birthday goodness

While we wait for me to have enough time to post all my Euro-treats, let me tell you about my recent birthday dinner. Actually there were two. One was a trip to Blue Ginger in Wellesley, to check out the perennial hype about Ming Tsai’s fusion cuisine. This was very good, and I will post pictures of it shortly, but it was eclipsed by my dinner with tallasiandude at Tuscan Grill in Waltham. We ate at the bar as we always do, and we loved our meal and our evening, as we always do. It is so nice to have a place that just the two of us go that is always so comfortable and comforting but still chockablock with cooking skill. I never take pictures of my food there, I just groove.
We started with a spicy cold cucumber soup with dill & creme fraiche, which was spectacular and the best dish of the evening, and a crespelle (thick crepe) filled with ricotta & smoked trout, which was delicious but larger & heavier than i was expecting it to be. Then we split a half-order of cannelloni filled with chicken mousseline & swiss chard, and glazed with a marsala sauce. And finally we had a beautiful chunk of cod wrapped in pancetta and pan fried to crispy delectableness and served with sauteed spinach & pan fried basil gnocchi, and the grilled hanger steak with a panzanella salad. We skipped dessert in favor of heading home to have some vanilla ice cream topped with the rote grütze I brought home from Germany: a cooked mixture of sour cherries, red and black currants, strawberries, raspberries, rhubarb & blackberries. Holy moly, yum yum yum.