It has been some time since we had friends over for a nice dinner. After some planning, we finally managed to fix a date where our three lovely couple friends could join us. I spent some time pondering over the dinner menu, and finally came up with the following. It’s a mixture of different kinds of cuisines really. A little bit of spanish, a little western, but mostly french.
For appetiser, we decided to serve up some lovely Jambon Iberico that we had received from a lovely lady we stayed with in France. Jambon iberico comes from the black Iberian Pig. It is very expensive and hence not widely available, especially in Singapore. The generosity of our friend in France will always be remembered. We served the Iberico ham with some very sweet and juicy melon and baby spinach.
Next up for soup, we had Chorizo and potato soup. This was not very successful as we could not find Kale here. I am very sure Chinese Kale would not have worked for the recipe. Anyway, with a few tweeks from the husband (he made this), the soup still turned out very nice.
The main course was boeuf bourguignon, served with tri-pepper butter rice and french beans. This recipe was taken from Julia Child’s book – Mastering the art of french cooking. Even though the recipe was rather time-consuming, and involved a fair number of steps, the results were very rewarding. A piece of advice? Use a good red wine. You will not regret it.
And of course, who can forget dessert? Endings must always be sweet. I decided on a warm chocolate tart from Pierre Herme’s book – Desserts. Though the original recipe called for bananas, I decided to use raspberries instead. I think the tartness of the raspberry compliments the bittersweet chocolate very well. And of course, as with all desserts made from Pierre Herme recipes, there were no leftovers.
