We just participated in the 30th Wine and Food Festival held at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History. I have been there most of those 30 years. This year I went into hyper-culinary mode and offered a duet of short rib meatballs in a cabernet veal demi glace and local farmed abalone with chardonnay butter. Serving over 1000 tastes was not a light task. Preparing the abalone was an eight hour labor that included some 15,000 whacks with the tenderizing mallet! Here is a link to a video I made for The Cultured Abalone farm that raises the abalone that I used. The meatballs were relatively easy as they are just scooped and formed into bite-sized morsels. I used some 45 pounds of short ribs in the process.
The event will be the basis for one of our The Inn Crowd shows. A later blog will have details and recipes. In the meantime, we made it into Richard Mineards' weekly social report in The Montecito Journal. It's always nice to be noticed.
