Dinner with Smasne Cellars

Summer is here, by gum! Sunshine, balmy temps, and mountains of asparagus. Bliss.

 This is some of the asparagus I cooked up the other night for a winemaker’s dinner, featuring the wines of Robert O. Smasne.

 My friend and cook extraordinaire Carol and I tried to stay close to home, focusing on local foods grown right here in the Yakima Valley, where Robert grew up working in the family ag business. The Smasnes have been farming in the Valley for about 100 years, and Robert has been making wines for about 16 of those. One of his more popular wines is Farm Boy Red, a pleasant little blend designed for everyday dining, and named to recognize his heritage.

The event was a dinner sold at an auction to support the Academy of Children’s Theatre. Our guests were treated to a fabulous meal, paired with wines Robert selected from Smasne Cellars.



Carol and I wanted to honor neighborhood farmers, so I whipped up a few platters of local asparagus toast.

Then we offered some of our local (not) shrimp skewered with local (could be) peaches, followed by sweet carmelized local (sure) onion tarts topped with local (yes) apricot jam, a fascinating local (why not?) blueberry, melon and prosciutto salad, culminating with tender filets in a local (see above) Farmboy Red wine reduction, tasty local (of course) roasted potatoes and more local (absolutely positively) asparagus crusted in parmesan and garlic.

Whew!

Then we topped the whole thing off with mango chile ice. Not local. But who cares anymore?

Turns out it’s harder than you might think to assemble a meal composed entirely of locally grown foods, especially in funky weather years like 2011. Carol and I put together our menu a few weeks ago, wishing with all our might that we could include cherries in there somewhere. There are few foods more gorgeous, more enticing than sweet, juicy Bing cherries. Unless you like Rainier cherries. Or Chelans. Or Lapins. Yum.

But the cherries are only just now coming off the trees. The late, late spring has thrown monkey wrenches into all kinds of foodie things around here, and our “farmboy” winemaker’s dinner menu was one of them. We played it safe and went the mango way.

And a fun choice it was, I might add.  Very simple, colorful and sweet. Start with lots of ripe mangos.

 Peel and dice them.  Add lime juice, lime peel, sugar and a little water. Whip 'em all together, then freeze.





 You can get the recipe here, but note a few changes – I used yellow mangoes (much riper than the red ones) and a lot more chile powder than the recipe called for. I also did not use fancy chile powder. In fact, I bought mine at WalMart. I have a son who sprinkles chile powder on everything, from tuna salad to plain buttered bread to breakfast cereal, so I stick to the most cost-effective stuff I can find.

Sometimes I think he eats chile powder by the spoonful, like Pop Rocks (remember those fun exploding candies? the biggest mouth rush of the ‘80s? ). Still fun, and an entertaining addition to mango chile ice.  Where the recipe suggests a sprinkling of chile powder, we went with tongue-sparkling Pop Rocks. Much more fun, and pretty, too.  Enjoy.