Wednesday, April 08, 2009

Faux Asian Dinner Party

L and I have been throwing dinner parties. We found a beef tenderloin recipe the other day with a wasabi-garlic cream sauce that got our imagination going. From there it was pretty short jump to a quasi-Asian theme.

We started with some summer rolls: carrots, raw beets, cilantro, mint, cellophane noodles all rolled together. They had a sauce recipe that was really close to the one we were planning to use for the salad, so we actually just quadrupled that one and used it for everything.

Our appetizer was Scallops with Asian Lime Chile Sauce. We made it with bay scallops (the recipe calls for sea scallops, which I've done before and which sear better) which was really nice served over greens with the sauce used as a vinaigrette.

We did the Tenderloin with Garlic/Green Curry Cream Sauce, which was fantastic (if I do say so myself - though the guests were also wildly enthusiastic about the meat -- key to note that the epicurious recipe actually seems to be missing a line or two, so I checked another recipe and then accidentally forgot to turn the meat down when I was supposed to, so my cooking direction became: Preheat to 475, cook for 15 min, leave in 15-20 min until meat thermometer is 130, let rest for 10 min, slice and serve (and microwave the piece for your friend who doesn't like it pink)). I really loved the sauce. It was amazing. The mushroom risotto was a little drier than I would have liked (we used the leek risotto recipe from last time, but it just didn't quite work as well).

We had made gougeres last time and it made me want to make profiterols - but the classic flavor didn't seem to work with the faux asian theme, so we mixed it up. We made the cream puffs/pâte à choux from this recipe (it's a little scary when you try to quickly add the flour while heating, but it's actually really easy: Tropical Profiterols), then used mango and raspberry and coconut sorbets (one scoop of each/3 puffs each person) and offered a pineapple sauce (that was okay - I didn't find a great recipe, so I I took a can of crushed pineapple in juice, heated it with 2T of sugar (not sure that was really necessary, but one of the recipes added 3/4c of sugar), 1 tsp of vanilla, and then 2 large limes (we might have needed less if we had no sugar).

We did the first two courses with Reislings - perfect. And then did the meat with the Karl Lawrence 2000 cab that I've had sitting here for ages - it was awesome!

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