[TN] Silver wedding dinner

Congratulations Nils, and Xina too. All the best!

-E

COngratulation on the 25! Jadot sounds niice.

Most felicitous anniversary, Nils and Xina! You are our role models. Now for the questions: was this meal at home? (if so, who did the cooking? ;0) and how did your palates fare going from a sweet CdL to a dry and nuanced GC Bourgogne?

Mark Lipton

And congrats to you, Mike, on celebrating your milestone! You too are a role model.

Mark Lipton (hearing the ticking of a clock in the background)

"Mark Lipton" skrev i meddelandet news:efe32p$sju$ snipped-for-privacy@mailhub227.itcs.purdue.edu...

Thank you everybody Thank you. Thank you

The meal was at home, and I did the cooking. The terrine (really, technically it was a mousse) did not entail any cooking except boiling the small and fresh beets, last of the summer's crop I'd guess.

Quite well. We never felt it as a problem. Perhaps because the CdL was not overly sweet - I would never consider it really 'sticky' - also, it being close to 20 ys old a lot of stickiness had left it. Not even the first sip of the Ruchotte felt in any way 'tainted' by the previous wine. I could of course have con tempalted a little mouthrinser (a sorbet, or a chilled melon soup), but, what with cooking three dishes (I didn't mention the tuna tataki, did I?) and opening round oysters which are very fragile compared to the oval ones, my hands were full. The Ruchotte had a certain sweetness, of the kind that comes from maturity, not form residual sugar - I wondetr what causes it? Does it say in the FAQ :) ?

Cheers

Nils GUstaf

Yes, Demel does make a very good Sachertorte. I like it a bit better than the one made by Hotel Sacher. Some say there are nearly as many variations of Sachertorte as cooks who make it. Have you tasted the Demeltorte? I like it ever better than the Sachertorte. It is based on chocolate, but is loaded with chopped almonds. It has some orange and currant jam. The top is covered with marzipan and then coated with rich chocolate. I also like Demel's nussbeugel, a sort of yeast dough strudel with a moist nut filling. Their teegebach assortment also is outstanding - I have never tasted cookies of this quality and type before. They also make outstanding chocolates. They ship all over the world by second day air express, and I always receive what they send in good condition. I am about to order from Demel again as soon as the temperature drops a bit more. Since air express has become so expensive from Vienna to the US, you have to plan an order carefully. I avoid heavy or large, less expensive, items such as bread. You need to order several items at once - and ordering with a friend or two will help. For those of you living in Europe, shipping costs are likely only a small fraction of that to the US. Their tortes freeze very well for months if you tightly wrap them in moisture proof wrap. I usually wrap with plastic wrap, and then wrap again with aluminum foil. A dried out torte is not very nice.

Living in Vienna *can* have a few advantages sometimes ... ;-)

Thus said, if you ever return, you should try "Kurkonditorei Oberlaa":

(Site doesn't work at the moment.)

It has an even better reputation for quality than both Sacher and Demel.

M.

Thanks for the suggestion. I was able to link to the site. Part of the German portion is working, but response is extremely slow. Clicking on the English version only brought up a window that said the site was under construction. I book marked the site and will check back from time to time to see if they plan to ship to locations outside of Austria. They seem to have a wide variety of products. Besides being able to obtain the Sachertorte and other goods from Demel and the Hotel Sacher, the Imperial Hotel will ship their torte. It is even richer than the other two because of the thick layers of what appears to be butter cream. To be any richer, they likely would have to serve you a portion of plain butter!

I have been party to just such an experiment. Many years ago, my mother (an excellent cook) made a Sachertorte for a dinner party at our home. Unfortunately, she misread the recipe (which called for a _stick_ of butter) and added a _pound_ of butter, a fourfold excess. The result was a horrifically rich dessert, somewhat of the consistency of chocolate butter. She was aghast at her error, but it found favor with one of the guests, Julian White -- a pianist/composer of some note who just recently died -- who gleefully ate two slices and would likely have devoured more had he been given the chance. Thankfully, he didn't die of coronary heart disease (he wasn't a small man by any stretch) or we'd all feel a bit responsible.

Mark Lipton

Funny coincidence ... over 20 years ago, in the early 1980s, the Austrian hotel group in which the Imperial is the flagship got a completely new management. The name of the group (CCA Hotels Austria = City & Country Hotels Austria) appropriately was changed to "Imperial Hotels Austria". A new General Manager was given free hand to change whatever he liked, and he did.

He brought Reinhard Gerer to Hotel Bristol (part of the group, across the Ringstrasse from the Imperial), an excellent chef, to organise what was to become Restaurant Korso, one of the best restaurants in town. He also approached me to become a sommelier at restaurant Korso, which I was for two years (1984/85), with the pompous title "Chef-Sommelier Imperial - Bristol" on my business card.

At that time the Imperial Torte was created - and, of course, marketing touted "an old recipe, found in the archives", which it wasn't, of course. Reinhard Gerer, having read the recipe, commented: "Lets see ... there's chocolate ... flour ... almonds ... marzipan ... butter ... and only about 10,000 calories per bite!".

M.