Sunday Food Fun with Friends

After many months of planning, several delays, the holiday season, a wedding, a play, and whatever other conflict that could come along eight gourmands finally got together for food, fun and fellowship. Yeah! The seed of this dining event started to grow at least some time last summer. Tracy and I were still pretty new to the church when David and his wife Kristin heard that Tracy and I were foodies. David asked if we would be interested in as a group of four couples for an evening of cooking dinner together and enjoying some good food. Tracy and I were onboard with that idea quickly. So like I said, after many delays Tracy & I, David & Kristin, John & Kyle, and Mark & Terrie were finally able to pull off this shindig.

In the planning we decided to give each couple free reign to add to the menu whatever specialty dish they loved to make or if they wanted to try something new. This menu got crazy quick. David wanted to do a pork dish. I was willing to do creme brulee and teach the torching technique. Terrie had never made risotto. Tracy and I had 4 cornish game hens in the freezer and several people had not had them before. Some people just wanted to chop veggies or watch the event. Finally we decided that the menu would be appetizers of bruschetta and shrimp cocktail, Mushroom Wellington Cups, a roasted veggie medley, risotto, a pork loin roll, roasted cornish hens with cherry port glaze and creme brulee for dessert.

The Cast of Characters- The Girls from left to right - Terrie, Kristin, Tracy and Kyle.The Guys from left to right - David, Mark, John & Aaron.

So with eight people in one kitchen it was should have been chaos but it actually went so smoothly. I got to work on deboning and preparing the hens for the roaster while Terrie worked on her bruschetta. She topped toasted slices of Trader Joe's bread with a pesto spread and a tomato bruschetta sauce. Over on the other side of the kitchen David got to work on something I am going to call "the Masterpiece".  He took a pork tenderloin, butterflied it and then pounded the meat into a thin slab.  He topped the pork loin with prosciutto, garlic, spinach and parmesan cheese.David then rolled it together, wrapped the outside in more prosciutto and fresh sage from Kyle's garden.Here we have David tying up the meat with a little help from Tracy and Kyle.David did a 4 Star Chef quality job on this dish. It was phenomenal. The finished Masterpiece was also sponsered by Kosher Salt.Once it baked in the oven it came out beautifully.As the pork roll baked Kyle roasted up a medley of eggplant, squash, zucchini, red onions and garlic.I knew oven space would be at a premium so I brought over our electric roasting oven. Kyle set me up a place in the garage for the roaster and here is how the hens turned out.While the pork, the veggies and the hens all roasted away Terrie got busy working on her risotto. I am not sure that I have ever had risotto and Tracy said that she knew she had not so this was a new experience for many of us. She added asparagus to the risotto and it turned out wonderful. Yeah, we need to get this recipe.David and Kristin got to play with phyllo dough and make Mushroom Wellington Cups. This was a dish I had not ever had before either.Once these cups were done there was some left over phyllo dough. Since we did not want it to go to waste Tracy and David decided to make another dessert. They took the dough, some cinnamon sugar and shaved chocolate and made a quick pastry.Now that everything was cooked it was time to fix plates and sit at the dinner table. Kyle had such a beautiful setting.

I will cover the creme brulee dessert in another post in a few days.  Also, I have asked the other cooks to send me the recipes and comments on their dishes.  As we receive them they will be published too.

So in all this turned out to be a 5 hour afternoon event that was just the best time with lots of left overs. I do not think anyone was dissatisfied with any part of the meal. Yup, Eight Happy Bellies.

Comments

[David Naylor]

Thanks, Aaron - loved the day, but next time, let's put that creme brulee in cereal bowls...!

[Kristin Naylor]

Amazing food, lots of laughter and sweet friends! So much fun! Thank you for recording our kitchen adventure. I am a big fan of you two happy bellies and so glad to be one of the eight!