Canapés, pizzas, roast pork with potatos, desserts
TO THE DRY CREEK VALLEY west of Geyserville this afternoon, there to graze and converse and relax among two of the kids, three of the grandchildren, and a couple dozen others, most of them met for the first time.
The house is on a hilltop facing west out across the valley and its vineyards. An elegant, curiously anthropomorphic pizza oven stands near the pool, and there Niko presided with his associate Amelia, who had squeezed out some fresh mozzarella from buffalo milk found who knows where.
The first pizzas were topped with sliced leeks and spring onions, the crust thin and brittle, nicely singed around the edges. Nearby Tatsuo looked in occasionally at a rack of pork turning slowly over a grill. Potatoes and garlic and rosemary were part of the menu as well.
Guests had brought a number of appetizers: smoked salmon, salmon rillettes, hardboiled egg canapés and the like. The wines ranged from a remarkably austere local Chardonnay — you might have thought it was Chablis — to a $3.99 sparkler from Trader Joe: there were no snobs among this company!
And since it was a visiting chef's birthday there was a cake, and rhubarb pie, and polenta cookies, and many other goodies…
A fine hot Sunday afternoon in the wine country.
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