Saturday 25 February 2012

Saturday night meal - Feb 25th


Another flavour experimenting meal:

Pre dinner nibbles:

1. Potato crisps with Brie gel, vanilla infused olive oil and ground coffee.
This was good.  I did it last week but used Pringles then.  They allowed a more uniform presentation.  Chips are a bit hit or miss at far as size and shape goes.

2. Beetroot chips with Brie gel, mashed walnuts and fresh fig.
Really nice but hindered a bit but the beet root chips - they were all very small.

Starter

Had eight for dinner so opted not to do the poached eggs but still wanted to do the asparagus and liquorice.  So did asparagus, smoked salmon, cream cheese and liquorice, based on the fact that dill is often paired with salmon and has aniseed flavours.  Worked well.

Main:

Chicken and strawberry salad.  Successively layered on the plate: baby spinach, sliced avocado, sliced bbq-ed chicken (still warm), sliced strawberries, finely sliced celery, finely diced red onion.  Dressed with a strawberry vinagrette.

Dessert:

Homemade gingerbread, fresh yellow nectarines, rum sauce, vanilla ice-cream.
One of the guests brought a very pleasant muscat that went very well with the dessert.

With coffee:

Dark chocolate and cumin truffles.  (What sort of fool picks a 38deg day to make truffles?  Oh.)

Having a lot of fun playing with the flavour matching thing at the moment.
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9 comments:

  1. Lee, I swear you're turning into Heston. What is brie gel? I can't eat Pringles, they give me a headache, hate to think what's in them.. ;-)

    Intriguing menu, I especially like the sound of the chicken and strawberry salad...

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  2. First time finding Brie gel here..not that I'm interested to find out..hehe. Now you'll be a good Masterchef contestant, lee..you and your experiment in the kitchen.

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  3. What is brie gel? When I Google it I get Briegel - no relation.

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  4. Bill: the link to the recipe is above but basically Brie, Milk & Agar.

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  5. well, if one can't eat pringles, there's always a funner, more tasty treat.
    Buy the flour tortillas at the grocers, cut them into comfortable sizes (probably practice on a couple) fill a good, deep skillet half up with oil or lard, heat till the (seriously, just PLAY with the first few...don't dump the whole batch in) first 2" square is completely surrounded by a light bubbling. JUST before they brown, and they finish browning while drying.
    Tasty, easy, and makes kelloggs really mad that we create our own food snacks.
    HA!
    win-win!

    say...you never did say which picture you showed Mum.
    One I painted?
    or the one of me?
    I found that small portraits of my face taped to the closet trim keeps mice away.

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  6. Boneman: It was a picture of you. From memory you were in a red checked shirt, with painting stuff in the background. No mice.

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  7. Boneman 2: I like the idea of the fried tortilla chips. I'm no fan of Pringles, it was just that they were uniform in shape. The tortilla angle gives even better shape control.

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