Seafood chow-down, 2012

This weekend we had some creative friends...

...and sleepy visitors... 

...to dinner! I got really lucky this last week with two of my faves peeps coming into town. I had envisioned a pure champagne and oyster dinner, light and romantic, but as everyone came together we all wanted to showcase a dish, so our little fête turned into a full-blown feast. Some of our ingredients were hard-to-come-by/ forgotten at the store/ forgotten in the fridge, but the end results were sparkling. We did a little shuckin', a little fryin', a little bone-swallowin'.

We had Spanish tapas sardines; Mexican red snapper with spicy salsa; raw oysters with tabasco; and a spinach salad with pomegranate and apple. I had never had anything like these sardines before. They were battered in semolina flour, fried in oil and sprinkled with salt and lemon. Gobble these suckas down whole, heads and all, just toss out the tail. This endeavor freaked me out at first (I'm not used to swallowing a spine), and I don't consider myself a fan of sardines in general. However, these were delicious, fresh and briny, with the lemon adding some sharpness. It made me feel like I should be drinking some fruity red sangria, and that it really shouldn't be -12 degrees outside right now.

The salad was sweet and tart, and the pomegranate was another reminder of warm weather (though our friend bragged that these are evvvverywhere out west, where she's living). The salad was meant to have a bit of blue cheese as well (forgotten in the fridge), but even without it the salad went really well with the seafood fare, lightly sweet and acid to compliment the ocean's salted bounty.

All the lovely dishes.

As I think the general consensus was that Carolyn's dish ruled pretty hard, I will just include her recipe (from what I remember anyway). She decided to make one of our three apps: a warm goat cheese, onion and fig dip with bread. So simple but so damn delicious. There are sadly no pictures of this cheesy decadence because the moment it popped out of the oven our group couldn't keep their mitts off of it (I burned the roof of my mouth, oopsie). Thanks to everyone for coming and bringing their A-game, and thanks Caro for fulfilling our oft-expressed desire for bowls of melty cheese...mmm.

Goat Cheese and Fig Spread

2 pounds of goat cheese

1 large onion

fresh thyme

salt and pepper

1 bag of dried figs

some red wine

2 cups of water

Oven at 375 deg

Caramelize the onions with salt and pepper and the fresh thyme. Cook it down till the onions are translucent. While you do this, put the dried figs in a bowl just covered with water and some of the red wine. This is just to plump them. 

Crumble the goat cheese in a casserole dish, add in the onions and figs and distribute evenly. Put in the oven until just golden on top, around 10 minutes. Take out and serve with warm bread. mmmm.