New Year’s Eve 2008

We decided to spend the evening at home with some friends last night and agreed in advance on some quick and easy food that we could all contribute to. By the time they had arrived, our best laid plans had gone completely awry and we ended up with a banquet rather than a buffet. Not that any of us were complaining 🙂

First, we started with a cocktail of our own invention. We scooped the seeds from half a pomegranate into a cocktail shaker, then added some mint leaves and some sugar and shook it with ice. This didn’t make a lot of liquid, which was okay because we only needed a little to pour into the bottom of some Champagne flutes before topping up with Cava. It could have done with a touch more sugar and pomegranate juice probably would have worked just as well as de-seeding a pomegranate ourselves, but it was a good way to start the evening.

As all our dishes had a South East Asian feel to them, it was only right that we started with prawn crackers; freshly fried and deliciously crunchy with a mild chilli kick and a hint of sweetness from the sweet chilli dipping sauce. The pile you see above is less than half of the final amount and I happen to know that there is only one lonely cracker lurking in the kitchen this morning, a fine testament to just how good they were.

Next we moved on to some spring rolls (prepared earlier in the day by our friends), with the crisply fried wrappers providing a pleasing contrast to the filling which included, (amongst other things) noodles, mushrooms, prawns and beansprouts. These were of course were very hot when freshly cooked and I for one almost burnt my mouth a few times being too greedy.

These were followed by sesame prawn toasts. This was the first time we’ve had home-made prawn toasts and they turned out brilliantly; light and crispy rather than the heavy, sludgy, oily examples that are sometimes served in restaurants.

Next was a rather spicy Thai noodle salad from the Blue Elephant cookbook. There isn’t much chilli visible in that picture but it was definitely lurking in there somewhere. It was a well balanced dish though, with the sourness of lemon juice, saltiness of fish sauce and sweetness of sugar in the dressing all coming together to complete it.

Then we had two different grilled skewers which had been marinating in their various pastes all day. Firstly chicken satays, which were also from the Blue Elephant cookbook. The marinade had quite a lot of turmeric in it which turned them very yellow but provided a deep, earthy flavour. Finally, lemongrass beef skewers, which we have cooked several times before. We served these with a peanut dipping sauce which was a success despite our haphazard approach to making the sauce which nearly saw us omit half the ingredients. We also had some sweet chilli sauce, which was just from a bottle rather than home-made but good nonetheless.

So there were no disasters and we really enjoyed everything, especially thanks to our friends for all their help in cooking and preparing some delicious food. It took a while to digest it all over a hard-fought game of Monopoly, which carried on until well after midnight, just interrupted briefly to watch new year come round on television before Kerri eventually took over the board street by street and hotel by hotel.