Liz had yet another dinner party, and I had a hankering to make paté again. So as before, ground pork, rendered bacon fat and the bacon plus spices, garlic, and this time cream, Calvados, and stale bread went in a terrine and into the oven. For some reason it broke- the fat separated out- so once cooled a tiny bit I puréed it all back together again and pressed it in the fridge for four hours. It worked really well, becoming basically rillettes, and the key was to let the food processor really go at it for quite a while, which obliterated the crispy lardons and pink peppercorns I had added, but made it very creamy and smooth, with no grainy aftertaste. Unmolded (I lined the pan with parchment to make it easy) onto nasturtium leaves with a side of pickles, it made for a decadent appetizer.
For dinner, everyone’s gardens contributed an emphatically color-coordinated array of dishes. David and Judy brought a huge slab of halibut from the city, John made shiso pesto for the fish, green mash, a green bean-butter sauce for Liz’s potatoes, and braised zucchini. We brought an enormous green oak-leaf lettuce that fed 12 people, and Liz made shredded pan di zucchero with pine nuts. We drank a White Barn “rosé” which is made, per the winemaker’s instructions, by mixing one bottle of his grenache with one bottle of his viognier (it’s tangy, complex, and insane) followed by 3 bottles of 1976 Drouhin: 2 delicious Clos de Vougeot and a sadly exhausted Clos des Mouches (I’m going to use it to marinate pork chops this weekend), a 2000 Aquila sangiovese, and a 1985 Chianti that I forget the name of. Dessert was 2 crazy vegan pies Liz made, vegan chocolate-cashew pudding I froze in the ice cream maker, and some local gelato from the new place in town.
