Unofficial Downton Abbey Recipes Are Officially Delicious

Valentine's Day provided the perfect opportunity to try out a few recipes from The Unofficial Downton Abbey Cookbook, and I am pleased to say the experience brought a few new additions to my last-minute dinner party repertoire... as well as a healthy respect for the Crawleys who purportedly ate this way every night.

To start, we sampled Lady Mary's Crab Canapés -- unlikely to win the prize for "most authentic" due to the Old Bay Seasoning, cream cheese, Tabasco, and Parmesan involved, but a crowd-pleaser nonetheless.

Crabby Lady Mary's namesake hors d'oeuvres.

Just like the Crawley sisters, these were as
gooey and cheesy as they looked.

We also amused the bouches with The Crawley Sisters' Stuffed Mushrooms, an spicy little number calling for more cream cheese and Parmesan to fill the gaps left by the destemming of the shrooms. They also worked in some garlic and oh-so-British Worcestershire sauce.

Because we 21st Century humans have fewer stomachs than the upper-class British employing Service à la Russe in the 1920s, we skipped the soup course and jumped straight to fish as our main meal -- omitting the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Courses of Joints, Steaks, and Roasts that were traditionally to follow the fish.

Daisy's Mustard Salmon with Lentils was my favorite dish of the night, thanks to its impressive resplendence of flavor and quick and easy style.  It actually could pass for healthy, too, if you don't use the entire half cup of butter that is supposed to go in.  The show-stopping mustard "sauce" consists of softened butter, chopped chives, chopped tarragon (this MADE the dish), Dijon mustard, lemon juice, a touch of sugar, salt and fresh ground pepper mixed together, then dolloped into the cooked French lentils and on top of the salmon just when you're ready to serve.  Tremendous! 

Daisy's tarragon-scented salmon and lentils stole my heart.
And most of my stomach capacity.

We paired our wild Coho salmon and lentils with a 2002 Nuits-Saint-Georges "Les Damodes" Burgundy by Philippe and Vincent Lécheneaut, because that's what Carson and His Lordship would have chosen.  This lovely silken delight of a wine even survived our side order of Baked and Buttery Balsamic Asparagus with Sea Salt, another butter-happy gift to humanity.  This simplissimo concept is essentially just roasted asparagus in a brown butter sauce that's jazzed up by the addition of a bit of soy sauce and balsamic vinegar.  Delectable.  No weirdness from the soy sauce addition at all, despite my misgivings.

Balsamic-spiked butter sauce, garnished with fresh vegetables.

After all that delicious butter, we had decided to forgo the uber-rich Creamy Chocolate Mousses and Mrs. Patmore's Extravagant Parisian Eclairs in favor of a light dessert like, say, two pints of Three Twins Ice Cream and a half dozen bignés from Ca'Momi.  This was our inspired Napa variation on the cookbook's Vanilla Wafers With Double Chocolate Ice Cream recipe, which included a helpful prefatory note: "With the advent of Service à la Russe, ice cream and wafers became the standard nonfruit dessert."  Reading a bit further, we learn that this standard dessert was actually the standard SECOND dessert, served after a first sweet course of something hot.  Maybe next time.  

And there will be a next time.  How else to sample the other four courses we skipped over?

Savoring Summertime

Flipping through my mealtime pictures from the last few weeks, I am struck by how many delicious items I discovered for the first time this summer.  Time for a roundup of the best stateside dishes of recent memory! (For pictures of France's prime offerings, check out my post from early August.)

Porchetta Arugula Pizza 

Ca'Momi

I discovered this luscious beast at the Silver Oak Release Party pizza pairing contest, when it won my heart and first place vote among a field of worthy contenders. A chewy blistered crust, perfect tomato to cheese ratio, and glorious paving of succulent porchetta slices packs plenty of flavor right out of the oven, but then the whole thing goes to another level with a cool showering of fresh arugula and shaved pecorino romano. Perfection. It was spectacular with Silver Oak's Alexander Valley Cab, but it is also superbly satisfying with Ca'Momi's own house red, Rosso di Napa. And, if you hit Ca'Momi on Sunday, Monday, or Wednesday night, you can get a bottle of the house red and any pizza (including this one) for only $20.  Total.

Grilled Watermelon Heirloom Tomato Salad 

Fish Story

Gorgeous, juicy, and minimally dressed, this is summer on a plate.  The hint of char on the watermelon brought a nice caramelized element to offset the sweet and tart aspects, but the stealthy showstopper of this salad was the creamy pine nut puree drizzled around underneath the peppery watercress and salty ricotta salata.  Amazing stuff.  I'm very pleased with the menu additions coming out of Fish Story under Kiwi chef Clint Davies, who took over from Stephen Barber in late June. Can't wait to go back and try some more of his repertoire.

Ham Biscuit With Peach-Borage Jam And Creole Mustard

Fremont Diner

Wow. As hard as it may be to believe, this thing tasted even better than it sounded, and even better than it looked.  Salty, meaty Fremont ham.  Sun-kissed peach preserves, with an unexpected herbal twist.  Tangy, spicy, coarse-grained mustard.  A perfect buttermilk biscuit enveloping it all like a fluffy golden cloud, if clouds tasted like butter.  And ... all this artisanal farm-fresh goodness costs a mere $3.25.  Get there early, because this divine creature is only on the breakfast menu.

Pork Chop With Agave and Malanga

Cielito Lindo

Cielito Lindo opened in the old Annalien space on Main Street in July. Another Mexican restaurant for Napa? Yes... but with an original concept, and plenty of dishes you won't find anywhere else in the valley.  The menu salutes the cuisine of Jalisco, the Mexican region best known in the U.S. as the home of Puerto Vallarta.  As you might expect, there is a lot of fresh seafood involved. As you might not expect, there is also a pork chop to remember. Thick cut, seared, and slathered in a sweet-savory agave and lychee pan sauce, this slab of pork is irresistible--especially perched on its starchy mash of malanga (a tropical tuber very similar to taro, with a nutty, earthy flavor). I loved it when I tried it in the restaurant, but I loved it even more when I stood in front of my fridge later that night, gnawing the leftovers off the bone.