Like sleeping on a bed of ricotta

With her trustee cooking t-shirt hanging comfortably off one shoulder, Sally outdid herself again at the second salmon stand dinner I attended at her house. These are always held on a weeknight, making them particularly exciting for a girl who wouldn't have been able to go in months past, when I worked a 9-5 corporate job. But this time again I was able to join the other sandwich kids for a night of ooohing and aahing over sally's springtime spread.

Here's a slightly more foreboding sign than the one I shot last time, which we passed upon entering Sally and Captain Mike's driveway for this dinner:

The color of Sally's homemade borscht is electric, the taste is sweet and shockingly refreshing, and I'm so excited that she might sell it at our salmon stand soon; It seems authentic to offer people borscht with their smoked fish. I like to picture people enjoying this combo often in Eastern Europe or Russia.

Hands continued to fly toward her crudite until it was gone, but I didn't hear anyone dare to ask how she makes her roasted asparagus, baby carrots and radishes so crazily succulent (soak them in salt before roasting? Douse them in more olive oil than other people do? Roast at a certain magic temperature?) I could drink her green garlic aioli like a soup; this woman really is a master of dips, sauces and all things creamy.

Only a couple who runs a successful smoked fish business and who are unusually generous like Mike and Sally are capable of offering their guests such a generous bowl of smoked trout dip, just flakes of fish, and the finest diced onions. The cool smokiness of the trout paired perfectly with crunchy little sea salt potato chips for dipping.

It's hard to picture Sally standing at the cowgirl creamery counter selecting cheeses like the rest of us, but she sure does it well. I loved that she gave us a Vermont blue cheese, sweet and grassy, to contrast with the Pt. Reyes blue we might be more familiar with (I think she probably felt a little pride, as I did, when the East Coast version was even tastier than its more sour, acidic California counterpart.) But the star of the cheese plate was a bowl of Cowgirl's fresh ricotta- I ate it on crackers, i scooped it with potato chips, I dotted it onto my smoked oyster pasta later....so clean and pillowy that I dreamed of getting in a bed of it.

While this baguette slice with Sally's homemade sockeye salmon butter, radish slice and parsley leaf might look simple, she knows that not everyone is gifted in the skills of hors d'ouevres assembly, and therefore made this "model" so her guests would know how to correctly assemble their appetizers. Years of managing her business have taught her the value of showing by example.

The one dish I failed to capture on film was a first course of smoked oyster on angel hair, speckled with parsley picked and chopped with care from her garden. For dinner, little spring chickens, rubbed with one of sally's many herb salts, sat ready to roast on a bed of green garlic (you can't see the bay leaf that sally asked me to pick off her tree and then placed strategically inside of each one).

In the purest ode to spring Sal paired this chicken with a creamy dish of fava beans and peas.

The pavlova dessert that Sally finished our meal with was declared by veteran dinner guests as "the best dessert she's ever made". She topped two homemade meringue rounds with her own maple custard, hand whipped cream and little strawberries that still tasted like the sun. What a carnival for a texture eater like myself, between the dry crunch of the base and the chewiness of the custard.

Even Jordan, the newest of the fish stand crew who admits his own naivete when it comes to appreciating beautiful food, knew this was one for the books; he wisely observed each bite to be "like eating fresh strawberries on french toast".

Stuffed with these dazzling gifts from Sally and Mike we drove home through the moon-lit fields of Sonoma and Marin to return to our beds in the city.