April 1: Take 1

We're actually back tracking here, because I've already been doing this for a month and a half. So let me just show you what we had:

Salad from Spain
jamon iberico, manchego cheese, poached raisins, almonds, arugula
Vina Aljibes Rosado

Wild Mushroom Neopolitan
with chevre mousse
Vazisubani Dry White Wine

Chicken in Riesling
over wild rice and haricot vert
Crossroads Savignon Blanc

Lemon Meringue Tart
Blanc Fetzer Gewurztraminer

Coming up with a menu with wines is a lot trickier than I thought it would be! You want to put your food in an order that makes sense, not repeat ingredients, and have a progression with the wines. It was a giant food puzzle, but it worked out in the end. I had 5 people over, and everyone survived! I will definitely need more people though, 4 wines is too much for 5 people to finish when that much food is involved.

One little secret, dessert wasn't supposed to be a lemon meringue tart. I fell asleep while baking the lemon tart on my dinner's eve. The buzzer was going off, but I was just too tired to realize. When I finally took it out of the oven (it woke my roommate), there were giant cracks in the lemon custard (oh no!). My original plan was to just put a dallop of whipped cream on each slice. Now that wouldn't be enough. I spent all day at work trying to decide if i should make a new one, or cover it up. I only had 2 hours to cook everything before people started coming over. In the end I decided the quickest save was to whip up some egg whites and make it a lemon meringue tart. Phew!