First dinner of December

In thanks of having my wife and I over for a pre-Thanksgiving dinner at their house – we invited Lara’s co-worker and her hubby (Meghan and Isaiah) and another co-worker (Jen) over to our house for a Monday night feast. Five courses were plated, one being the pork-belly that I’ve previously posted on here. Conversations were light-hearted as the four of us with Hawaii ties tried to introduce Jen to “local-pidgin-talk” from the 808.

Wild Arugula with tomatoes two ways (Broiled with shaved Parmesan and sea salt with butter-balsamic reduction, and a tomato compote with white truffle oil, shallots, and lemon-mustard vinaigrette):

I had somthing simliar to this at Bouchon a while back ad it got me thinking to make it myself. A Croque Madame is basically an open-face ham and cheese sandwich. Japanese pillow bread is lightly toasted and then i freid some nice thik-cut ham. on top is a poached egg and a classc mornay sauce coats it all. Yum:

Lamb is a favorite meat of mine. Whenever I suggest it, I’m met with looks of disbelief. I love to grill, and now that it’s chilly outside it’s a great time to throw on a few racks of whole-mustard coated lamb and serve it with a Cabernet-shallot reduction and fried shallots that were used to flavor the reduction were then flambeed in vodka. I served it with a side of Asparagus-Gai Lan; known as ‘Aspiration’ with black truffle drizzle and finishing salt:

Desert is not one of my fortes. In fact, I don’t have much of a sweet tooth and try to abstain from baking as much as possible. I find many deserts to be too rich or sweet and not the way I ever like to end a meal. Lara has been perfecting her bread-pudding recipe and made a croissant bread-pudding with chocolate chunks. I helped out by making a bourbon cream sauce with fried peach sections:

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