New American Feast — Tasting Menu and a Michie tradition.
Every Thanksgiving for the past eight years or so we have had our “Michie” feast on the day after Thanksgiving. It’s a good thing that our Thanksgiving menu is pretty traditional because so much work goes into our meal on the Friday following Tday. Here’s our menu for the night with a few picture teasers. We will be posting some of the recipes over the next few days.
mushroom mosaic terrine
paired with gloria ferrer sonoma brut
———-
lemon basil sorbet palate cleanser
———-
parsnip bisque with crispy pork belly
pared with robledo sauvignon blanc 2006, california
———-
crab, avocado, mango tower
paired with pierre boniface apremont 2008, france
———-
seared yellowfin tuna tostone stack with mexican coke reduction
pineapple, mango, sesame vinaigrette
paired with st. clement, bale lane, 2007 sauvignon blanc, napa valley
———-
fig and port sorbet palate cleanser
———-
chicken fried deer heart, latke, black pepper cream
paired with mo zin, spann vineyard, 2006
———-
duck confit ravioli with port wine and sun-dried cherry sauce
paired with calvet-thunevin cuvee constance, 2005, cotes catalanese
———-
smoked espresso powdered venison tenderloin with chili, chocolate
fresh gulf crab cake and beer blanc sauce
paired with nero d’avola/merlot evoe aziende agricole aollara
———-
madeira-braised veal cheeks with chive cheese grits
paired with bear boat pino noir 2006, russian river valley
———-
gorgonzola dolce latte with asian pear, Tete De Moine, triple cream brie
———-
pumpkin bread and chocolate bread pudding, frozen honey cinnamon custard with cajeta
paired with assorted liquer
(Sherry) We decide on a theme in advance. It all started with frying the turkey for the first time eight years ago. We had all this oil left over and thought we should do something with it so the next day we had a fish and frog leg fry. The next year we decided to do all oysters. I think we did them seven different ways. In the following years we have done, sushi, Mexican, Italian, French Country, Spanish Tapas and this year we decided on a tasting menu, New American style.
(Alexis) This year we had 10 courses, 10 people, 10 bottles of wine. Everyone comes up with their own recipes for the event in advance. Paul oversees the entire menu and if you’re lucky he will cook your course for you too. Just kidding. But it is a life saver when he looks at your recipe and clues you in to the fact that you really need to start parts of your recipe 24-48 hours in advance. Thanks to him I had some awesome duck confit already prepared for me when I went to make my ravioli on Friday.
(Sherry) We have so much fun cooking and laughing and consuming a lot of wine together. Everyone really gets into their dish, preparing and plating for presentation. We decided this year that everyone should present their dish when serving their course and explain how they prepared it and what wine they were serving with it. That was a lot of fun.
(Alexis) I think I had an advantage of being towards the end of the meal, when I was a little loosened up by the wine and more than ready for some “public speaking.”
(Sherry) We had 2 oz. pours on all our wines and by the end of the night I think we calculated that everyone drank a bottle of wine a piece. This is not including what my daughter-in-law coined “intermission” wines in case someone wanted more wine while waiting for the next course.
My dish was the only one that flopped. It was tasty but the terrine, even with 24 sheets of gelatin, did not set up like it was suppose to. The veal cheeks came from Chicago and other ingredients came from Austin and Houston. I made two trips to an Asian market to get the pork belly. We have already been talking about the next feast when we are all together and we’ve decided it will be a “locavore” theme. We will have to cook only seasonal ingredients within 50-100 miles of where we live. So that will be Chicago, Austin, and Houston. This will be a challenge.
(Alexis) I’d like to add to the local part that the ingredients should also be organic, natural, grass-fed, free range, etc..
Stay tuned for more recipes and photos of some of the highlights from the tasting menu!
