The night Bravo told me to stop tweeting

The back story....

I love Top Chef. I have seen every episode of every season, I have attended multiple live events and when I travel I eat at the restaurants of both the judges and contestants.

Last night I made plans to attend one of my favorite types of local events - a Beer Pairing Dinner at Luke. I am a foodie and I Facebook and tweet most everything I eat, so my phone was out and in full posting mode. These beer dinners are fantastic and this one in particular was made even better by the pairing of one of my favorite local brews Real Ale to the menu. To top it off I had the pleasure of befriending the Brew Master responsible for some of my favorite casked beers at the event - I was in heaven. Check out my Facebook page for a full rundown of the menu and paired beers - This was an amazing meal!

How it went down...

After dinner there was a recommendation from the Chef to check out a local bar for cocktails. He told me they had a Moscow Mule and that the bartender made his own Ginger Beer. I was sold on the idea immediately. My friends and I headed over and ordered tasty beverages.

This bar really was quite spectacular. The Esquire Tavern is the oldest bar on the River Walk and serves up some amazing tasty creations. It's a weeknight and was mostly dead when we arrived, but not for long. I turned my head and caught a glimpse of a beautiful bald man. I had to do a double take because one of my Friends bears a striking resemblance to this sex god of the foodie world ;) And sure enough it was the one and only Tom Colicchio of Craft Restaurants and Top Chef fame. I've adored him on TV and dined at his restaurants many times. He is simply stunning both in talent and looks. The buzzing of the crowd grew louder as other faces turned and were recognized.

Emeril Lagasse - who while amazingly famous and known to millions also happens to be the one responsible for my favorite stuffed chicken wing at his restaurant NOLA in my beloved New Orleans. I eat there every trip I make to that wonderful city.

Tre Wilcox who I had met at the Central Market Cooking School years ago when he taught a class and made one of the most tasty sea bass dishes I have had in my entire life - I said hi to him and he was super sweet and just as friendly as ever! Such a great guy and talented chef!

Gail Simmons - another member of Top Chef royalty - I'll get more to her later

Padma Lakshmi the amazingly beautiful and alluring goddess herself. She is even more amazing in person and it was all I could do to not go total fan girl and make an absolute fool of myself.

So I think my fellow foodies can understand how the atmosphere might change a bit having these people in the room. There were a handful of kitchen staff there from Luke. Our own local celebrity Steven McHugh was also in attendance after having made such a spectacular meal for us just hours before. I get foodie fan girl just being around him on a normal basis, so this night I was on overload.


I was lucky to have my dinner date with me for the night who kept me reigned in. I was flipping back and forth between my options: play it cool and enjoy your drinks with these amazing people, or go fan girl and start asking for pics and autographs. I opted for the play it cool and just enjoy the night. My phone was still out and I'm an avid tweeter so how could I not type in my few 140 characters or less possibly one of the greatest highlights of my foodie year?

Here's where things turn sour - On twitter I am a nobody or at least in the grand scheme of things I am a nobody. I have a tiny group of 500 followers or so. Some foodie friends, but mostly computer geeks like me from the other part of my world. Of those 500 followers none are paparazzi. Here are my tweets verbatim in the order posted:

1) Heirloom and melon tasting @Luke paired with Real Ale Lost Gold IPA Swoon! http://lockerz.com/s/115144347

2) Omfg. @tomcolicchio is at this bar. So is Tre Wilcox. In SA?

3) Pardon my French but fuck. Emeril is here too. I just walked into a foodie wet dream

4) And @gailsimmons !!!

5) Seriously. Tonight just got surreal @ the esquire. Top Chef in the house!!!

6) Fuck. I just met @PadmaLakshmi I'm in love.

I saw nothing wrong with any of these tweets - perhaps outside of my use of expletives, but really now - I was excited and dropping the f-bomb is not a punishable offense as far as I know unless you are 5 years old, and even then the punishments are light.

I was just hanging out with my friends, enjoying the evening and behaving myself. I wasn't snapping pictures, I wasn't asking for autographs, I was just doing the same thing they were - relaxing at a very cool bar, sipping at finely crafted beverages, chatting with the super talented bartender and having a good time with amazing people.

About 50 minutes after that last tweet about my love for Padma a tall blond guy with walks over and places his Blackberry in my face with a picture of my twitter avatar on it and asks "Is this you"?

I politely yet quizzically respond "Yes" and the guy says to me in a very rude bad impersonation of my mother yelling at me tone "you need to stop tweeting... Now!"

I was in shock! I quickly turned on my phone and pulled up my twitter app to look for something awful - for a second I thought maybe my account had been hacked and someone was saying horrible bad things about these amazing people I adore - but no, just the few tweets above.

I have no idea who this guy is and I watch him walk back over to Gail Simmons and chat like this was normal acceptable behavior. My friends and I are all standing around in amazement and then my equally cute Tom Colicchio looking friend pulls out his phone and with amazing speed and dexterity displays a picture of Mike Score from Flock of Seagulls.

The resemblance to the rude Blackberry guy was incredible. And he went about responding to the jerk and defending my honor as an innocent tweeter. From here on out I will refer to him as Flock of Seagulls because he never did tell me his name. All I got later was that he worked for Bravo and was on the "job" that evening.

My Friend waves at the guy to come back over and when Flock of Seagulls arrives he pulls up the picture and asks "Is this you?"

Flock of Seagulls replies "Um, no"

Friend replies back with a "Oh, well you can go fuck yourself anyways" and a beautiful display of the middle finger to his face.

The flipping of the bird to Flock of Seagulls offender pretty much made my night :) As crude as it seems, there's something beautiful about that gesture when given with that kind of passion.

Flock of Seagulls turns to the bartender and attempts to get us kicked out of the bar.

Friend then says "Don't be a pussy."

Flock of Seagulls then backs into the slowly escalating crowd and people start sticking their nose in and asking me "OMG what just happened", "What did you do?" I'm just standing there in amazement.

My dinner date for the evening, in his very calm and graceful demeanor starts asking Flock of Seagulls what the problem is and is trying to diffuse the situation. Flock of Seagulls has backup posse forming and they start saying that saying that someone had dropped the truly offensive f-bomb and called him a "faggot". He's pointing his anger at my Friend. This is where things got ridiculous. None of my friends nor I would ever use that word. Hell, had I seen anyone use that term towards anyone Flock of Seagulls included, I would have kicked their ass out myself. I have no tolerance for that kind of hatred.

Next thing I know I am pressed with my back against the bar standing with Colicchio and my Friend inches from me as they exchange peace agreement terms. My dinner date is trying to help me figure out what's happening. Colicchio wants my Friend to apologize for calling Flock of Seagulls a pussy. My Friend counters with a request for Flock of Seagulls to apologize for being rude to me. Flock of Seagulls wants to do no such thing and starts spouting off that he was just doing his job.

Gail Simmons is now standing across from me joined in the fuss so I politely say "I have no idea what I did to offend you guys but I apologize for being a fan and complimenting you on twitter"

Gail says back to me "You tweeted this location and have compromised our ... " I'm not sure what it was she said through all the shouting but I'm pretty sure my simple tweets didn't compromise a thing or what she was so upset about. I didn't see anyone show up after my tweets and it has been over an hour by this point. I mean if a flood of fans spilled in and crashed their party I could see how she might be upset, but that didn't happen at all. I'm sorry Gail - I don't understand what made you so upset. I was tweeting my love and adoration!

Then next thing I know Flock of Seagulls is making an apology to me, Gail Simmons is shaking her head and Tom is telling me "It's fine... It's fine..." and people are all calming down. My Friend apologizes to Flock of Seagulls for calling him a pussy. Everyone seems okay again. I'm still in shock. Flock of Seagulls is taken out of the bar.

I walk over to Flock of Seagulls' backup posse and have a nice conversation about Top Chef being in San Antonio for some undisclosed reason and they can't tell me and they are so sorry that their friend was so rude to me. One of them jokes that he was just jealous of my back tattoo. Then he shows me his awesome goat tattoo and we are back to laughing and enjoying ourselves. It was a really awesome goat arm piece and they were really sweet to make amends for the guy being out of line and trying to censor my tweets. We discuss the "freedom to tweet" and they point out that the chefs themselves are twitter users, but that Flock of Seagulls might not be and maybe he doesn't understand how it works?

We stay there for another hour or so, Emeril and Padma have stumbled out at this point, Gail makes her way out - still with the head shaking thing - I can't help but think she's upset with me for only tweeting her name and some exclamation marks and not saying how in love with her I am. Which I am sad for because I really do respect her work and she's an amazing woman. I do hope that if fate ever places in me in such close proximity to her fantastic-ness that she realizes that I am not out to compromise her anything :) I'm just a foodie fan. No press showed up, there was no picture taking by anyone that night - I still am not sure what the concern was over my few simple innocent tweets.

I walk down through the rest of the bar patrons both our group and the Top Chef group and everyone is still trying to make sense of what just went down. They are sweet enough to buy me a drink and make lots of apologies for this guy starting such a fuss and I'm back to being my somewhat normal self. Tom is smiling again and we all cheers over fantastic cocktails.

My notes from this experience:

1) if I ever need to broker a peace agreement or calm my normally crazy self my dinner date is the perfect guy for the job. He stayed calm through the entire ordeal and kept me from going fan girl crazy.

2) if I ever need my honor defended my Friend is an amazing guy and totally has my back. He's also totally trained to kick ass and he's crazy fun to hang out with. I'm pretty sure if it had turned ugly he would have won that versus challenge I posed earlier today. I also am now in love with his middle finger and rapid photo finding abilities.

3) my new friend who also makes amazing beer magic and might be a bigger guitar geek than me is great at photo bombing and we totally need a re-do attempt! I'm still wondering if it was my quirky karma or his amazing hair that caused the events that set in motion last night.

4) I love being surrounded by amazing chivalrous beautiful men :) I am a very lucky girl.

5) if you compliment someone on twitter, and there are other people nearby, the compliments should be equal or someone might get offended.

6) If you are insulted by professionals, their companies will make it right and send you formal apologies and gifts in the form of autographed cookbooks :)

7) I still love Top Chef and am super excited to see what brought them to San Antonio. I was honored to be in their presence last night and enjoy their company.

8) if there are celebrities around, be careful what you tweet because you might compromise their? oh wait... I never did learn what that was :P Sorry Gail!

It's a new dawn...

So a quick catch up from the previous post... I'm so behind ;)

Surgery was a complete success - clean margins, tumor completely removed and no need for post surgery radiation. I'm told I'll make a full recovery.

The scar is massive (at least to me) but is well hidden by my hair and so far no one seems to notice any real difference unless I point it out and say "hey check out my huge scar!"

Life is returning back to normal - Ran my first post surgery race on Feb 26th, and already have 4 more upcoming races on the books, including the upcoming Culinaria 5K! - How perfect is that? Food and Running all in one?  I'd like to work back up to a half marathon by the summer - we will see how that goes.

I've decided to work on making the most of this year and celebrating the amazing life I have been blessed with. Next week I'm starting up my travels again with a trip to Arizona, followed by a conference trip to New Orleans - then Baltimore in April, San Diego in there somewhere too - Possibly Costa Rica in July and most importantly a Euro vacation in Germany, Italy and France for the holidays this year. I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself!!!

"My Last Supper"

Two weeks ago I got news that a small bump behind my ear was a little more than a bump. In fact it was a tumor. The kind that we later discovered that Adam Yauch had and survived. (ironic fate for a Beastie Boys fan)

The options were few, leave it (not a good outlook) or treat it and the treatment is surgery. The surgery will leave a scar from the top of my ear, down my neck and a dent in the side of my face, but should be 100% curative and I can get back to my normal day to day life.

Adam has the same scar and dent that I have to look forward to. He is also making a movie and releasing a new album this year. I'm looking forward to kicking this thing's ass and finding my own new projects to conquer.

I opted to have 2 weeks with my family and friends before going under the knife. I had to make sure all was right with my world. My primary world being food, I knew that I had to get in one last pre-op spectacular meal and I am blessed enough to have just the people in my life to take on such a crazy request. I have spent the past 2 weeks trying to be as un-dramatic as possible because I know that tomorrow will be a breeze and in a few weeks I will be up and running like my normal self.

Side effects like loss of taste buds or paralyzing half my face are just not options I accept. I know I wont be able to feel my ear ever again, but who needs to feel their ear? Maybe I'll get a new piercing :P When I read through the list, the loss of taste buds probably scared me more than most things thus the "last supper" idea was formed.

I knew exactly where I wanted my "last supper" to take place. I emailed Chef Jason Dady and put in my request for a table at The Lodge Restaurant. The first reservation I made was for four. I figured I wanted my family there by my side. Then I found out I had awesome friends coming in from out of town who love The Lodge as much as I do. So I posted an event on Facebook and soon enough my party of four grew to fourteen.

There is nothing I enjoy more than a fabulous meal shared with friends. I am the luckiest girl in the world to be surrounded by so many amazing people who shared this night with me and helped me forget about how scared I am. I have spent the past two weeks doing my best to be brave and not show my fear, but honestly it's pretty freaking scary stuff and I'm just glad I'm surrounded by so much love and support.

They even indulged my whim to get a "Last Supper" photo at the end of the meal. I love this picture, and I also love every single person in the photo. They are the best!

We arrived at the lodge and headed to the bar for cocktails. From scotch to dirty martinis and glasses of wine, we all started the night off well.

Once we were seated it was announced that we were going "off-menu" for the evening and were about to indulge in my most favorite thing - a tasting menu. I cannot tell you how impressive it was to watch the staff handle this rowdy group of fourteen. We had a vegetarian, a pescatarian, a hard shell seafood allergy, and someone who ate kosher. None of this phased the kitchen. Course after course arrived matching the needs of the guests and everyone had an amazing time.

Words cannot do this meal justice. It was a combination of my favorite dishes and a few new hits. The best I can do is share some food porn and recommend you head to The Lodge Restaurant to try for yourself.

Ahi Tartare

Seared Diver Sea Scallop w/Brown butter

 

 

Butternut Squash Bisque w/"Cinnamon Toast Crunch"

Foie Gras with huckleberry and fennel pollen

Sous vide pork loin - sweet vermouth

Atlantic salmon & couscous

Brioche butter apple blue cheese Moroccan tomato

Hot vs cold. Scallop sashimi v grilled

Nutella soufflé with peanut butter mousse

Chimichurri Steak with winter hash

This is me - post feast with Chef Robbie and Chef Dady - two of my most favorite people in all the world (even before this amazing evening)  The food and wine on this evening were beyond all expectation. I cannot say Thank You enough to Chef Jason Dady and his amazing team who made this night possible for me. They took care of us from start to finish and reminded me yet again why The Lodge is my favorite San Antonio foodie spot.

And a special shout out to Josh Kirk and the staff for taking care of all the "special" needs of the table. I have never seen such amazing service with such an odd group of food restrictions. And to Chef Robbie for making the Hot vs. Cold scallops. That dish made me want to be a pescatarian (and then the chimichurri steak brought me right back :)

I am looking forward to heading back for a post-op "first supper" when I am all healed up and back to myself again. These kinds of meals make life worth living.

And if the "Last Supper" wasn't enough, while following my pre-op instructions of no eating after 5pm the day before surgery, I made sure to schedule a brunch for this morning. I took my family and met up with my fellow foodie @WaspyRedHead. We headed over to one of my other favorite Dady spots - Restaurant Insignia  As normal Sunday morning ritual there is nothing better than great food with a sparking beverage! To my surprise, I was greeted with my most favorite mimosa listed on the menu as "Adele's Absinthe" - After a few of those and a most fabulous brunch (the lobster crepes are fantastic) I am feeling like a total Rock Star! A huge thanks to Mr. Joshua Sellers for making my day with that surprise (and my favorite morning beverage!)

Adele's Absinthe

Lobster & Cream Cheese Crepes

Again, so many thanks to the people who made this night (and following morning) so perfect. To my family for putting up with my crazy pre-op requests, and to the countless friends who have sent messages, texts, emails, etc. with prayers and well wishes. I'm going in tomorrow to get this "bump" removed and I will be fine no matter what happens. I am truly blessed to have so many people in my life who are this wonderful. I love you all! ... and I cant wait to post again in a few weeks when I'm all healed up and back to my normal food obsessed self. (and I'm totally going to rock the scar - and maybe a new tattoo? :)

Balls!

It's that wonderful time of year again!  Yes, Holiday Cookie exchange - where you sacrifice just a few nights of sanity and your kitchen and come home with more cookies than you can eat for the rest of the year.

I love my job, for many reasons, but the fact that I work with a ton of talented bakers who enjoy these kinds of mass production as much as I do really is amazing.

This will be my 5th year participating with these wonderful ladies (and I think we have a gentleman baker this year too!) and I can't wait to see what they all have in store. For my contribution this year I decided to go with my Mom's cake ball recipe that I nearly OD'ed on last Christmas.

The base recipe was simple enough, so I added my own twist and went balls to the wall with my confectionery treats.

All in all I made 1200 cake balls this year, the majority of which got packaged in little tins for tonight's great exchange @ Z'Tejas (which I am crazy excited about too) There's something magical about trading cookies and recipes over margaritas :) Always puts me in the holiday mood.

I decided to go with 3 cake ball variations for the trade.

Red velvet, dark chocolate, peppermint schnapps ball

Spice cake, white bark, cinnamon schnapps ball

Dark Chocolate Cake, ghiradelli, caramel and salt ball
(and an amaretto version of the dark chocolate cake for the non salty chocolate lovers)

I couldn't pick just one, so each participant tonight will receive a cute little sampler box of cake balls.

The base recipe called for box cake, baked according to directions and canned icing- well everyone knows I don't follow directions so here's my recipe

"Chocolate Salty Balls" (South Park Pun fully intended)

Ingredients

2 cups boiling water

1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened

2 1/4 cups white sugar

4 eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Ingredients for frosting:

1 stick butter
2 squares (1 oz. each) unsweetened chocolate
1 1/2 c. light brown sugar (packed)
1/2 c. milk
1 1/2 c. sifted confectioners' sugar

Caramel - I used a jar of milk caramel I picked up at Junior League Ole Marketplace

Ghiradelli 60% chocolate chips (melted until smooth - for coating)

Maldon Sea Salt - a pinch for the top of each ball

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Grease 13x-9 inch round cake pan.

In medium bowl, pour boiling water over cocoa, and whisk until smooth. Let mixture cool. Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at time, then stir in vanilla. Add the flour mixture alternately with the cocoa mixture. Pour batter into pan.

Bake in preheated oven for 25 to 30 minutes.

Remove from oven, while still warm crumble into large bowl and mix with chocolate icing and caramel.(see recipe for frosting below)

Form mixture with hands into 1" balls. Using spoons, cover balls with ghiradelli chocolate (melted)  and place on parchment paper. Sprinkle the top of each ball with Maldon Sea Salt.

Cool in fridge for at least 1 hour

Can be packaged in air tight container and stored at room temperature.

Frosting:

Melt together butter and chocolate. Blend into this the brown sugar and milk. Cook and stir to boil, simmer 4 minutes stirring occasionally. Remove from heat; beat in sugar. Cool, beating occasionally until thick.

The red velvet cake balls are red velvet cake (family recipe), cream cheese frosting (Wilton cake yearbook recipe), covered in the same Ghiradelli 60% dark chocolate and the I used peppermint sprinkles I found pre crushed at the local grocery store - These are simply amazing and yummy too! I added a bit of peppermint schnapps to the mix as well.

The spice cake balls were spice cake (family recipe), vanilla butter cream (family recipe), with Hot Damn cinnamon schnapps added. I coated them in white bark and placed a red hot on the top of each one. The spice cake for some reason was a little more difficult to work with than the chocolate and red velvet, so I didn't make as many of these. I might reattempt another batch and modify the cake recipe to go for a denser cake to hold up to the ball shape.

And last but not least, all the balls got a little mini cupcake wrapper spot in these cute tins I picked up at a local craft store.

Cake balls are super easy and fun. Whether you make your cake from scratch (recommended) or go for easy and use a mix, the end result is a little bite of heaven. Made even more heavenly when you start spiking them and decorating them with assorted toppings.

The possibilities are endless! And the jokes have been rolling all week. Thanks for all the funny commentary - it helped me get through 12 hours of baking and balling :)

*and yes, I know that cake balls are technically a petit four, but they are so freaking delicious and pretty I couldn't resist sharing them with the group this year

Happy holidays everyone!

Julie/Julia Iron Chef Stone Oak

Last night, I had the extreme pleasure of attending the first Alamo DraftHouse Iron Chef event outside of Austin. If you know me, then you know that one of the only things I love as much as food is a good movie, so when the DraftHouse combines my two favorite loves - I am there!

It's never been a question "should I make the drive to Austin". So now that they are bringing these events closer to home, I am overjoyed!  Last night I sat back to enjoy an excellent film with an amazing meal - best date night ever!

A little background on my relationship with the film. I saw it when it originally came out, and yes I have read the book. I adore it on many levels, and not just because I am an obsessive Julia Childs fan (complete with first edition copies of her books) I am not a writer by any means... I blog, but not often, or in any matching pattern or style. But I do love to cook. And I have mastered many things in the kitchen including the boning of a duck, lobster, and most recently, a zombie brain aspic.

My husband had not seen the movie and I think the highlight of the night for me was hearing him whisper in my ear "OMG, that's you!" (referring to Julie on the floor of her kitchen having a fit over food gone wrong) Come on foodies, you know we've all been there :)

I do have to make a small note that I have extreme guilt over failing to adhere to the cardinal rule of the Alamo DraftHouse. I did use my phone during the film to obtain these photos. I couldn't resist, and I did make sure the screen was turned off, the flash and sound were off and I was taking under the table pics as to not disturb the guests around me. But I am feeling crazy guilty none the less because that Tim League rule of "NO TALKING, (and texting and tweeting totally count), put your phone away during a movie" is one of the reaons I love the DraftHouse so much and have sworn off all other theaters (minus IMAX, but if the DraftHouse obtained an IMAX screen they would have my total undying devotion)

The meal was a blind taste test for 3 panel judges. Red Team vs. Black team. I will admit, thanks to the power of facebook I already knew going in who was behind the red team as I had seen the prep on the Pate de Canard en Croute - but I kept an open mind. Below you will find my own scoring card which did not exactly match up with the judges decision, but I'm okay with that. I had a fantastic evening and am still full of butter this morning :) This is a good thing!

The Black team - Peter Smith & Brett Rea of the JW Mariott & the Red team - John Bullington & Andrew Leal of the Alamo DraftHouse

Tim League played the role of the Chairman, complete with a bite into a fresh yellow bell pepper to open the evening's event.

So on to the best part - the food porn!

   

Round One - Lobster Thermador paired with Joseph Faively, Burgundy, FR

The Black team prepared Lobster Thermador two ways, under pastry and on a stick. The "on a stick" was a lobster sausage corn dog, and not my favorite, but under that beautiful golden brown crust of pastry was nothing short of yum. The bisque was creamy and delicious and the butter claw meat was tender and melted in my mouth. This would have been my winning choice for round one if it had not been for the competition. 

The Red Team prepared Spicy Lobster Thermador Canneloni with petite braised cucumber soup. Besides being completely on point with two highlights of the movie (braised cucumbers and canelloni) this dish was possibly my favorite of the evening. The lobster canelloni was packed full of delicious meat and the spicy fennel flavor made my night. I licked this plate clean with no regard for manners or politeness. It was a foodgasm like few I had had before. Kudos to the chef for making me want to have sex with this dish.

Round Two - Boeuf Bourguignon, paired with Verdillac, Bourdeaux, FR

 The Black team went with a deconstructed Beef Bourguignon of slow cooked and pressed boneless shortrib and a burgundy "caviar" using a spherification (which alone gets molecular bonus points), and a carrot chip, but I was a little put off by the topping truffled ravioli that seemed to overpower the rest of the flavors. 

I would have liked to have seen more rich flavors of the beef come through and possibly a less fatty meat selection. I did not finish this dish, but I did make a solid attempt.

 The Red team went with a more classic approach. They went with a straight from the book Julia's Yesterday Boeuf Bourguignon Avec Pomme that could do no wrong. Sometimes you just can't mess with a classic, and they took a simple straight on approach to one of my favorite Julia dishes and knocked it out of the park. The meat was tender and savory and balanced perfectly to it's Pomme (potato) shell. Again I wanted to lick this plate clean.

 Round Three - The Duck - paired with Pierre Amadieu Cotes Du Rhone, FR

(this was my favorite wine of the evening - heading out today to obtain a case!)

 

The Black Team went with A Roasted Mallard, with a Texas Peach tea laquer, Torchon of Confit and a parsnip apple "mousse" 

This is where my opinion of the Black team started to turn around. The peach laquer (while a bit overpowering, was enjoyable in small quantity) I loved thee parsnip mousse and while I wanted to finish the plate, it was a bit too rich and overpowering for me.

The presentation was beautiful and  I really appreciated the effort that went into the duck

 

The Red team prepared Pate De Canard En Croute - Boneless Duck Breasst Stuffed with Pate un Porc et veu and baked in pastry with grilled truffled frisee. The effort that must have gone into preparing 100 of these little wrapped packages is mind boggling to me. I loved the pistachio filling and again, I attempted and wanted so much to finish this plate but was struggling with the full belly by the third round. I am so going to attempt this dish the next time I'm feeling my Julia vibe :)

Round Four - Dessert - paired with Fleuraison Rose, FR

The Black Team knocked one out of the park with hteir Rein de Saba - Glazed Chcolate Torte with raspberry salad,  and Minus "321F" Creme Fraiche. I am a huge fan of liquid nitrogen and until this evening thought Chef Jason Dady and Chef PJ were the only San Antonio holders of a liquid nitrogen tank. This dessert was a bit on the large portion side, but I still finished every bite. the bitterness of the raspberry and microgreens played well with the sweetness of the chocolate and cream. I would order this from any restaurant in a hearbeat - please tell me it's going on the JW menu somewhere!

The Red team went with a light and oh so fitting Ile Flottane (Floating Island) with a chilled caramel Almond souffle with seasonal pomegranate creme anglaise. Again Another plate I licked clean. This dish was a perfect bite of sweet and the pomegranate seeds were crunchy and fit well in the creamy base.

If I were sitting on the judges panel, I would have given the first 2 rounds to the Red team, the third round as a toss up and the fourth round to the Black team which would have resuled in a Red team win. But alas, I was not a celebrity, nor a judge, and In the end the judges selected the Black team from the JW Mariott. I think in fact we all won last night. What a fabulous way to spend an evening and I left full and blissfully happy ( I swear not just because I had not only my wine pairings but those of my husband) - I love being married to my Straight Edge BFF aka Designated Driver :)

A huge thanks to both teams for a wonderful meal and to the Alamo DraftHouse for bringing my two loves a little closer to home. I can't wait for the next foodie event! 

*fingers crossed for an Iron Chef SA AlamoDraftHouse competition between John Bullington and Jason Dady. Seriously - this has to happen.. I am going to start a petition :)

Can you imagine the greatness?