Fancy Fish Fettuccine

For all of this week I’ll be testing and prepping for the October 14th event.  There’s only a few tickets left and I’m both terrified and excited at the same time.  This will be a defining moment in the fledgling Basil & Sage private chef startup.

There’s some big challenges.  It’s a lot of plates.  I won’t have my partner in crime because the event is on a Sunday.  There’s some food logistics to over come with some tricky ingredients and some even trickier methods.  There’s no kitchen so we have to haul down a makeshift kitchen, which largely determined the menu.

But….I will have Diane, who is actually better than me around food, so I’m extremely grateful for her.  Yesterday, she tested out making the squid ink pasta from scratch and dropped some off.  I consulted with her about the ink streaking when I went over all of my concerns with her about achieving what I envisioned for the menu.  She nailed the pasta.  It’s gorgeous.  We’ll be eating the test batch tonight.

I made the sauce with butter, white wine, cream, shallots and garlic.  I realized at the last minute that I had forgotten a vegetable.  No problem…I tossed  some fresh green beans right into the sauce.  Cha ching!  The halibut was divine.  It was worth growing all those tomatoes just for that trade.  I rolled and handcut the pasta and it was perfect for four so we invited friends.