Dinner #25 - A Night of Ricotta

December is always a very crazy month and the same definitely applies for Worth Kitchen. In the past two weeks we have had 3 dinners, two of which have been filmed. We are planning our first dinner for 18 people this Thursday at a beautiful loft in SoHo. So our plans do not stop... but lets not get ahead of ourselves. We still need to go back to Thursday December 2nd, our 25th dinner.

The dinner of the ricotta. Delicious dishes, and my first braised short ribs of the winter. This is a dish that will make various repeats in the future.

The menu was the following:
Appetizer
Baked beets and ricotta with rosemary and truffle salt


Entree
Braised short ribs with a merlot and broth reduction on a bed of ricotta polenta

Dessert
Ricotta cheesecake

The baked beet slices with ricotta. A little amount of beet juice was poured on top of the cheese to give it a desired coloring. Experimenting with the presentation is one of the key take aways from these dinners. Sometimes its a hit, sometimes its a miss. You be the judge.

The short ribs were seared before putting them to braise for 4 hours in a chicken broth with leeks, carrots, celery, rosemary and a bottle of merlot. By end of the braise we had a delicious broth that when filtered and reduced to a perfect sauce. The polenta with ricotta was served a long with some chanterelle mushrooms

The ricotta cheesecake was very simple yet indulging. My first cheesecake ever and I think it came  out quite well. It was missing the orange zest, it could have given it an additional flavor bump. But for first time with a cheesecake, I was very pleased. 

After this dinner I had a lot of short ribs and polenta left over. So instead of keeping it around for a personal dinner or lunch, I took the everything to the office and prepared short rib tacos and ricotta cheesecake for anyone that was around. This was officially our first of what could be many more Thursday Left Overs.  Many were feed and all were happy.

From a Challenge to a Feast...

Well, we proved after our dinner #11 that it is possible to unite the most picky eaters in one table. To say that this dinner was a challenge is a great understatement. Not that I don't mind the occasional challenge, I actually love them, but this one set the bar high. These were the limitations for the night:

• gluten free
• lactose free
• no shell fish or "anything that touched the ocean"

Now that i see it written up like this, I just realized I cooked my first kosher meal without even knowing it. Not 100% sure it would have been blessed by a rabbi, but nonetheless.

I cannot however, for all that is sacred in this blog, dedicate this post only to the food. It was an amazing dinner, delicious in all ways. But it was also a very special dinner due to the people that joined us. Not only did we have a very fun couple of Argentines (one who works with Tamy) but we also had my sister-in-law and cousin visiting from Mexico and Miami respectively. This would be the first of two consecutive dinner's where we would have family and friends visiting from far away (my sister-in-law will repeat two dinners since she is staying with us for a week). It is always a treat for us to have family join us on our dinners. I think it becomes very obvious for our readers that we are very close with our family, its part of who we are, and I think that translates to the experience.

Ok, so now back to the food! Full of challenges and all, Tamy and I set out to create an amazing dinner. Understanding all the requirements that we had, we set out to create the menu. We obviously struggled due to the fact that gluten, believe it or not, is very hard to avoid. It is in so many things that we eat on a daily basis, it has become a regular staple of our diet. So the menu we created after much contemplation and research (yes some twittering as well, thank you!) was the following:

Theme: Balsamic Vinegar

Appetizer

Goat cheese covered seared beet salad with arugula and pine nuts (for the lactose intolerant we removed the goat cheese of course)

Main Plate

Seared duck breast with balsamic reduction

Ying Yang Quinoa with wild mushrooms and asparagus

Dessert

Originally planned strawberries with balsamic reduction but finished with a Grape/Blueberry sorbet with balsamic reduction, garnished with peach slices

More on the dinner, the grocery shopping and the recipes shortly.