Long Day's Night

I know I'm quoting it wrong //grin//. Sunday night was the BC Day Gala Dinner at Vinoteca. It was a 9 course wine pairing extravaganza prepared by Jorg Gabler with help from the rest of us kitchen peons. It's a bit of blur, but I remember sending out, not neccessarily in the right order:

• Organic greens with rose petal & lychee dressing (divine!), topped with dried chips of Roma tomato that kept blowing away every time the servers walked outside.


• Green gazpacho soup with creme fraiche.


• Lemongrass braised Salt Spring Island mussels on soft polenta with lemon balm and garlic infused cream - we had problem with all the mussels opening and this course took forever to plate


• Apple braised pork, served with apricots braised in pork stock and preserved kumquats.


• Roasted fig with chocolate sauce, peppercorn goat cheese and crisped pancetta.


• Maple, star anise and brown sugar marinated venison, then grilled and served with fresh beans and yellow zucchini. Holy crap, it tasted like candied venison, so good!!


• Free range duck and rosemary risotto with duck liver and morel mushroom compound butter and a parmesan wafer. The duck was to die for! We all ate the leftovers right out of the pot.


• Peppercorn crusted grilled ahi tuna with some sort of berry sauce. Yum, yum, yum!


• Carmelized apple in phyllo pastry with creme anglais and fresh berries

It was a lot of fun working with Jorg (pronounced Yorg), he is an instructor at the Nanaimo campus of Malaspina and has worked in a lot of interesting places (like the Ocean Pointe in Victoria). What a long day though - 13 hours not including travel time and the stop at 7/11 on the way home (Ryan "needed" some chips).

So, should you you ever go to a Gala dinner or even a big event, please remember the staff have been there a lot longer than you have and tip accordingly. //grin// Seriously, though, planning these things is a long involved process. Fatima and Jorg started in June choosing wines and planning the menu, then Jorg started prepping on Friday and the dinner actually started at 530pm on Sunday evening. Ryan and I were almost the last to leave at 1am Monday morning and there were still dishes to be done.