Every sunday morning is the farmers market. It's a quaint, little, but still bustling farmers market, and the produce is delicious. You start to see familiar faces and you start to see familiar pets, and the vendors and their familiar foods are so comforting. One of the chefs at a local restaurant, Bacaro is great and wonderful about supporting the local community, especially when it comes to local produce. Monday night is Market Night where they use produce from the farmers market and create a beautifully presented and amazingly flavored meal. You have the option of wine pairing for an extra 20 dollars where you can sample 4 wines to go with your dishes. I highly recommend the pairing if you do not have a favorite. otherwise, it's nice to just have a glass of something delicious to go with your meal even if it wasn't specially paired for the night.
The menu, as far as i can recall was something similar to this: (the names aren't exactly right but the description of the dish seems to be right. I should have asked for the pairing menu as well because some of the wines were just amazing... and it's unfortunate that i can't remember what they were!!!!! it's almost infuriating!!)
Just as a note, I have not eaten substantial amounts of meat in years... I have eaten small morsels of meats to explore new dishes, but i haven't actually consumed quantities larger than my pinky nail in almost 6 years. They didn't offer any substitutions for this meal because this was all that the kitchen had prepared (they have a more extensive menu the rest of the week which is equally delicious) so i told them it was ok and I decided to eat (try to eat) a portion or so of the duck which was the featured meat. Duck is incredibly tasty, and back when i did eat it, i enjoyed it a lot. It is also a very fatty animal. My fault entirely, but after eating a thumb or two sized portion of duck meat, my insides were in knots for an entire week trying to process this foreign protein... BUT.... all GI distress aside, the entire meal... was soooooooooooooooooo delicious!!! D got the wine pairing, and I opted for an Argentinian red... 2006 of some sort. very good... and the wine pairing definitely complimented the dishes very well.
but here was the breakdown of the meal:
Duck Confit Bread Pudding
-wow. this was amazing. it was savory and delicious and warm, with the flavors of the duck baked into the soft squishy bread. Luckily the pieces of duck were large so i managed to fish them out and give them to D... i felt kind of bad for him... he ate a lot of my meat that night... but it's ok... the meat was also delicious.
Truffle and Mushroom Soup with baked cheese
-the soup was so delicious. A little on the salty side, and the baked asiago cheese that was added didn't help cut the saltiness... but otherwise the flavor was great. the mushrooms and the truffle were so great to eat. i'm not sure i would have it again just because it was almost overwhelmingly salty... but if it were diluted a little and served with a slice of crusty bread, it would have been PERFECT.
Duck Breast over Swiss chard, Sweet potato and Chocolate Balsamic sauce (which was AMAZING)
-the duck... was soooooooo tender.... but i'll have to rant and rave about the combination of vegetables that were served with this dish. the swiss chard was piled high and i don't know how it was prepared but it was amazing. maybe it was sauteed to perfection in some amazing sauce that the duck meat provided, maybe it was steamed or blanched in something amazing... but it was perfect. it wasn't overcooked, it wasn't undercooked, the flavor wasn't overwhelming but it wasn't too bland. the subtle flavors kind of like well prepared spinach but 10000x better went so well with the morsels of sweet potato. if you grabbed a forkful of the swiss chard with some sweet potato, and a nugget of duck.... and swirl it around in the chocolate balsamic sauce, it was seriously a mouthful of heaven. the chocolate balsamic sauce, as strange as it may sound, was so delicious. if it were appropriate, i would have stuck my finger into the sauce and cleaned the plate. It was rich with chocolate flavor, not really sweet like a milk chocolate but rich and slightly bitter like a dark chocolate or cocoa powder and the balsamic vinegar definitely added a great depth to the chocolate. It wasn't tart or overwhelmingly flavored like an italian salad but rather incredibly subtle. Tasting the sauce was a great adventure of flavors because upon first taste, you'd smell the chocolate and taste the sweet aroma of the chocolate, and then it would dissolve into the rich and almost bitter flavor of good dark chocolate and as that flavor rolled off your tongue, the balsamic vinegar ended the taste with it's playful tartness. your mouth wasn't overwhelmed with sugar but rather the flavor rolled off your tongue and into your belly... and settled into a warmness with whatever foods you had already eaten. ok but enough of the chocolate, on to the next plate
Ewes milk cheese with red pepper jelly
-I can't say i'm a huge fan of ewe milk cheese.... it's hard to describe the flavor, but alone, i found it to be unpleasant. It had the consistency of soft butter and the rind was pretty terrible... (D's plate of cheese was almost entirely rind... oops... ) but the crusty bread and the red pepper jelly to go with the cheese were definitely the saving grace of the cheese. The red pepper jelly tasted like, red peppers with a little bit of a spicy kick made into a sweet red jelly. all together, it was tasty. cheese alone, yuck :-( luckily the wine that was paired with it definitely helped to temper the indescribable flavor of the cheese.
Pumpkin Pie with Rum caramel glaze and some sort of Pecan crust
-you can't go wrong with pumpkin pie. Nor can you go wrong with a pecan crust. and you top that with a rum caramel glaze... you have a winner. win win win! at this point in the meal, i was on the verge of exploding with amazing food, but never fear, my DESSERT STOMACH came to the rescue! amazing consistency, amazing texture! i had to scrape off some of the caramel syrup because i found the rum flavor to be a little overwhelming... but all in all, it was a solid dessert. great way to end the meal.
i would highly recommend going to market night. support the local growers support the community, eat great food because life is too short to be eating crap all the time.
I WISH I HAD TAKEN PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
next time, i'll have my camera handy :-)
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