opening up the coffers

I get eye rolled by the fiance when I come home with a new beer, and place it with the others. The whole 'cellaring' thing, she doesn't get so much. that, and she's a bit put off by the shelf space hogging of all the bottles. I can't say I totally disagree with her. Anyway, I'm doing my best to bust out of the buy and hold mindset and decided to crack in to some prized bottles, as my best man to be Jason and his girlfriend Adrienne were stopping by for dinner last night. I had actually sliced my finger (typing=ouchy) during the brewday, greatly reducing the dexterity of my right hand.

We braved the snow, and grabbed some provisions from TJs, and told J when he arrived to have at it, he was guest chef for the night.

Adrienne made a great spring greens salad with walnuts, goat cheese and a fresh grapefruit vinaigrette. We sipped an alesmith speedway stout with it. delicious coffee-beeryness.

Esther laid out some thinly sliced manchego with stonehouse olive oil drizzle, grind of pepper and sea salt, and some grilled toast points. J put a simple salt and pepper seasoning on a flank steak, seared over high heat and finished in the oven. He deglazed the pan with some of my homemade zinfandel, reduced and finished a pan sauce with butter. An israli couscous was the side...he added some slowly toasted pinenuts, dried cranberries, shitake mushrooms and finished it with fresh chiffonade parsley. nicely done J.

We cracked the black ops (yeah, it exists), and had ourselves a nice feast. the stuff is pretty damn fantastic, but I gotta say, the RIS that J and I made together at his place about 6 months ago is right up there with these.

Esther rounded out the night with some from scratch lemon vanilla cupcakes while we watched food network...waiting for the first episode of flight of the conchords to arrive.

in short, coffer opening can be a very good thing.