Dinner.

Our friends Trent and Aimee sent us Thomas Keller's cookbook Ad Hoc as a thank-you for letting them stay with us when they were here last month. The book arrived the day before we were leaving to be out of town, so our first opportunity to really peruse the recipes wasn't until we got back this weekend.  I must confess that the possibility those recipes presented was taunting me all week long....

We cooked three recipes from it for dinner:  chicken with tarragon, buttered farro, and rainbow swiss chard.  Wow, was it tasty!  The chicken had sweet paprika and curry powder that added an interesting twist to the usual, classically French pairing of tarragon and chicken.  And the swiss chard had serrano ham and wine-soaked raisins that presented a salty, sweet undertone to the chard.

But the true winner was the buttered farro.  OMG was it good!  Ironically, it was the simplest of the three recipes, but the integrity of the ingredients really shone.  Gropius and I both commented that with farro that tasty, it's a wonder why more people don't cook with it more often!

Thanks, Trent and Aimee!  Come back to visit and we'll cook you something....farro, anyone??