Dinner Party!

Last night I hosted my first dinner part at my new flat! Had a lot of fun doing it, and gained a new appreciation for how long it take to pull these things together!!

table all ready!

The Menu:
To Start: Spicy Cheese Sticks paired with Gonzalez Byass Oloroso sherry
Main: Satay Chicken skewers served with rice, peas, a spicy peanut sauce and tadzhik, paired with a BC wine - Little Straw's 2009 Sauvignon Blanc
Desert: Apple Turnovers and mint tea.

Spicy cheese sticks & sherry

 I have previously posted on how to make the cheese sticks. The only alteration was that I added about a teaspoon of cayenne pepper, and that give them quite a kick. Next time I plan to use some jalapeno cheese for another option.   I chose sherry as the pairing drink due to the oloroso sweetness, as a nice counter to the spice... delicious!

2 day marinade

Both the Satay marinade and the Peanut sauce are recipes from my Dad, and I am not to divulge their secrets. I will post photos though!

The Sauvignon Blanc was a really good pairing with the spice. Wasn't too sweet, but also not overly dry. Was nice on it's own, but a really good mix with the meal. 

I made both the marinade and sauce a few days early, and upon taste-testing I was a bit concerned how spicy they were. After speaking with some co-workers I resolved to make a cooling sauce to assist with the menu. I first looked for the Indonesian 'raita' but decided on a tadziki as I had more the ingredients.

Tadziki

Evidence

8 oz plain yoghurt
1 cucumber
1 tbsp fresh dill
2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 lemon, juiced
some salt & pepper. 
garlic to taste

Method:  Peel the cucumber. Add all ingredients into food processor, blend.
Thoughts: this was very runny. I think making it with greek yoghurt will help, and perhaps 'shredding' the cucumber with a cheese grater, and then mixing it all together by hand may be a new way to go.  Tastes really good though!

Apple mush turnovers

The apple turnovers worked far better than I'd anticipated and I was really pleased with them.  I used store-bought puff pastry as I was running out of time and, frankly, have never made pastry before!
The filling was a bit of a hodge-podge.  I had the leftover apple 'mush' from my apple post (see previous entry) and I wanted to use it up.  I put it on the stove and reduced it down to an apple sauce, and then followed a recipe I found online.

I added this all to the mush:
1 cup brown sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp corn starch (first mixed with 1 tbsp cold water).

Final product

It needed some texture, so I took my final fresh picked apple, peeled, cored and sauteed in butter, to the mix, and let it cook enough to get a little soft.   I then rolled out the puff pastry, cut into squares and dolloped some of the mush into the center of each square, joining the corners to create little triangles.  This was a more difficult process than anticipated, and they didn't look very professional, but that's ok.

Once they'd cooled I made a drizzle icing out of some icing sugar, milk and vanilla. It was rather yummy!  I served these with mint tea.

All in all, I'm rather pleased with the outcome.