Entertaining at home

Friday night dining out

I've got a huge weekend coming. Busy!! It's Friday and that's my favourite day of the week :)

To cap off my favourite day, we have a booking at Flying Fish Restaurant & Bar tonight. Peter Kuruvita is renowned for his seafood dishes and I'm really looking forward to it. I'll eventually write up a post on fine dining in Sydney soon because all those luscious food photos are really starting to pile up.

If you're a foodie, a gastronomist or into gastronomy then continue reading. If you're just a steak and three veg kind of person, then I'll be boring you to tears.

Saturday dinner preparations


How often do you entertain at home? It requires a lot of planning and in the past, when I haven't planned beforehand and stocked up on some of the ingredients, it becomes a nightmare to prepare on the day.

A few important things I've learnt to prepare:

* Plan the menu
* Plan the timing of the food preparations and the cooking
* Don't try to cook all the dishes on the stove OR try to cook all the dishes in the oven - I've tried to cook three dishes back to back in the oven and it's a nightmare with the temperature either too hot for one dish and needing to wait for the temperature to drop for the second dish
* Have nibblies on hand, so that if you're running late with the dishes, those who are starving can snack
* Try not to test drive all your new recipes or you'll be very stressed
* Have some dishes that you can prepare beforehand and keep in the fridge

I've outlined a menu that I've planned to cook. It's a bring-a-dish do, because it would be torture having to cook for a lot of friends without any help and if it's not bring-a-dish then I don't know who would put their hands up to host.

Nibblies:
* Chips & biscuits
* Crackers with brie or roasted chilli capsicum dip

Mains:
* Leafy salad
* Potato salad (trialing a new recipe so that could be a hit & miss)
* Drunken & bruised salad (an Alvin Quah ex-Masterchef contestant recipe!)
* Baked salmon with teriyaki sauce, ginger and shallots
* Chicken middle cut wings marinated three ways (sweet chilli, pepper & cajun style, honey & soy)
NB: Having chosen two oven baked dishes is not ideal but I'm not in a stir fry mood

Dessert:
* Coconut & butter cake with passionfruit icing (I heart passionfruits)
* Fruit salad
* Mango sorbet

Sunday dinner preparations

I should really take it easy on the weekends... keep telling myself that but then I keep flouting that advice to myself...
I've been meaning to try some of Adam Liaw's recipe (Masterchef winner)...his Angry Bird dish:

* Adam Liaw's Angry Bird Recipe (a Korean dish called Bul Dak)
* Honey, soy and hoi sin sauce pork rib marinade
* White chocolate and berry scones