Dinner From Tubes
Only Gabe would come up with the idea of creating a dinner in which every dish contained an ingredient that came from a tube. Luckily for me, he and friend Regina’s idea and plans for dinner coincided with my trip to New York, so I was able to participate, and most importantly, enjoy the results.
I actually didn’t realize how much food could be found in a tube, until Gabe showed me his collection, a huge container filled with tubes containing exotic ingredients. I have regularly bought tomato paste, ginger, garlic and cilantro (the last one was one of those first and last purchases) in tubes – easy to store and easy to use. But there is so much more – mustard, horseradish, fish paste type things, and in Europe, the selection is even more diverse (for example, I’ve regularly bought mustard in a tube in Finland which by the way, is one of my favorite mustards). And now I'm keeping my eyes open for new food in tubes.
Dinner started with deviled eggs, half of which contained black cod roe and half horseradish. I absolutely loved the fishy taste with the egg; I even bought a tube of smoked fish from Ikea and made my own a few weeks later (in the spirit of keeping my eyes open for new foods in tubes). From there, we moved to sweet pepper stew with chorizo. Sooo delicious, the stew contained a few ingredients from tubes, possibly paprika. For the main course, roasted chicken, sautéed brussel sprouts with white beans (garlic from a tube and courtesy of Chris), a spinach and feta cheese torta and mashed potatoes (with horseradish from a tube). I contributed a ginger cake, which of course, used an entire tube of minced ginger.
I like the themed dinner idea. Gabe’s went beyond the general cuisine categories that usually mark a themed dinner (such as Mexican, Indian, Thai, bbq, etc.) and forced us to be creative in ways that cooks are not normally challenged. I imagine it was like Iron Chef, only without the really weird ingredients and snarky comments from judges. I’ve already discussed the idea with a few of my Seattle foodie friends and we’ve thinking of new themes for dinner parties (and those of you I haven’t discussed with, don’t worry, we’ll discuss).
Themes … all good.
Below: the deviled eggs with a few tubes. Jason and I were being artistic.
The stew, with the tube of paprika (at least, I hope that's paprika).
Main course!
Ginger cake, slightly blurry. A lot of wine and food had been consumed by the time dessert was served.
