Wassup?

Good morning Thursday!  The good news is: the menu last night was quite popular.  The bad news?  We sold out way too early, by 6:30.  We had a few disappointed later arrivals, which at least let us know that we need to do a SBF beef menu again. 

The meal began with eggplant ravioli, produced cooperatively by Jay and Kevin.  The green beneath is lacy mustard, direct from Kevin's raised bed, self-seeded no less, from a plant left from last year that went viral this spring!  The filling was eggplant plus a little goat cheese, the whole thing dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

The pièces de résistance was this plate of St. Brigid's Farm grass fed roasted beef, set on a slice of country bread, drizzled with it's own juices and then splashed with basil pesto.  I was not totally convinced about the flavors of basil with beef, no matter how good it smelled, but once again, I would be wrong to be a doubter.

Dessert was a cup of Kilby's vanilla, with an almond biscotti poking out.  

For those on the email list who heard about the "Chocolate Caramel Slice" experiment - the results are in and we are very happy.

I pretty much used the recipe from the link I included yesterday, except I put coconut in the bottom layer, as that was something which was included in many other recipes.  I also made one mistake - which I corrected in today's batch - in using baking soda instead of the called for baking powder.  They didn't suffer any ill effects, that I could tell, but it will be interesting to see how the corrected recipe turns out in contrast.  A lot of the recipes I looked at on the internet called for self-rising flour, which I believe contains the latter.  I also used ganache for the chocolate layer, thinking it might be easier to cut through.

Anyway, they were delicious.  A bit rich (duh!), a bit sweet.  Only improvement would perhaps be a slightly thicker caramel layer.

We also turned our attention this morning to the half-peck of red jalapeno peppers that Kevin got from Redmans.   They became our first batch of Cowboygirl Candy for 2012.  The fact that they are red is great, and they are quite hot!  I could not have my face anywhere near the pot they were simmering in!

Ooh boy, look out burger!