We had three lovely couples at our place for dinner the other night. I was racking my brains as to what to cook for a party of eight and decided that the theme for the night shall be “comfort food”. It was a fairly warm night, which was a shame because the menu would have been terrific if it had been a nice cool evening.

We began the meal with some lovely mushroom soup prepared by my hubby. The soup consisted of a mix of brown and white button mushrooms and portabellos. It was rich and creamy, and the added touch of sour cream was just about perfect. The mains were homely comfort food – Shepherd’s Pie and Ratatouile. I like to make my Shepherd’s Pie filling with a mix of minced pork and beef. I feel that it gives extra flavour. The mash potato was crisp on the top but soft and fluffy inside. The key to good mash is good potatoes with a generous dose of butter and milk.

The other main is ratatouille, made using Julia Child’s recipe. I’ve done ratatouille a couple of times before, but never using this recipe. Her recipe is rather tedious, as it calls from frequent basting of the vegetables in their liquids. The result however, was well worth the effort. The vegetables were full of complex flavours. Some of our friends don’t typically enjoy the vegetables that go into ratatouille (eggplant, zucchini). Nonetheless, they found this dish very tasty.

By the end of the meal, everyone was stuffed. However, no meal is complete without dessert. For dessert, I chose something that I could prepare ahead – Pierre Herme’s Tri-Creme. The dessert is essentially three layers of cream. The base layer is a coffee creme brulee, without the caramel topping. In the middle we have rich chocolate cream made with Valrhona 64% chocolate. The freshly whipped cream at the top helps to balance out the richness of the dessert. As with all of Pierre Herme’s recipes, this one was a sure winner.

I found a recipe on Epicurious that had rather good reviews and decided to try it out. Moisture, I read, is an enemy of gnocchi and hence the potatoes need to be baked, not boiled. How troublesome! Determined to succeed on my first try, I decided to take no chances. Four potatoes went into the oven for one hour. Next, I had to rice the potatoes. I didn’t have a fanciful ricer (those that looked like a giant garlic press) and so did it using a old-fashioned ricer consisting of a sieve like metal plate and a handle. After ricing, the potatoes had to be spread out and cooled till room temperature before it can be mixed and made into a dough. Here’s what the gnocchi looked after they were rolled and cut.

I made a pork mushroom ragu to go with the gnocchi. The tomato based sauce was extremely flavourful, thanks to the black pig ham, Italian sausages, porcini, white wine and a whole load of other stuff. A very satisfying meal indeed.

I cooked and served this dish in a claypot for extra flavour. In fact, this would make for a great one dish meal when served with white rice. The gravy was simply delicious. Of course, since my mom was over for dinner, I couldn’t just serve this. We had this yummy chicken with some stir fried vegetables, and a simple steamed egg with dried scallops. The soup of the day was sharks fin melon soup. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photograph of this one.

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.

Personally, I’ve never been to Jumbo, and so was taken aback to see so many customers that weekday night. Indeed, the restaurant was packed! My hopes at finding good food that night was elevated. We went for a set dinner package for 4 people, so that we could try a variety of things. We were not disappointed. Here are some of the dishes we ordered.

The mixed platter, featuring seasoned jelly fish, braised duck with cucumber and mango salad, seafood rolls and fried special beancurd was a good start to our meal. The jelly fish was tangy and spicy, whetting our appetite.

Next up, steamed drunken prawns. They were so sweet and succulent! Absolutely lovely.

We had to have some vegetables for a balanced meal and this was surprisingly good. A common dish, but nicely done.

The chilli crab was the highlight of our dinner. It was the very reason why we were even there in the first place! The crab was fresh, succulent and sweet. The chilli gravy really complemented the crabs well. Served with fried and steamed mantou buns, these were really fulfilling.

Location: Jumbo Seafood, Blk 11 Dempsey Road #01-16

This mozzarella cheese is an absolute favourite among us. It is different from the usual Caprese that most Italian restaurants serve. This is hand braided buffalo mozzarella, freshly imported from Naples, Italy. The taste is fantastic, if you are a cheese fan, of course.

This antipasti is very appetising and really whets your appetite. The vongole is fresh, sweet and succulent. The white wine tomato sauce complements the vongole totally.

This is one of our house favourites. The squid ink crab meat pasta. I don’t recall a time at the restaurant when this was not one of our orders. If you enjoy seafood pasta, you have got to try this. The handmade squid ink pasta retains some resistance when you bite into it. Flavoured by the chunky crab meat in a tomato based seafood sauce, the taste is heavenly. Enough said.

This was one of their specials of the day and so we decided to try it. The pasta tasted typical, but the meatballs were really good.

How can we forget their wood fired pizzas? This one has a thin and crisp crust. The fillings were rich but accompanied with the rucola and freshly shaved parmesan, the taste was delightful. J had many slices of this.

Check out the restaurant at 11 Jalan Bingka, Mayfair Park.

With the steaks grilling, we turned our attention to the lobsters. They looked juicy and succulent, all ready to be eaten. A lovely orange red with succulent white flesh spilling out of them, they were almost picture perfect. Well, maybe food perfect.

When they emerged from the grill, we were not disappointed. The meat was thick and oozing with natural sweetness. And oh, the lobster roe? It was fragrant and had the most complex flavour. This was the way fresh seafood should be eaten. With little or no seasoning, one could almost taste the ocean.

Home-styled surf and turf. Don’t you wish you were there?

Seeing that we still had plenty of sausages left, and some Hokkaido frozen scallops, he decided that an aglio olio was in place. Even though, in his rush to serve dinner, he had forgotten to add the salt, the saltiness of the sausage, together with a sprinkling of freshly ground parmesan cheese more than made up for the taste. All in all, it was a very satisfying, home-cooked meal.