Every New Year’s Eve, since some years back now, I together with some other food- and wine interested friends meet up to do some home cooking.

The formula is in principle always the same:

• Every person makes at least two dishes, together with two (or more…) matching wines.
• What we do, in regards to the food, is presented and synchronized with everybody else. This, so not everyone shows up with the same food or only desserts etc.
• The wines are not presented in advanced, apart from its general category (e.g. white, red, champagne or sweet etc.) and are also served blind to the food.

Bonus dishes and wines are of course always more than welcomed…

This year we were six people attending and this is what we had:

 

Lobster soup

This was based on Leif Mannerström’s classical lobster soup recipe with glass boiled lobster with cognac and madeira.

This was the first “official” dish of this dinner and a very tasty such!

Paired with a Champagne Special Club by Pierre Gimonnet.

In 1971 a group of twelve growers started an organization called Club de Viticultures Champenois, to promote the concept of terroir and estate bottled, or grower Champagne in France and abroad. In 1999 the group changed their name to Club Trésors de Champagne, but the mission and philosophy has not changed. Today, the group consists of 28 growers, including three of the original members: Pierre Gimonnet, Gaston Chiquet and Paul Bara.

In addition to promoting the individuality of grower produced wines, this association allowed producers to market their wines together, through a special bottling of their top wine. The Tête de Cuvee or the Prestige Cuvée of each grower is peer reviewed. If the wine passes muster, it is bottled in a specifically designed, distinctive, bottle for the Club. Club growers made it easy to identify the Spécial Club bottling for consumers by using the same unusually shaped bottle for their top wine. In 1985 the Club changed the shape of the bottle to the one that is used today which is based on an 18th century design. The production of the Spécial Club bottle is regulated and trade-marked; only Club members may purchase these bottles from a glass supplier and they may only be used for Spécial Club wine, once it has passed several rigorous blind tastings.

 

Potatoes Granita

Potatoes Granita with Kalix löjrom (vendace roe), dill, lightly cooked crayfish tails, trout roe and marinated in cognac.

Kalix Löjrom is the designation of the roe of the small salmonid fish species vendace (Coregonus albula), harvested specifically from the Bothnian Bay archipelago of the Baltic Sea in northern Sweden. Since 2010 it has a status of Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) issued by the European Union, and is the only Swedish product with the PDO status.

Superb quality seafood and paired with a trio 1996 Champagnes:

Mountain Char

Tommy Myllymäki’s baked Mountain Char with crispy vegetables, trout roe and beurre blanc.

A very good dish!

Paired with the outstanding F.X. Pichler Unendlich from 2000. Eventually had this wine passed its best period, but it was still very good! One of my absolute favorite wines!

 

Foie Gras

Foie Gras brazed in port wine, served together with rhubarb sauce, potato spirals and black tea foam.

Yet another a tasty dish that I enjoyed a lot. Served together with a Josephshöfer Riesling.

 

Crown deer inner fillet

Crown deer with red wine sauce based on calf broth and served with a cauliflower puree, parmesan and cream.

The crown deer was of excellent quality and was a good start of the meat section of this dinner!

Served with a 2007 Marc Sorrel Hermitage Le Gréal.

 

Filet of reindeer

Reindeer filet, sautéed white cabbage and black trumpet mushrooms.

Tasty, good quality dish paired with one of the highlights this evening, namely a very lovely E. Guigal Cote Rotie La Turque from 2000.

 

Canard à l’orange

This was a variant of the classical Duck à l’orange dish. Here with (sous-vide at 54 C) duck breast served with an orange sauce made of homemade chicken stock and served with red cabbage (it was meant to be savoy cabbage…).

Served with a 2004 Chateau Haut-Brion.

 

Tournedos Rossini

Now, one of the most classical New Year Eve’s dishes arrived on the table. Tournedos Rossini on Swedish filet of beef from Skaraslätten. Served with a sauce of truffles and Foie Gras. Classical, tasty and the best possible meat quality; what can go wrong?

Paired with a Pauillac from 1995

 

Oxtail

Slow cooked oxtail (from Björlanda Gård) served with potatoes, blue cheese cream and kale.

No disappointments so far… Instead, yet another tasty dish!

Served with a great Penfolds Grange…

 

Cloudberry panna cotta

Cloudberry panna cotta with sea buckthorn.

Paired with the prestige champagne from De Saint Gall; Cuvée Orpale Grand Cru from 1996.

Chocolate terrine

Chocolate terrine with candied pecans, dulce de leche and banana ice cream.

Served with our only fortified wine this evening, a Banyuls from Domaine Pietri-Geraud and their Cuvée Méditerranée from 2010.

Banyuls is a French appellation d’origine contrôlée (AOC) for a fortified apéritif or dessert wine made from old vines cultivated in terraces on the slopes of the Catalan Pyrenees in the Roussillon county of France, bordering, to the south, the Empordà wine region in Catalonia in Spain.

The AOC production area is limited to four communes of the Côte Vermeille: Banyuls (from which the AOC takes its name), Cerbère, Collioure and Port-Vendres.

 

Crème Brûlée

The final dessert was a classical Crème Brûlée with a light taste of vanilla and orange.

Classical but not made in a classical way… By cooking custards sous-vide (i.e. in a water bath), it is possible to precisely command the temperature to which they are heated, thus eliminating the risk of a curdled dessert. The Crème Brûlée was prepared in small mason jars so the desserts emerge individually portioned, each in its own container (source and recipe from chefsteps.com)

Served with:

• Brännland Iscider (Ice Cider) 2015. This is the core of Brännland Cider. They work with the best Swedish apple growers to find the varieties that are best suited for making ice cider. The apples are pressed in December, the juice frozen and concentrated using the natural winter temperatures in Sweden. The concentrate, starting at 34-36 Brix is fermented for 10-12 weeks, aged for three months in steel tanks and then bottled. A combination of warm sweetness, balanced by an acidity makes Brännland Iscider useful in a wide variety of gastronomic pairings, e.g. our crème brûlèe.
• Brännland Iscider Barrique Every year Brännland Cider sets apart some of its ice cider for barrel ageing. 12 months on a barrel softens and integrates the high acidity and fresh apples notes with the natural residual sugar to create a deeper, more complex ice cider, darker both in color as well as on the palate.

 

Summary: Some previous New Year celebrations (e.g. 2013, 2014 and 2016) may have had more “fun” and experimental dishes. This year, the dishes were more classic and at the same time maybe maintained a more even quality overall. You could say more classical French than Modernist Cuisine (which have had a higher influence previous years). Perhaps because of our “adjusted” taste buds and partly because we did not use my kitchen for the first time (with access to rotary evaporator, centrifuge, pacojet and homogenizer etc).

Also the wines (17 different in total; did I say that two out of six persons attending did not drink any alcohol this evening…?) were really good and of high and even quality. Personally I was very happy and satisfied with both the food, wines, location and last but not least the company this New Year.