Farmer's Market Anniversary Dinner

To celebrate our 2nd anniversary and to welcome Emi back from a conference over in Leavenworth I decided to make a special dinner for the two of us. All of the ingredients were local and purchased from the Edmonds Farmer's Market.

This is one of Emi's favorite new wines. She tried this Syrah recently at a dinner with our non-profit organization. She'll have to do a blog post on some of her new favorite wines sometime in the near future and I'm sure she'll highlight this wine.

Our summer favorite, caprese with heirloom tomatoes, basil, fresh mozzarella, Hawaiian sea salt, pepper, olive oil, and our aged balsamic vinegar. The difference this time is that I added avocado, which adds a richness to the caprese salad. I also served this with some toasted bread. I heated 3 T of olive oil in a hot pan with one clove of crushed garlic. When it was hot, I toasted each side of the bread for a few minutes and added generous amounts of salt and pepper. The garlicky toast topped with the sweet caprese salad was great and a delicious way to sop up the extra balsamic.

I grilled some fresh Yakima corn for us. I served it with the honey-ancho chili butter which I blogged about last week.

This was a special meal because every time we go to the Farmer's Market Emi wants to buy fresh pasta from this funny Italian guy who has a stand at the market. Finally I decided to splurge and bought Emi her duck ravioli. This stuff wasn't cheap at $13 a package, but it ended up being well worth the cost.

The guy selling the ravioli recommended that I saute some fresh mushrooms (chantrelles which I bought from the market) with some fresh sage. Then serve with the ravioli and top with a little bit of salt and pepper. A very simple sauce that went a long way to bring out the flavors of the duck.

The very easy, simple, yet delicious main course. Butter and salt makes anything better. Basically a fool proof, refined dinner.

I also bought a flat of local strawberries and blackberries to use for dessert. I coated them in sugar and stored in the fridge. I then made some shortcakes and also grilled up some fresh peaches. After the peaches grilled I melted Emi's Ann Arbor maple sugar over the peaches and combined everything together and topped off with whipped cream. This was a fun way to end our locally produced anniversary dinner.

To many more delicious meals together.

- Kyle