{"id":588,"date":"2012-07-30T00:29:04","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T23:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ginnyang.com\/?p=588"},"modified":"2013-05-29T13:35:25","modified_gmt":"2013-05-29T12:35:25","slug":"dinner-party-in-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/?p=588","title":{"rendered":"My dinner party in review"},"content":{"rendered":"

So now that the guests have finished eating, I’ve finished cooking and all the pans have been washed (several times over), all that’s left to do is write-up all the recipes.\u00a0 Before I do that, I’m going to go through the menu and how it all went.\u00a0 Firstly, I decided to add an additional soup course.\u00a0 Three courses didn’t sound like enough work and I had initially planned to make a Langoustine & Coconut Bisque with pan-fried Monkfish.\u00a0 But due to a last-minute let down, I couldn’t get any Langoustine and I spent over an hour searching for an alternative when I should have been cooking.\u00a0 As I also forgot to make my chocolate mousse the previous night, I had thrown my entire plan out by over an hour.\u00a0 In the end I spent a good 11 hours cooking and serving dinner but the result was worth it.\u00a0 As a reminder (and a little plug to each recipe – which I will add with time), here was the full menu:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Amuse Bouche:<\/strong> Lemon Sole & Avocado Ceviche<\/a>. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Starter:<\/strong> Pan fried Scallops & Chorizo in a White Wine Jus with a Wild Rocket and Pomodorino Tomato salad, dressed in English Black Truffle oil<\/a>.<\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Soup:<\/strong> Prawn & Monkfish Coconut Bisque with Chilli and Lemongrass<\/a><\/em>.<\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Main:<\/strong> Pork Roulade filled with Avocado, Baby Fennel, Basil and Orange, on a Polenta Fritter<\/a>, topped with Pepperoni sauce<\/a> and served with a Broccoli Puree and charred Yellow peppers.<\/em>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dessert:<\/strong> Dark Chocolate Mousse topped with a Raspberry and Limoncello Granita<\/a>.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Planning a dinner party menu can be quite a challenge.\u00a0 In this case I was forced to go a certain way because my dishes had to be both lactose and gluten free.\u00a0 So I didn’t need to make up a theme of any kind.\u00a0 I did however, plan out how I wanted my dishes to “flow”.\u00a0 Initially I had planned on going from a seafood dish to surf and turf to a meat dish, but then I added a soup course which was more or less just seafood.\u00a0 But even then, I still wanted to go from subtle, refreshing flavours to big, strong flavours towards the end.\u00a0 I opened with my ceviche, which was light and refreshing (and served it with a glass of Prosecco) and that setup the rest of the meal.\u00a0 I then had the starter, which was sweet, subtle but had a bit of a kick from the salad.\u00a0 Then the soup, which was creamy and a little sweet but it had the asian aromatic flavours as well.\u00a0 Then the main course was a much stronger dish, plenty of aniseed from the fennel but still giving a bit of sweetness along with the salty spice from the pepperoni sauce.\u00a0 Then lastly I had the rich, dark chocolate mousse contrasted with the sharp raspberry and limoncello but it still had a lasting sweetness from the granita’s syrup.\u00a0 I thought the whole menu ended up being nicely balanced.<\/p>\n

The feedback from the guests was good – great in fact (and that’s the most important thing).\u00a0 The only negative I got was the black truffle oil dressing was too strong and that seemed largely down to people not liking black truffles!\u00a0 Personally I think you need a strong dressing to go with wild rocket, otherwise you just won’t taste it. \u00a0 I can live with that as a criticism.\u00a0 The ceviche, pepperoni sauce and granita seemed to get special praise.\u00a0 It’s nice when people pick highlights to a meal, it gives me more confidence than just “everything was good” which sounds like polite code for “well I didn’t hate it but…”.<\/p>\n

Personally I had two issues with the meal.\u00a0 The first was the chorizo in the starter, it was too smoky, too strong.\u00a0 The feedback I got was that it provided a really nice contrast to the scallops.\u00a0 But I felt that they overpowered the scallops and I could still taste them until I got to my soup course, I didn’t really like that lingering smoky aftertaste.\u00a0 It was the first time I had bought this type of chorizo, I normally use one bought in the supermarket or one by a brand called “Bath Pig” (which is really good) but this time I got them from the Limoncello deli and I wasn’t that happy with them.\u00a0 The other issue I had was with the bisque.\u00a0 It wasn’t creamy enough, but to be fair to myself, it wasn’t the dish I had planned and I ended up improvising. I had no complaints about it, but I didn’t feel like it was as good as it probably should have been.\u00a0 Those two minor issues aside, I really enjoyed the meal and I loved making it and coming with the menu.\u00a0 What I thought was going to be a real challenge – the lactose and gluten free requirement, actually helped in the end.\u00a0 The inspiration for my bisque came from being forced to use coconut milk instead of cream.\u00a0 As soon as I had sweet fish meat and coconut, I immediately thought of a Thai green curry.\u00a0 So I had a lot of fun with it, I enjoyed putting the whole meal together and I’m happy to say that my guests enjoyed it as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So now that the guests have finished eating, I’ve finished cooking and all the pans have been washed (several times over), all that’s left to do is write-up all the recipes.\u00a0 Before I do that, I’m going to go through the menu and how it all went.\u00a0 Firstly, I decided to add an additional soup course.\u00a0 Three courses didn’t sound like enough work and I had initially planned to make a Langoustine & Coconut Bisque[…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-muse"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1PTCG-9u","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=588"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1069,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/588\/revisions\/1069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ginnyang.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}