Food and Wine Fest 2013: Round Six

Home stretch. Just a few more items remaining on my list. This is where we get down to business.

Daniel and I took a left turn and went straight to...

AUSTRALIA


Garlic Shrimp with Roasted Tomatoes, Lemon Myrtle and Rapini. Rosemount Estate Pinot Grigio.

I am super picky about my shrimp. I don't really care for them cold. My favorite is crispy and breaded. But I have to tell you, all Fest long, every time I passed that booth, that garlic shrimp smelled goooood. I finally caved and decided to give it a whirl. It was a good decision. The shrimp were warm and, as advertised, garlicky. What really intrigued me were the roasted tomatoes and the rapini (same this as broccoli rabe -- we looked it up on the almighty Google). The rapini was super bitter on its own, but combined with the roasted tomatoes, something about the acid tempered the bitterness and it. was. heaven. Oh, and in case you are curious, lemon myrtle is an herb. (We Googled that too.) The pinot grigio was light and refreshing and paired really well with the stronger flavors of the food, but the food was definitely the star here.


Onward to...

SINGAPORE


Seared Mahi Mahi with Jasmine Rice and Singa Sauce.

The Mahi Mahi was perfect. Neither mushy nor dry, it was cooked exactly right. And there was rice. But really? They were vehicles for the Singa sauce. What is Singa sauce, you ask? Shallots, garlic, ginger, lemon juice, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, and oyster sauce. Or, in other words, YUM. (Related: Round Six brought to you by the powers of Google, apparently.)


Halfway 'round the world Showcase Lagoon we go, landing in...

MOROCCO


Harissa Chicken Roll. Ksar White.

What ended up being the only non-seafood dish I had (not counting dessert, of course) was this chicken roll. I've had it before and it's tasty. Crispy roll encasing spiced shredded chicken with some veggies. It's flavorful and packs a wee bit of punch, so the wine cooled things down nicely.


A quick hop, skip and a jump, and we were in...

FRANCE


Escargots Persillade en Brioche. Eiffel Sour Cosmo Slush.

Every year, I work up my nerve to have an escargot. I have to wait for Daniel to join me, because I can only muster up enough courage to have one and *someone* has to eat the other two. This year, though, I was in for a surprise. In previous years, the snails are swimming in pools of garlic butter, and the brioche have their little "hats" in place. This time, the was a little sauce that had parsley as well as garlic, but WHERE WAS THE LITTLE HAT?! I get brave because I can't *see* what I'm eating. Thank goodness that sauce was thick and opaque, hiding the meat, or I might have chickened out. As it was, I needed a good dose of liquid courage beforehand, in the form of that tasty red Cosmo slush (vodka, Grey Goose Cherry Noir, Grand Marnier, cranberry juice). (The wine was Daniel's beverage of choice - Chardonnay, Macon-Villages, La Cote Blanche - and that is as much as I can tell you about that, because I was all about that slush.) Back to the escargot: It wasn't bad but I still missed the little hat.


Next in line was...

IRELAND


Warm Chocolate Pudding with Bailey's Custard.

For as long as I can remember, Ireland has offered a chocolate lava cake with a ganache sauce as its dessert. Upon my initial surveying of the menu items, I thought they were serving the same thing, just with a new name and a different sauce. Oh, most certainly not! The texture of the "warm pudding" was something like eating a half baked caked: warm and gooey but definitely some cake-like qualities. The "custard" was like a vanilla sauce and added another layer, unlike the more one-dimensional chocolate-on-chocolate dessert in the past.


One final stop...

CANADA


Seared Rainbow Trout with Bacon, Frisee and Maple Minus 8 Vinaigrette.

Oh my. The fish was cooked really well: juicy but the skin was nice and crispy. Drown it in a sweet-tangy vinaigrette, add a few fresh greens, and sprinkle it with crispy bacon bits (the real deal, not "bacon") and this was incredible. So many flavors but none overpowering the others. This was a fabulous addition to the 2013 menu! And a great way to wind up the Festival.

Time to start contemplating the top five dishes of 2013...