{"id":1016,"date":"2012-07-19T07:38:37","date_gmt":"2012-07-19T11:38:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/?p=1016"},"modified":"2012-07-19T08:19:49","modified_gmt":"2012-07-19T12:19:49","slug":"catching-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/catching-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Catching up…."},"content":{"rendered":"

What with long power failures, travels and visitors, we’ve fallen behind with our blogging.\u00a0 The topic here is food…beginning with the dinner guests prepared for us here at Thistle Hill.<\/p>\n

To explain:\u00a0 we asked Rappahannock’s wonderful chef, Sylvie Rowand, to stage a dinner here for friends in the style of her native Reunion, a French island in the remote Indian Ocean.\u00a0 Sylvie combines her French heritage with flavors of other populations on the island: Asian and African.<\/p>\n

But to make it a bit more entertaining, we asked Sylvie to add another of her specialties:\u00a0 a cooking class.\u00a0 Our kitchen is small so we spilled over into the adjoining breakfast room to do the chopping…and there was a lot!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You will note in the\u00a0left hand picture I was serious about this, wearing my “Inn at Little Washington<\/em>” apron.\u00a0 Sylvie is giving the opening lecture, a combination of what we’re about to prepare plus geography and the history of her island.\u00a0 I’m flanked by Lindsay Sagstuen and Gisela Volkert.\u00a0 In the next picture John Dibble is in the yellow apron.\u00a0\u00a0And finally, the result:\u00a0Kurt Volkert isn’t waiting for the photo session to end.<\/p>\n

The dinner was delicious and achieved despite constant power outages which left us with just one burner at times and never an oven.\u00a0 Actually, it was, according to Sylvie,\u00a0 a more traditional preparation.<\/p>\n

The menu included Spring Rolls, Yellow Rice, Lemon and Onion Salad, Sauteed Chayote, Ginger Carrot Beef and a Crepe with Peachs and Blackberry Coulis.<\/p>\n

So the dinner was truly a special experience and no more expensive than a meal in a fine restaurant.\u00a0 Plus we had something to talk about instead of politics!<\/p>\n

Moving to another subject:\u00a0 <\/strong>I mentioned recently reading a cooking tip by a well-known Washington chef.\u00a0 He sautes his steaks in butter briefly before putting them on the grill.\u00a0 We like to put a dollop of butter on our meat at the very end of cooking, but this worked well, too.\u00a0 You’ll have to decide whether it’s worth the extra step and extra pan to clean.<\/p>\n

Finally, a grass fed cookbook:\u00a0 <\/strong>by a chef who raises grass fed meat.\u00a0 It gets a warm review from another grass fed farmer.\u00a0 Read about it at the link:<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.goodfoodneighborhood.org\/book-review-pure-beef-lynne-curry\/<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What with long power failures, travels and visitors, we’ve fallen behind with our blogging.\u00a0 The topic here is food…beginning with the dinner guests prepared for us here at Thistle Hill. To explain:\u00a0 we asked Rappahannock’s wonderful chef, Sylvie Rowand, to stage a dinner here for friends in the style of her native Reunion, a French island in the remote Indian Ocean.\u00a0 Sylvie combines her French heritage with flavors of other populations on the island: Asian and African. But to make it a bit more entertaining, we asked Sylvie to add another of her specialties:\u00a0 a cooking class.\u00a0 Our kitchen is small so we spilled over into the adjoining breakfast room to do the chopping…and there was a lot! You will note in the\u00a0left hand picture I was serious about this, wearing my “Inn at Little Washington” apron.\u00a0 Sylvie is giving the opening lecture, a combination of what we’re about to prepare plus geography and the history of her island.\u00a0 I’m flanked by Lindsay Sagstuen and Gisela Volkert.\u00a0 In the next picture John Dibble is in the yellow apron.\u00a0\u00a0And finally, the result:\u00a0Kurt Volkert isn’t waiting for the photo session to end. The dinner was delicious and achieved despite constant power outages which left us with just one burner at times and never an oven.\u00a0 Actually, it was, according to Sylvie,\u00a0 a more traditional preparation. The menu included Spring Rolls, Yellow Rice, Lemon and Onion Salad, Sauteed Chayote, Ginger Carrot Beef and a Crepe with Peachs and Blackberry Coulis. So the dinner was truly a special experience and no more expensive than a meal in a fine restaurant.\u00a0 Plus we had something to talk about instead of politics! Moving to another subject:\u00a0 I mentioned recently reading a cooking tip by a well-known Washington chef.\u00a0 He sautes his steaks in butter briefly before putting them on the grill.\u00a0 We like to put a dollop of butter on our meat at the very end of cooking, but this worked well, too.\u00a0 You’ll have to decide whether it’s worth the extra step and extra pan to clean. Finally, a grass fed cookbook:\u00a0 by a chef who raises grass fed meat.\u00a0 It gets a warm review from another grass fed farmer.\u00a0 Read about it at the link: http:\/\/www.goodfoodneighborhood.org\/book-review-pure-beef-lynne-curry\/        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1016","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1016"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1016\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1016"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1016"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thistlehill.net\/wpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1016"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}