Dinner at Bob’s

It’s rare that you get an invite to a multi-course course, fusion, chef-inspired dinner at a friend’s house. Or maybe I need some new friends?

Either way, when an old acquaintance from university reached out and offered to make me a gluten-free, dairy-free feast, how could I say no? Especially when this person likes to spherify, Vitamix, sous vide, foam and liquid nitrogen (that’s a verb) foods.

Here’s how it went.

We started with a kind of ceviche-meets-fish tartare with lemon, red onion, dill and salt:

The paste on the side is a slow-cooked soy-based paste that was pure umami. That was the one thing I couldn’t have. The other dinner guests loved it with the next course of miso soup and deconstructed sushi: tuna sashimi on seasoned rice with salmon roe, fennel and capers:

Now that we were full, it was time for bison meatballs, clearly. These were baked in a sweet tomato sauce that incoporated Bob’s mom’s homemade tomato salsa.

When I’d walked into Bob’s apartment, he’d been tying a giant hunk of pork shoulder around some Arctic char (or was it rainbow trout?) and wrapping the whole thing in nori to roast.

It ended up looking like this when it was cooked:

And this is how it looked on the inside. I dug for the fish, but my favourite part was the charred edges of the pork. The new potatoes were superfluous to most people after all that seasoned sushi rice, but it was a roast, and thus required potatoes, we figured.

Stick a fork in us, we were done. 
Thanks, Bob.