Better Late Than Never

So herewith the tardy Valentine's dinner: I tried to combine decadent pleasure with some of the things already in the fridge to make good use of some of the nicer leftovers. The first course was kind of a riff on peanut butter and jelly; seared foie gras trimmed into heart shapes on raisin toast with homemade grape jelly and some of the peanut soup underneath, garnished with Indonesian long pepper. We had a glass of 1989 Moulin Touchais Coteaux du Layon, which was more or less a perfect match; it's not dessert-sweet, but sweet and bracingly acid (20% of the grapes are picked underripe, the rest, almost over) so it's ideal for this kind of sweet/savory combination. It will also keep just fine in the fridge until tomorrow.






















Next up were roasted pheasants on the sunchoke purée, with pheasant sausage and a cinnamon-blood orange gravy. I made the gravy in the pan that the foie and sausage both cooked in, and used a broth made from the pheasant giblets. For this we opened a 1990 Barolo by Marchesi di Barolo, which is still tannnic and not showing much fruit. 1990s are killing right now, so it's either in a dumb phase (unlikely) or just not that good (more likely.) It's a shame, because their 1990 Cannubi is sublime.




















Then, another sumptuous salad, and last, Christine's (and now Milo's) favorite dessert: the warm chocolate torte with the molten center. Easy to make, and pretty unbeatably wonderful, even by itself- since I forgot to make the kumquat marmalade to go with it. So just imagine it with nice tangy orange curls on the side, and maybe a heart of powdered sugar on top. Even without them, it didn't suck.