I can feel the excitement building, as we get closer to our big concert, Judith. Tonight we will be rehearsing with a slightly larger orchestra and next week, we finally have the opportunity to work with the full orchestra and soloists. Seeing this amazing, lost work coming together, gives us a feeling of accomplishment, and we can finally see how the final piece will come together. We can hardly wait.
Tonight for dinner we have invited someone who has been on the guest list for sometime, but never been “on the list”. He is a tenor and also named Shawn. We had a forewarning (from Ruth) that he is “an eater.” Yeah… nothing better than cooking for an eater. So our trio gathered with New big prairie Shawn. This should be fun. We also found out that he has a placement back home for the summer, so good thing we had him over this week.
We had time to gather and toast with a glass of wine, and then settled in to our first course. When Shawn said he wanted to do a shrimp cocktail, I said “OK, but not the boring kind.” With shrimps slowly poached in vegetable stock, a salad of chiffonade of romaine, apples,shallot, and mayonnaise and cognac sauce. This was very flavourful, light and tasty.
I swear those shrimp were fed on oats and hay… but very tasty.
After a brief pause, to let our main protein rest, we served. Beef Tenderloin, with a red wine shallot reduction, Gratin Dauphinois, and glazed carrots. You really can’t go wrong with tenderloin, but the dauphinois put a new spin on potatoes gratin, and serving the wine used in the sauce is always a winner.
Steph had to meet the orchestra a bit early, so we had to get dessert on the go. We served a Caramel Cream Layer Cake. 4 layers of light cake, topped with Chantilly cream laced with crème fraiche, and topped with more Chantilly cream and lots of caramel… What’s not to like. I am eating the leftovers, while I type this entry…..
Now that there’s caramel on the keyboard,…. We didn’t have a tonne of time, until we had to head off to rehearsal. This was the earliest that new Shawn had ever made it to rehearsal. Tonight we worked with not only strings, but oboe, clarinet and French horn. We also had 3 out of four of our official soloists in attendance. It’s just amazing to see the story come alive. Next week we finally get to hear the piece with full orchestra and soloists. It’s going to be amazing!!!
My only regret from the evening was that we didn’t have time after dinner for a little sing-song around the piano. But even that was forgotten while watching the soloists sink their teeth into their roles as it made the text leap off the page; If the chorus can do the same then the audience will be treated to a spine tingling performance. Can you tell we are excited??? There are still good tickets in the balcony. You don’t want to miss this once in a lifetime show.
