Dinner with Friends-7/20/2024

After living in Shanghai for a year and a half and traveling mostly to Asia for over two months, we are finally back home.  I have not cooked for our friends in a while so  today it is a very good occasion to have all of us together over a fancy home cooked meal.

Table is set up.

Table overview.

Summer is in the air and my tablescape is representing the lust and sunny weather of California.

I don't have a printer anymore so I had to hand write all the name tags.

I have chosen to put a bunch of small vases in the center of the table with colorful flowers.

Green, Blue, and yellow are the colors I picked to decorate the table.

The idea is to have a cheerful tablescape and I think I was able to achieve the vibe with the decorations.

Tonight we are having 16 people over for dinner.  It has been so long that we all sat down at the same table for dinner.

Let's start dinner!  The first course is a duo of appetizers.

Hamachi in a ponzu honey ginger sauce with radish and avocado salsa served together with a pan fried Mochi, bacon, nori sheet.

I am pairing a cold and hot dish together.  Both dishes are very flavorful and a great start for a meal.

Cheers to a long lasting friendship!

Champagne to celebrate our return.

The second course is a corn soup with sautéed shrimps, homemade croutons, and charred corn.

Corn are at their peaks in the summer and they are so sweet.  The soup was light, sweet, creamy and so delicious.

The third course is a ratatouille, prosciutto, and boiled egg.

Ratatouille is the ultimate summer dish where eggplants, zucchini, and tomatoes are abundant and flavorful.  We all love this dish.

The fourth course is all about comfort with a bowl of spaghetti in a tomato sauce, sautéed eggplant, roasted cherry tomatoes, spicy Italian sausage and lots of basil.

Simply delicious and satisfying.

For the fifth course there are 2 choices:  The first choice is a grilled rib eye with green peppercorn sauce, sun ripen tomatoes, and roasted cauliflowers.

The second choice is a Cornish hen marinated in a honey soy sauce served with sun ripen tomatoes, and roasted cauliflowers.

I used the same 2 side dishes for both dish so the difference is the protein which is either the ribeye or Cornish hen.

Desserts.

On the left is a Galette des rois (King's cake) made with puff pastry and almond filling.  On the right is a homemade assorted fruit tart with a coconut creme patissiere.

The 3rd dessert is an almond cherry clafouti.

We met Tracy and Steven while travelling to Laos and found out that they were also living in Shanghai.  The funny thing is they also moved back to the U.S. a few months after we left Shanghai, and they also live in the bay area.   It was a pleasure to have them over and reminisce about our time in Shanghai.

Very nice to be able to see both of them here in California.

Tracy, Cindy, and I.

Next... Behind the scene

Filed under: Dinner Parties