New Years Eve

New Years Eve Champagne Dinner
Served from 5 PM to 10 PM

Live Entertainment with the classical guitar of Greg Williams

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Individual bottles of Piper Heidsieck Brut Champagne

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Prix Fix 4 Course Dinner

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1st

Southern Style Creamed Corn with Bacon

Beef Vegetable & Cremini Mushroom Soup

Butternut Squash Soup

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2nd

Beet Salad with caramelized onions, maple roasted walnuts and goat cheese

Mixed Greens with maple roasted walnuts, raisins, feta cheese with a balsamic vinaigrette

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3rd
Filet Roast with Red Wine Sauce

Turkey with a vegetable & bread stuffing and Apple Dressing

Pumpkin and Butternut Squash Risotto
Mexican Prawns with garlic and lemon, mushrooms, ginger & scallions

Roast Leg of Lamb with Red Wine Sauce

Penne Pasta with artichoke, & Cremini mushroom

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4th

Kazan Dibi -- Turkish lavender almond milk flan with Lavender Tuiles

Chocolate-Coconut Bread Pudding with passion fruit sauce

$55

A perfect Saturday

It was supposed to be storming this morning, but, although its cloudy, the temperature is nice and the air clean. Took the dog for a nice long walk and came home to harvest some Meyer lemons in our garden. We have soooo many. So the plan is to cook up a batch of my lemon marmalade. Look for it at brunch tomorrow and try to identify it in some of our specials coming up this week.

Thanksgiving dinner

Gonul did another great holiday meal. Everything was well received, but the Turkey, of course, is always the center piece. Her secret for a perfect Turkey is fairly simple and will fit into many recipe variations. Start with a quality Turkey. Gonul uses oraganic Turkies from Diestel. She then brines the Turkey in red wine, vegetable stock and herbs. Guarenteed to be moist and juicy -- even when reheated for leftovers.

Beet Salad

Its root vegetable time at the farmer's market. Bought, among many other things, some great beets. Ask for our beet salad special. We are also doing a really generous promotion for the next couple of months. For $40, get a four course dinner for two, including a bottle of wine (house white or red depending on the entree).

Spicy Citrus Sauce

I was experimenting with all the great citrus from my garden and developed a wonderful spicy citrus sauce. It will be part of our Thanksgiving prix fix dinner. This will be a good recipe for my next cookbook.

A visit with Kenny

Kenny and Derya

a
Gonul and Allie



3 Generations: Mitch Zach and Kenny




Derya up and riding




Gonul's step son Kenny Blum is quite the adventurer and now runs Tahoe Wake Sports at Lake Tahoe (north shore). See http://www.tahoewakesports.com/. Gonul, her son Derya, her husband Mitch, Mitch's grandson (Kenny's son) Zach, and Derya's friend Allie from Connecticut enjoyed a great day on the lake wake boarding, tubing, swimming and wake surfing last week. Derya had never tried this sport although he is fairly comfortable snow boarding. Kenny had him up on his firtst try and taking a long ride on his second. He's a great teacher and this was a very special day

Here is Kenny wake surfing: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijbYG4MTOXo

Derya's ride:

Fox 40 cooking demonstration

Gonul appeared on the Fox40 morning news show to demonstrate her stuffed chicken recipe on Thursday, August 28th. This was her 4th TV appearance this year. All have been fun and interesting. Live television usually is.

Gonul was able to show all the ingredients and spices that go into many of her dishes and present the finished product of this particular dish, but time constraints did not give her a chance to actually demonstrate her methods -- maybe at a later date. What was supposed to be two five minute segments turned into a single 3 minute segment because of some live interviews running long. However, there was some excitement. Knowing that her segment was shortened, Gonul turned up the heat on the electric range provided to make sure the skillet for browning the chicken was hot enough. Because of the delay, the skillet was on the oven top longer than planned and when she added the butter and olive oil to the skillet a great plume of smoke arose and set off the smoke alarm at the TV station. So much for the demonstration!

Email Gonul for the recipe at jstreetcafe@aol.com. We will add you to our email list if you ask so you can get notification of special events (Wine Maker's dinners, wine tastings, entertainment, etc. along with monthly recipes and discount coupons)