her friend Wes shot the boar last month up in Cloverdale. My friend Ben also gave me boar sausage this week from a Russian Boar he just shot up in Kern somewhere. These tacos, finished with cilantro and sour cream are so good and so rich, maybe a little too spicy for the timid. I would say the best taco meat I have ever eaten, hands down.

Rufus T. Firefly

I am sorry to say that the duck soup was less successful than it could have been. Maybe there is a reason that you never see it served anywhere. Perhaps if we had time to doctor it up. Subtle, but not rich enough or flavorful enough to make a splash, She had asked me earlier in the week if I thought that we should add chicken stock to the stock and maybe we should have. Our compatriots put a good face on and pretended to enjoy it but I think that the dish was marginal at best. Didn't help that my wife was also coming down with an instant flu.

Hey you can't win all the time, can you? Waste of a perfectly good duck, but who asked me? She scored with the boar tacos. D ended up saving the day with homemade baked alaska, meringue over chocolate chip mint ice cream, gorgeous and scrumptious. I decided to duck out early and nurse my cold. Have to thank the hosts, my spousal unit and my friends for saving the day making it a really nice evening and a new years eve to remember. Quack.