Setting off the New Year, CP style

Dinner Menu 12-31-09 ($175/person)
An aperitif and hors d'oeuvre (fois gras w/ truffles and Champagne)
Smoked black cod and salmon salad with steelhead caviar
Dungeness crab consomme with wild mushrooms
Roulade of squab breast with duck mousse and pommes Anna w/ artichokes
Bittersweet chocolate souffle with Grand Marnier creme Anglaise

Happy New Year, y'all! Chez Panisse is closed today for the New Year, so I am resting my legs while I recount yesterday's affairs.

Yesterday was just CRAZY at Chez Panisse. The annual New Years Eve dinner is, of course, the crown of achievement for the whole year, so it has to be spectacular...and each year's meal needs to be better than the last.

Even though seating was half an hour later, and there was a longer period between the first (6 pm) and second (9:30 pm) seatings, there was still so much to do; mainly because there was so much detail in the NYE dinner...even moreso than an everyday dinner.

We peeled more artichokes (which have to be one of the dirtiest vegetables on the planet, requiring one to scrub one's hands vigorously with a Brillo pad or pumice stone to get the dirt out of your skin!), and I was tasked with trimming and cutting small carrots (not baby carrots, like you buy peeled in a bag in the store; these are actually midget carrots, in varying shades of orange, yellow, white, and even an orange with purple stripes!). For dinner, I got to cut up turnips (long ones, round ones; big ones, small ones; white ones, red ones, brown ones, yellow ones).

Then we helped assemble the squab for the main course (yep, got to see those squab breasts again, up close and personal). I really hope people enjoyed it (we didn't get to eat any for dinner due to the limited quantities...DRAT!), because it was a lot involved in assembling those things: putting the duck mousse on the breasts; wrapping them in chard leaves; doing a standard breading (egg wash, flour, more egg wash, bread crumbs) and praying that they didn't fall apart when being fried. All this x 110 servings. Yep.

Good thing that the evening was so festive. :D We were given complimentary glasses of a delicious rosé wine, and dinner included both Sancerre (a white wine) and a Zinfandel (the regular red one, not white Zinfandel). And, we got to snack on an assortment of cheeses (including one that came wrapped in a Savoy cabbage...very interesting) and freshly-baked breads (including a cinnamon roll made with golden raisins). YUM!

Staff dinner was everything on the menu except the crab consomme (DRAT! x 2) and the squab (we had beef tenderloin instead...it was still good!). The salmon and steelhead caviar salad was EXCELLENT. That was my first time having high-quality caviar (we tried different kinds at school but, like most things, they pale in comparison to what is served at CP) and man...while I probably wouldn't snack on it regularly, it was good in a dish like a salad, and just enough for me, portion-wise. I may have missed out on the chocolate souffle, but I did get a rather delicious duo of homemade pear sorbet and huckleberry sorbet, on a bed of huckleberry sauce. YEAH!

The rest of the evening was spent assembling squab for the second seating; prepping the quail for Saturday (since we are closed today); starting the creme fraiche (2-day process, remember?) and just cleaning and assisting where necessary.

I left about an hour later than usual so that I could get to the buses on my side of the world on time...and ended up stuck on the BART [Bay Area Rapid Transit: the subway of the Bay Area] when the New Year rolled in (who thought it was a good idea to put a train out of service due to unexpected schedule changes? Not me!).

At least my wait was entertaining. :D I got to inhale the smoke from the people getting blunted on the train (No smoking on the train? HA!). Plus, a gentleman at the stop where we were forced to disembark was rolling his own fattie (from the odor of his fresh weed, I'd surmise that he may have had a very good grade of it. But I'm nowhere near an expert on cannabis.). And two young women were mixing Courvosiers and Cokes while waiting for the next train. And women with healthy curves squeezed themselves into outfits 2 sizes too small, and boots (which apparently is the style here). And how could I forget the guy in the Bengal tiger-patterned faux fur/velveteen pants (like those that wrestlers, or MC Hammer, used to wear), with the half-braided/half-poofy Mohawk (like AJ from BET's 106 & Park used to wear, but different), who was riding a bike? Dude's hair was kinkier than mine! But he was stylin' and profilin'...I ain't even mad. Gotta love Oakland on NYE.

Thanks for stopping by. Enjoy the start of your New Year! See you in a couple of days.

T.