Serious Food'rotica

"We ate and drank all day long. Brendan shucked eighteen very fresh raw Maine oysters, which we ate on ice by the fire with shallots in white wine vinegar and a sauce of lemon juice, ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco, and horseradish.

I dismantled 2 small endives and, on twinned pairs of the crisp, subtly bitter leaves, I slathered sour cream and loaded each with capers, fresh basil, and oil-packed artichoke hearts. We ate the whole plateful with a fresh batch of blini with slabs of two rather spectacular mild cheeses and some seedless purple grapes.

Then I steamed a bunch of slender asparagus spears and served them with a fantastic dipping sauce made of the rest of the white wine vinegar-and-shallots mixed with mayonnaise and Dijon mustard. After this, I steamed eighteen clams, which we dipped in hot butter.

Later, I melted a bar of very dark chocolate in a double boiler while I cut the stems off some eerily ripe, preternaturally juicy California strawberries. I dipped ten of them in the chocolate and put them into the fridge on waxed paper. While they set, we revisited the blini and cheese course.

And then, with small glasses of Marques de Caceres, to finish this day of insanely luxurious, happy eating, we ate the chocolate-dipped strawberries."

-via katechristensen, via orangette