This week marks our return to rehearsals for Pax Christi Chorale, and it looks like quite the season. We are starting rehearsals for Mendelssohn’s Elijah, with special guests The Bicycle Opera Project. This is a big work, with a lot of choruses, and should be a great, innovative show. This also means we are back to our in season schedule, so everything has to be prepped and ready to go.
I thought since we are just getting back into the swing of things, that we should keep to something simpler, the tried and true. Then again, it’s our first week back to rehearsals…. So we want something nice….. We did keep the guest list to just our trio, to get us back into the swing of things. For our first course we served Lobster and Guacamole salad with vodka spiked tomato sauce.
To heck with simple, this is a decadent dish, which featured tomatoes and herbs from Steph’s garden, which made all the difference to the dish. We just love the summer bounty. The lobster is rich, but offset with the creamy avocado, and a zing from the spiked tomato sauce. This should start the season off right.
It was nice that even though we had a schedule, it didn’t seem rushed, and we had a chance to get caught up on our summer adventures. For our main we served braised beef ribs with pomme puree and braised vegetables.
After being braised for 2 hours, the meat was falling off the bone. These potatoes are a recent discovery and come out extra creamy. This dish almost did not happen, as we could not get beef ribs anywhere. Finally the butcher was able to custom cut them for us. Yeah Pusateris???
With a cup of herbal tea in hand, we finished the meal with mascarpone filled cake with sherried berries.
I love making this dessert, when the local berries are on. It took some looking but the blueberries are wild picked. Lovely, creamy and cakey.
I think this will get us through that harrowing (at least for me) first rehearsal, on a new piece, as we launch into Steph’s last season with Pax Christi chorale. If you have been putting off seeing this team, now is the time.
