Monday, August 24, 2015

Rge Rd Farm Dinners


This is year 5 of Rge Rd's Farm Dinners, hosted at Nature's Green Acres adventure farm. We had chilly weather and a lot of wind, but hunkered down in tents and wrapped ourselves in blankets whilst sipping boozy ice tea in anticipation of good eats. 'Twas lovely.

 A little beef carpaccio, pate with pickled beets and sausage with grainy dijon kicked off the evening. With pork smoking nearby we dove onto wood boards lined with mixed greens, flowers, pickled beans and other veg drizzled with milk thistle vinaigrette.

Then came the meat....

Chicken
Pork
Beef





The chicken was accompanied by baby potatoes and a subtle onion puree.


The pork smoking prior to dinner was a cut of loin and belly rolled with herbs into a wanna be roast. The skin crisped up like bacon angels and accompanied each serving along with broad beans and roasted onions. Beef tenderloin followed with a light chimichurri and a root vegetable gratin. What's that fancy stuff on top you ask? A carrot mousse! A meat celebration it was and I was loving it!



This is an eclair ----->

It's what I ate for dessert, filled with raspberry and honey cream, a spoonful of mint mascarpone and a little streusel to accompany it. 












Hats off to the staff of both Rge Rd and Nature's Green Acres who worked tirelessly to pull off this event. Serving a 75-person meal is enough of a challenge, but the crew cooked and plated it outdoors in unusually chilly weather. Canadian booze flowed throughout the evening piss-strong cowboy coffee wrapped it up. I get juiced about good local food and drink. Rge Rd covered some of the best Alberta has to offer and prompted me to dream up a few kitchen ideas of my own. The only thing that could have made this night better would be cats; lots and lots of cats. 



Nailed it!