Saturday Night – Fifty Shades of Dinner

While the last two weekends have been wonderful from a food and wine perspective, they have also been a little heavy in the food and wine area, so Kathy was looking so a simpler/lighter menu.  We discussed it and decided on Lamb burgers and Greek Salad and something for dessert.  I have been itching to do a homemade Greek Salad for a while and a few weeks ago Kathy and I had Lamb burgers which were awesome and I wanted Mick and Amy to try them.

That was the plan and then I got a text from Amy in which she mentioned that she had been reading the 50 Shades of Gray series and had a massive craving for Champagne.  It seems there is a lot of Champagne drinking in the books.  Amy even volunteered to provide the Champagne.  Not being one to turn down free Champagne, I agreed to do an appetizer course which would pair with Champagne.

Around this same time, Kathy’s sister Kelli said she would be in town on Sunday and wanted to do dinner together.  I suggested the three of us go out for Sushi which Kelli lit up to.  It had been a bit since I’ve had Sushi so I was looking forward to Sunday.  Unfortunately, something came up the next day and Kelli had to cancel for our Sunday Sushi-fest.

I was still kicking around ideas for an appetizer to go with the Champagne at this point and I decided to kill two cravings – order some Sushi to go with the Champagne as our first course.  Mick and Amy love Sushi so I knew that wouldn’t be a problem and Kathy isn’t a huge fan but was cool with it as the first course.

I ordered the Sushi from Spring Sushi on Upper James in Hamilton.  I usually go to Aijo Sushi which is downtown Hamilton but wanted to try something different.  I ordered 4 Dragon rolls – Red (Salmon), Yellow (Mango) and 2x Green (Avocado).  Amy brought a bottle of Perrier-Jouët Champagne to go with it.  We have reviewed this before - http://zippysauce.blogspot.ca/2011/12/saturday-night-champagne-and-sheian_11.html
so I won’t go into much detail.  I will say that the Sushi was very good as there wasn’t a single grain of sticky rice to be found at the end of the course so everyone enjoyed it and the  Perrier-Jouët Champagne worked very well with it.

For the main course I did Lamb burgers and Greek Salad and paired this with a 2003 Byron Pinot Noir from California.

The nose on the Byron was mild with a barnyard aroma and some cherry/strawberry notes in the background.  Tasting the wine before the food, I really liked it, black licorice with cherry notes that finished very smooth.  I really liked this wine with the food and on its own but I’m not a huge pinot fan and this reminded me more of a Red Bordeaux than a pinot.  Kathy and Mick love Pinot Noir and weren’t an enamored with this wine as I was as both thought that it needed more fruit on the nose and the taste and that I had done this wine a disservice but aging it as long as it did.  The fruit did come out more with the food just not to the level they would have liked.  On the other hand,  all of us finished the bottle with no problems and I don’t think anyone would have complained if there was another bottle handy.

Here is the group rating for the wine -Mick –87, Mark - 89, Kathy – 87, Amy – 86, Overall – 87.25.

There was no LCBO information on this wine which wasn’t a surprise as I’m pretty sure I picked this up in the US a few years back for about $30 US.

For dessert I picked up a Key lime Crunch Cake which was nice lighter dessert to end the evening.

Thanks to Mick and Amy for providing the Champagne for the evening and looking forward to our next Saturday night dinner.

Cheers! 

Mark