Wednesday, August 06, 2003

I went to one of about three democrats in my office to ask him: “Do you know anything about wine?”  “I like wine, but I don’t know anything about it.” “Are you sure?  I need something to go with kidneys, stat!” “Gosh, I don’t know….” “Please?!!!  I’ve got this totally intimidating person coming over to dinner, I need to have insouciant perfect wine, I’m freakin’ out, dude!” “Well, I do like Chateau Greysac Haut Medoc.  And the Chateau Trintaudon Cote du Rhone is a savvy choice.  And, if you want to be outrageous, I think that BV Coastal Cabernet Sauvignon is one of the great deals out there on red wine.” You see why I’m paranoid?  People are always holding out on me. So before going home to prepare a dinner of Rognons de Veau en Casserole, Kidneys Cooked in Butter with Mustard and Parsley Sauce, with sautéed potatoes and braised  onions, and Clafouti for dessert, for my totally intimidating guest, I stopped by Astor Wine and asked the guy for the Greysac.  It was the easiest wine-shopping experience of my life – no wandering aimlessly in the Burgundy aisle last night.  I set the bottles on a shelf near the front door when I came in, and goddamned if practically the first thing Intimidating Person said when she walked through the door wasn’t, “Oh, Greysac!  Where did you get it?”  Oh, I picked it up at this charming little Long Island City shop, their selection really is so thoughtful…. The Intimidating Person, who was rapidly becoming not so intimidating at all, had also never eaten brains, so there I was one step ahead of the game already.  And soon the Intimidating Person, who was turning out to be a warm and sweet slip of a thing, was watching me make my kidneys and potatoes and onions.  I kept expecting everything to skid into disaster, but I held steady.  I blanched and peeled the onions, and threw them in a pot with some vermouth and thyme and bay leaf and parsley.  I let Eric peel my potatoes, and cut them in half, and then I threw them in a pan with most of a stick of butter.  I browned the kidneys lightly in butter.  I was a little – okay, a lot -- scared that I would either under- or over- do them, and that the Intimidating Person would spot my ineptitude immediately, but if she had any opinions, she kept them graciously to herself.  The kidneys were big and many-lobed, not at all like the neat little lamb kidneys I’d used once.  They spit up a lot of juice as they cooked, so that I thought, when I finally judged them done and took them out, that I needed to boil down the juice a bit before I added the shallots and vermouth and lemon juice.  This I did.  I let the wine boil down, probably a bit too much, the stuff browned a bit too much.  The potatoes, too, got a little burned.  I.P. kindly called them “caramelized.”  Off heat I stirred in mustard I’d mashed up with some butter.  I sliced the kidneys, which were at least pink in the middle, if maybe a bit less tender than they ought to have been, and tossed the slices with the sauce and some parsley on very low heat.  It was too easy to even talk about.  I let the dinner sit while I quickly whipped up the batter for the Clafouti in the blender – milk, sugar, eggs, vanilla, touch of salt, flour – poured a layer of it into my springform, heated up for a minute or so on the stove top so a film set on the bottom, dropped in the pitted cherries, poured on the rest of the batter, and stuck it into a 350-degree oven. Dinner, miraculously, was okay.  The kidneys were yummery, like liver, rather.  My mother says that kidneys taste like piss, but they really didn’t.  (I mean, in my experience with piss-tasting…)  I think Mom must have gotten a bad one.  These tasted quite nice.  The potatoes were burned, but whatever.  The onions were nice.  And it was so much cooler in the dining room that we had a very nice time. And the Greysac was excellent. And the Clafouti was good too, poofy and browned, with the cherries all jewel-like and shit studded through it.  This was just the same as what we had the night before, only we didn’t soak the cherries beforehand in kirsch and sugar.  I liked it better – it was little less sweet, a little less boozy.  Simpler tasting.  Our No-Longer-So-Awfully-Intimidating Guest had two slices.   7:48:07 AM    comment []