Who doesn’t love bubbles?!

Our goal was to sample a variety of sparkling wine, from various regions. And, of course, pair it with delicious food, prepared for wonderful company!

Here’s the menu (I laid it out in InDesign and printed copies for everyone):

The cocktail, a take on a French 75, was lovely. If you like gin–or even if you’re not quite sure–I’d highly recommend the Hendricks Grand Cabaret. If I did re-make the cocktail, I’d cut back a bit on the simple syrup, because the Grand Cabaret had a lot of fruity sweetness. I made up the simple syrup from organic sugar in advance.

Mel made the Black Truffle Pearl Toasts (unfortunately the caviar was past its use-by date and had gone off–originally we’d planned the dinner for a month prior but had to reschedule). They were delicious! Black truffle pearls on cream cheese on rustic sourdough from our local Farmer’s Market (Lodge bread, if you’re interested.)

I don’t have pics of everything–we all actually dove into the chicken before we could get pics, and we ended up firing up another chicken (Mel’s dish) so Mel could get a pic, but I didn’t grab my phone for it. Our friend Eileen brought the homemade palmiers (delicious!) but I also neglected to get a pic of them.

Gougieres (Mel): sooo tasty. They had carmelized onions inside. The sauce is a rich cheesy sauce for dipping.

You can check out my re-post of Mel’s Facebook post here if you want ALL the pics.

Regardless, here are the rest of the courses *I* got pics of: salmon (Mel), below; pear salad (me), above; and following, the onion tart (me); sorbet (me); limoncello cheesecake (Mel).

In hindsight, looking at the pics, I should’ve brought some mint leaves to garnish the sorbet, and maybe some fresh thyme sprigs for the onion and cabbage tart. Next time!

It was a wonderful dinner!