27 February 2007

Café Montmartre's Winter Wine Dinner.

Chicago.

For Madisonians in need of a local food fix, Café Montmartre, the REAP Food Group and Fountain Prairie Farms will be hosting a special dinner on Sunday, 4 March. They're calling it the "Winter Wine Dinner", and pairing a multi-course meal with a special selection of wines. The tentative menu, from chef Ron Walters, will probably look something like this:1
Amuse Bouche
Potato pancake topped with pork shoulder confit and pickled red cabbage

First Course
Roasted root vegetable soup, served with parsley coulis and crème fraiche

Second Course
Black truffle beef pot pie: braised beef shanks, chick peas, raisins and mire poix cooked in port wine and mounted with truffle butter

Third Course
Roasted pork tenderloin served with a warm caramelized onions, apple cider vinaigrette, braised mustard greens and potato gnocchi

Fourth Course
Roasted beet napoleon topped with bull’s blood micro greens and blood orange vinaigrette

Fifth Course
Chocolate cappuccino: espresso and chocolate pot du crème topped with cinnamon meringue
Note: the "bull's blood micro greens" refer to the particular type of beet, not actual bull's blood. Unless this is a somewhat more beef-intensive meal than I'm anticipating.

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1Except, of course, that it'll be printed on paper, with a more stylin' font selection.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bull's Blood is also the name of a type of Hungarian wine (and, apparently, a secret society at Rutgers... ah, wikipedia). As you would guess, it's a very dark, strong red wine. Unfortunately, the only kind I've seen in liquor stores here is pretty lousy (though cheap). I have found some good Hungarian wines of other types (Tokaji furmint--white, reminds me of Pinot Grigio, kekfrankos--red, reminds me of syrah, and Tokaji aszu--dessert wine, like alcoholic honey) in this one store here, which makes me happy.

Anonymous said...

do you know if they'll be serving veggie-friendly alternatives?

Brian Garthwaite said...

John -

I remember having Bull's Blood in college - the very same cheap and not-terribly-memorable deep red wine you've found, I'm sure. My roommates had picked up a bottle, because of fond memories from a backpacking trip that went through Hungary. The others, though, I haven't had. Tokaji aszu is one I'd love to try, someday. (Botrytized wines are, as a general rule, phenomenal.) Eric Asimov wrote an article about Tokaji aszu back in December, which fired my interest.

Regina -

I don't think so. At least, I haven't seen mention of it, and I expect that a note would have been somewhere. Couldn't hurt to give them a call; even if they aren't able to do it this time around, at least they'll know there's some interest. (That's how L'Etoile finally did a special all-vegetarian wine dinner - the vegetarians asked for it.)