The Texas themed dinner is over! Here's how it went down.
Every room/area in our home is a different elevation, and one of our guests has MS and is wheelchair bound, so we had to create a dining room in what is otherwise our den so he could roll inside through the back patio double sliding doors. Each guest's plate included a menu printed in the font of an Old West wanted poster. I served four fine wines, but for the first, the only white, for effect I bought and emptied out a 1 liter box wine and put the Oregon Sauv Blanc in that. It was called Liberty Creek, which I thought to be a good TX joke because Lyndon Johnson had a dog named Liberty. Only, turned out he didn't; that was Gerald Ford. OOPS!
Amuse bouche: Texas Toast. A piece of cheap white bread rolled flat, crusts torn away, and rolled up around American cheese, Tapatio hot sauce, ancho chile powder and batonnets of seared 'hog belly', served in a shot glass with tomatillo sauce and pickled jalapeno peppers.
First course: Storm in the Gulf. Shrimp ravioli on Yellow Rose of Texas sauce (yellow tomatoes, onions, garlic, cream, gin, aleppo pepper) garnished with yellow pear tomatoes in a pesto vinaigrette.
Second course: A 'Murrican Salad. Romaine, clover sprouts, watermelon radishes, pecans, Oil Rig vinaigrette.
No Texas meal is complete without a stack of cheap white bread.
Third Course: Cherry and apple wood smoked prime grade prime rib with onion, sage and potato gratin.
Final course: Old Homestead Chocolate Cake with chocolate debris, road dust, tire tracks.
After the guests left, Bob Marley inspects the floral arrangements.