Food and Wine

Troy’s First “Not-Luck” Party

By Craig ⋅ January 30, 2008 ⋅  Email This Post ⋅ Post a comment

Among my pseudo-serious cooking friends (wannabe chefs – all of us), Troy is clearly the most practiced and best of the bunch. The food at his parties is routinely way over the top, and anyone lucky enough to be invited that doesn’t appreciate the time, effort and expense of his menus should become the amuse bouche at the next one.

The first one of these parties was organized with an Evite, limiting attendees to around 8 or 10. Those 10 people needed to pick a general category of food and bring enough of it along for Troy to make into a dish. Here is what we ended up with.

Ingredients
Protein: Beef Tenderloin and Yellow fin Tuna
Fruit: Coconut, pomegranate, cactus pear, strawberries, dates and star fruit
Vegetable: Pumpkin
Starch: Hominy, and semolina flour
Cheese: Gruyeres
Random: Cranberries and lemon Grass

Menu
To tide everyone over:
Cocktails (solid Gin and Tonic, Solid upside-down berry martinis)
Buckwheat bread with home made butter laced with fleur de sel
Assorted cheese and crackers

Notes: Those high-end jello shots were so potent we could barely finish them, but I think we did an alright job of it. They were quite stiff, because with all that booze I bet it was difficult to solidify. Troy’s bread is always amazing, salty and good.

Sashimi: Yellowfin lightly dressed with sesame oil and black vinegar, on Himalayan salt blocks

You can’t really go wrong with sushi-grade fish, but these crazy Himalayan salt blocks he has are the perfect plate as the fish absorbs some saltiness from just sitting on them. Those blocks can be heated, placed over flame, etc. Nigh indestructible and a definite conversation piece.

Fondue: Wine, Kirsch and Gruyere. Served with the buckwheat bread.

I signed up for cheese, and brought Gruyeres thinking that fondue would be an easy out. I was trying to imagine the timing and pressure of everything he would be faced with and figured his bread, plus good cheese = good stuff, and might give him some respite from the other crazy ingredients. (hominy)

Fillet: Pan fried and broiled to rare. Topped with onion pomegranate chutney.

It’s all about the meat. And this was a simple but perfectly prepared fillet. It melted on the tongue.

Sorbet: Cactus pear and cranberry.

A little palette cleanser, Troy used some of the fruit, cooked it up and threw it in the ice cream machine. We had some Iron Chef fears that some of the fish would end up in there, so this was a pleasant half-time surprise.

Soup: Pumpkin, Hominy, and Coconut. . Served in the pumpkin with an Ancho cotton candy.

Probably the winning dish of the evening in my book, this was a spicy pumpkin soup with coconut served back into the pumpkins as bowls. The Ancho cotton candy that Orion made was a great addition.

Pasta: Tuna fillet pan fried in bacon fat over pappardelle carbonare

The food is still coming, and the homemade pappardelle made with the Semolina Flower ingredient was a bit heavy this late in the game, but tasted incredible. Of course the tuna in bacon fat was a fabulous topper. Vegetarians can stay home, if you hadn’t figured that out by now.

Dessert: hot strawberry “ice” cream with strawberries macerated in muscavado sugar and balsamic vinegar

The end, and a great one at that. Fat and happy as the saying goes. Well done Troy.

It was a long evening of eating and drinking, and the food was top notch. I’m sure Troy will do a few things differently next time, and if I’m lucky enough to be invited you can bet you’ll see it here.

Photos of the Evening at Flickr