Locavore Dinner

With our 3rd annual Locavore Wine Dinner is on the horizon it's time to start planning a menu.  This is probably the most challenging wine dinner we put on, at least as far as the kitchen goes.  Each dish takes days of planning.

Can I get all the ingredients I need?  I need to be sure, with all the restrictions in being a locavore menu one change can snowball into many.

Can I get balance in the dish?  Balance is probably the hardest thing to deal with with this menu.  I love using acid in cooking and with the only pure acidity available being cider vinegar, I really have to carefully put together each dish.  I really have to look for natural acidity in ingredients and make sure I don't prepare them in such a manner that changes, alters or loses that acidity.

What are the steps needed to prepare each dish?  When you lose the use of cooking oils, especially the neutral ones, you need to be careful in how you decide to prepare each dish.  If am to cook chicken for example, I need to decide if our churned butter will be to overpowering for the desired outcome.  Maybe I need to render some chicken fat instead, maybe some lard.  Maybe all of the fats I have available are too strong and I need to change the method use to prepare the chicken.  What dish is next?  What dish came before?  More importantly, what fats am I to use in the dishes before and after?  If I use all lard to cook with, the menu items will all start tasting a touch similar.

Now I need to think about putting them together in a harmonious and pleasant order as to not overpower any of the dishes.  I need to make sure there are palate cleansing dishes and that no heavy dish precedes a subtle one.

Then we have to pair wines with them, which carries its own list of concerns.

Sometimes planning these menus comes together effortlessly, sometimes they are rewritten a dozen times.  Let's hope for the former...