Friday, September 21, 2007

Manresa Does Tomatoes, continued:



I always harbor a little guilt when I eat bunny, but the next course -- a rabbit daube with basil surrounded by a tomato vinaigrette and garnishes of new zealand spinach -- was so good that I banished mental pictures of Peter Rabbit and Thumper. The following dish was the only one I didn't love:a deconstucted "ratatouille" and sheep's milk rictotta with sheep's milk as a sauce. The ingredients were impeccably fresh and certainly each was delicious; I just didn't see the scattering of ingredients across the plate as "ratatouille" -- even with the qualifying quotation marks.
Following this slight disappointment, came a suprise course that at first rang my HO-HUM bell: three tomato wedges -- a red, a yellow and a pink-- drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt. OMG, it was fabulous. The olive oil was French; the salt was seaweed based and the combination with the tomatoes had us hailing the bus boy for yet more bread. Not a one of our plates went back to the kitchen with a drop of olive oil or tomato essence remaining.
And the food kept coming.
Roast duck and foie gras with caponata was simply magnificent, as was the dessert: caramelized brioche and a slow confiture of tomatoes plus vanilla olive oil ice cream. (Our friend, a sophistacted and long-time owner of numerous restaurants, was softly chanting "More brioche; more brioche")
Lovely LeRoy wines throughout the meal, exquisite Numi teas at the end and Manresa's marvelous little black olive madeleines: What's not to LOVE?

5 comments:

Marjorie said...

your life does not suck.

Casey said...

excellent photos of every course at egullet:
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=42051&st=270

go to page 10 of the topic and scroll down

Anonymous said...

That goes to proove yet again that simple recipes with the freshest ingredients rock! Loved your post :)

Lucy said...

I think it's Nigella Lawson (in How To Eat) who has a recipe for rabbit dish with a reference to Peter Rabbit and Mr McGregor that, despite being a non-meat-eating girl, always gets me laughing.

The tomato wedges sound amazing. Simplicity can either be done so badly or so very well. Pleased it fell into the latter category.

LoveAppleFarm said...

Jack may not remember, so go ahead and let him know that the lovely orange oxheart you have there is called "Homer Fikes." That's my new favorite tomato variety for 2007.