August Dinner Recap

One of our best dinner clubs, "hands down", well, except for the epic fail on dessert, but we will get to that later!

Our hostess, Grapes, set an elegant table, with chopsticks and handmade coasters personalized in Japanese!

Paprika started us off with shots of sake, because when at a Japanese dinner....!  Consensus: Yu-ki!

Her appetizer was lettuce rolls; a hands-on appetizer as we assembled them on site: Lettuce filled with rice noodles, pork or tofu filling and toasted sesame seeds.

Rice Noodles

Tofu Filling

Pork Filling

Final Product

 Her wine was a white blend called Barrel 27 - "Each bottle of this wine represents a dream realized by friends"

Saucy labored through a Miso soup, that was fantastic!  With bits of tofu, seaweed and green onions.

"Hand" painting from China

Her wine of choice was a Malbec

Grapes, our hostess, a sushi lover in her own right, wanted to Master the art of rolling sushi.  She did prep our stations for us by taking on the arduous task of spreading the VERY sticky rice on the seaweed papers.

 We then decided if we wanted to roll them rice in or rice out and laid out our veggies of choice (carrot sticks, carrot pieces, cucumbers, avocado)

And ROLLED!  Once rolled we secured the rolls with the bamboo mats and then sliced the rolls in pieces.  They had distinct looks based on the seaweed paper being on the inside or outside and how tightly we used the bamboo.

With sides of pickled ginger, wasabi and soy sauce - the sushi was just as good, or better than what you find at a local Japanese restaurant!!

Grapes

Saucy

Couscous

Paprika

Pickled Ginger and Wasabi Paste

Before partaking in dessert we tried our hand at origami!!

Grape's Boat

Paprika First Fold

Saucy Second Fold

One more fold.....

Final product - Butterflies!!!

Saucy's Ghost!

 Dinner was going so well and then came Couscous' dessert!  Here is what the Daifuku (Mochi with Sweetened red bean paste) was suppose to look like:

Here is Couscous version: 

It started with beans that wouldn't mash and a glutinous dough that was more like silly putty than an "angel-soft marshmallowy texture" as promised. This was our first inedible dish in all the years of dinner club.

It was more reminiscent of The BLOB - Run for your lives!

Fortunately, she had plans B and C in place!

Plan B:  Homemade Green Tea Ice Cream

Plan C:  Packaged Japanese Cookies

An entertaining, educational and filling dinner!  Catch us next month when it's Mangia, Mangia Mangia!

AUGUST DINNER CLUB  W. I. T.

Upcoming Dinner: August

Hostess:  Grapes

Theme: Japanese

July Dinner Club Recap

I know you are all "ears" to hear about our corny dinner this month!

The evening started with a trip down memory lane...Grapes was cleaning out her photo collection, and came across this gem from her bachelorette party 10 years ago!  Now that's a  corn-fed boy!

We had a field day at Couscous' crib, with her fun summer dishes.

Grapes got the evening off to a tasty start with peppers (jalopeno and sweet reds) stuffed with cornbread  and wrapped with bacon (or unwrapped for the vegetarians!)

And a bottle of  Dialed In red wine, because the label looked like the end of a corn cob??   You be the judge.

 Couscous' culinary contribution consisted of buttercrust corn pie with fresh tomato salsa. A saltine cracker crust that was scrumptious!

Paprika created her own side dish by combining three different recipes for a delicious rice salad with black beans, corn (roasted over an open camp fire!), peppers and a vinaigrette.

Her wine contribution was a refreshing sauvignon blanc from Nobilo.

No one had a batch of corn based wine ready, but there was talk of heading down to West Virginia to sample some Apple Pie Moonshine!

Saucy completed our corn fest with a spice cake made with creamed corn and a caramel icing.  Amaizeing! and she served it in theme appropriate dishes - Corn Cob plates!!

Check back soon for details on our next dinner club!  We are on a roll!!!

JULY DINNER CLUB W.I.T.

Upcoming Dinner:  July

Hostess:  Couscous

Ingredient:  Corn