We may have gone overboard yesterday.....

[Kcwhippet]

....but what fun. We had Dave, a fellow manager at the wine shop, over yesterday for a day of food and wine - lots of food and lots of wine. I baked up some bread before he came over to go with the food, and as it turned out to help absorb some of the wine. I had also marinated some whole water chestnuts for one of the appetizers. Dave brought a 1995 Remoissenet Montrachet du Domaine Thenard which we drank while we were doing the prep work on the apps and dinner. Winoweenie called while we were at this stage and admitted that maybe this would be one SW he might be tempted with. Anyway, we (Dave and I) made the apps - bacon wrapped water chestnuts (marinated in soy sauce, honey, veal stock, rice wine and garlic) and quickly boiled fresh Red Maine shrimp (the boil had salt, bay leaves, Meyer lemons, black peppercorns, yellow mustard seeds, cloves, dill seed, red pepper flakes and some Sauvignon Blanc). While we ate these, we had a 2006 Starling Castle Rheinhessen Riesling - very, very nice, We were joined then by our niece and her boyfriend, so we opened a bottle of Glenora 2001 Brut to celebrate his election to his city council seat. As Dave and I continued prepping, we finished off the Tin Roof SB that was in the shrimp boil. When that was empty we did a Merlot (I won't tell you the winery for fear of derisive jeers, but it was quite nice - not much nose to speak of, but a a nice fruity drink). We marinated some flat iron steaks in some of the Merlot, olive oil, garlic, parsley, rosemary and dry mustard. Whileit was marinating, Dave made the Chimichurri sauce that was to go with the steak while I did the twice baked potatoes that had their first bake after the water chestnuts came out of the oven. Then I made up a mixture of butter, garlic (used quite bit throughout the day yesterday), parley, basil, salt and fresh ground pepper which went on half a loaf of the bread to make herbed garlic bread. Put the potatoes and bread in the oven and opened a bottle of Novy 2006 Viognier while we waited. Boiled up some fresh baby carrots and put the steaks on the grillfor a few minutes per side (we like it at the point where you still have to beat it down with a stick to keep it from jumping off the plate). Finished off the carrots with some melted butter, meyer lemon juice and salt - plated them and sprinkled dill on top. Dave took off the steaks and bias cut them, then plated them with the Chimichurri sauce on the side. Finally, onto the table with the steak, the twice baked potatoes, the carrots and the herbed garlic bread. We were also going to do a Caesar salad (from scratch, of course) but decided there was enough food already. At WW's suggestion, we opened a 1999 Insignia to go with the meal. After dinner, we decided to play some cards and put out a tray of Stilton and walnuts to go with the Delaforce 10 year and Barros 20 year ports. We finished off with some 2005 Nachtgold Eiswein a distributor had dropped off at the shop. It was a lot of fun doing this with Dave since we both worked as professional cooks in previous lives. I'm not quite sure, but I think we killed a total of thirteen bottles in a heroic stab at hedonism.