Saying Goodbye to the Summer with Food and Wine!

It seems only appropriate, the wider we open our door to let others in, the more we should begin to show in the pictures. When we started this, the only pictures that we were taking were strictly of the food. Little by little, we began adding more pictures of ourselves and our guests. So now we have decided to bring you closer into the actual dinner and show you more pictures of what happens inside and around the kitchen on all Thursdays.

Dinner #17's theme was "Summer isn't over yet!" and all the dishes were either a collection of some of our past favorites from this summer or new creations that went perfectly well with the theme.

Enjoy the pics and stories!

Plating the appetizer, the ceviche. Adding the last touch of corn to the top. The sweet corn helps cut the spiciness of the Aji Amarillo and adds a delicious touch.

The final presentation of the flounder ceviche with aji amarillo. In Peru, the sauce that is used for the ceviche, which in this case is made up of 1/2 cup of lemon juice, 1/2 cup of orange juice, 2 aji amarillos chopped and 1/4 of heavy cream (in a blender), is calle leche de tigre (tiger's milk).

Jut before being served

Amy, Gerard, Nuria, Charlie, Alex, and Kat enjoying the pre-dinner discussions around the kitchen. This is ice breaking at its best, seeing as how most of the guests did not know each other previous to this encounter.

I don't know if this applies to everyone, but there is something about lamb chops that I find completely delicious. Before throwing these in the oven, I covered them with salt and pepper and olive oil.

The final plate, lamb chops with mint and goat cheese pesto accompanied by quinoa with cherry tomatoes and mozarella cheese. The mint pesto is prepared very much like a normal pesto, but instead of using basil use mint. Add goat cheese for an added flavor.  its a delicious sauce.

Ginger and mint infused coconut mousse with mango. This dessert came from the very first Thursday's at Worth, but went through a very significant improvement in the second round. I feel I am coming into my own with desserts. If you recall, dinner #1 I was petrified of the idea of having to create a dessert as it was something I never practiced too much. Things are definitely different now, watch out for dinner #18s orange dessert.

There is no way that I could talk about this dinner without mentioning the wines. Christy Frank of FranklyWines did a fantastic job of hand picking and pairing each wine to the dishes and setting up a landing page for all of our guest to purchase. The wine selection was amazing! See our Flickr on the top left for more info on each wine. The best pairing to date.

The wine glasses are still empty, which means that the plates were just served. After this there was a presentation of the food and of the wine, then straight to the food.

"Its the shape of the egg cartons that bounces sound back, not the material!" "Would a plastic egg carton work just as well?" These are just some of the conversations we had this night... granted this was after our 7th bottle of wine!