I wanted to do some stuff on my Big Green Egg last week, so I got some really thick pork chops and the makings of caprese salad (what I understand to be tomatoes, fresh mozzarella cheese and basil), along with some ciabatta bread.

The set up was easy; get some coals going on the egg and get it heating up. While doing that, I opened a bottle of wine to breathe, which I thought was perfect for the meal… a bottle of Le Snoot Cabernet Savignon!

I also got the pork chops out of the fridge and seasoned them with grey salt, black pepper, oregano, onion powder and garlic powder. Since these were really thich (like 1 1/2″), I seasoned them pretty heavily.

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Here it is at last! The foie gras I’d been so looking forward to preparing and eating. The big question: was it worth it?

The answer: a definite YES!

This stuff is like heaven on a fork. Here’s the progression of how things went:

If you look at any posts this week, they’ll most likely be from our 2007 wine party. This was, I guess, the featured dish of the party (outside of the wine, that is). I’d been looking into whether I’m pro-foie gras or anti-foie gras in an earlier post. My conclusion was that I’m pro. So I put in my order, and the foie gras got here last Thursday.

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It’s been a hectic few days getting ready for last night. My wife and I had our 5th annual wine party. We’ve gone from just a few people, to a dozen to twenty. That’s about 2 1/2 times what is recommended for a wine party, but we don’t care… We’re not trying to do a really formal wine tasting; we’re trying to enjoy the night with friends and finding some wines that we might like that we hadn’t tried before.

It’s almost more fun to try some wines that are the worst wines. But more on that later.

The way our wine party goes is pretty simple, and pretty much against the accepted wine tasting process. We start with the food, which is supposed to be later, after the tasting. I fixed all the food. Then we start tasting wines. Each couple that comes brings 2 wines, a red and a white. The theme this year was French wines, so all the wines were French.

As I’ve said before, I try to do a couple of main dishes with several cheeses and bread. Thursday, I made crepes. Friday, I made dessert and started on French country bread and brioche. I’ll go through all of the dishes separately, to spend the time each deserves.

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