Some friends of ours purchased a company in Atlanta and will be moving there next week so Jody and I invited them over for a farewell dinner yesterday. We shared some great wine and food, but this course really shined like a crazy diamond. It was fettuccine with a butter, cream, parmigiano-reggiano, bacon sauce topped with grilled lobster and dry-packed day boat scallops.
While our guests relaxed and recalled entertaining and humorous but slightly embarrassing stories that usually began with, “Remember that time when Dave…” Jody and I got down to business. I was in charge of making the pasta and preparing the lobster and scallops. I made a little over a pound of fresh fettuccine and cooked the ghee painted lobster hunks and scallops over a hardwood coal fire. In the meantime, Jody cooked the fettuccine and made a very simple sauce out of four sticks of butter that she melted and lightly browned and then whisked in 2 pints of vigorously shaken heavy cream. When the sauce came together she whisked in a mountain of grated parmigiano-reggiano and 7 broken up strips of Nueske’s bacon.
The pasta and sauce were plated and topped with the grilled lobster, scallops and some vibrant flat leaf parsley. We all raved about the meal while talking about new chapters that are beginning in our lives.
The night evaporated quickly, as it always seems to do when one must bid a final farewell to great friends. We shared a ’77 Fonseca from my cellar that I had been saving for a special occasion. When it came time for our friends to leave, Jody and Barbara hugged and cried. I shook my buddy Matt’s hand and said, “Promise me you will not become a Falcon fan.” He laughed and replied, “Promise me that if we come back to visit, Jody will do all of the cooking. ”
