September Dinner Recap

Paprika hosted dinner club this month in a new location - the Masonic Village!

so that our special guest, Pickles could join us!  Here is her homemade batch she inspired!

The dinner club gals made a "dinner you couldn't refuse!!" 

  Mangia Mangia!

Thanks to Pickles for reserving the community kitchen and her table layout and decorations!

 

Saucy started us off with delectable breaded parmesan zucchini sticks dipped in Paprika's doctored sauce - gave it a little zing!

We raised of glass of Paprika's wine selection - Salute!!

And enjoyed her main course of zucchini pancakes and Eggplant Parmesan!  Her first time with the versatile, but tricky purple plant and she excelled!

Zucchini Pancakes

Eggplant Parmesan

Couscous' Italian staples of Greens and Beans and Garlic Bread accompanied the main course!

And to go with the beans she brought along.....

 a nice Chianti!

Grapes topped off the evening with a fabulous tiramisu cake, though not quite traditional tiramisu - she substituted Bailey's for Kahlua which put a yummy spin on the dessert of the Old Country so even anti-java Saucy enjoyed it!

Dinner was delizioso!  Though we may not be invited back to the Village.
While we weren't the cause of the leak, I swear, we did discover it and did our best to clean it up, but I'm pretty sure this was our first and last time there!

Looks like they'll have to call in "Sam the Plumber"!

Simone Rizzo "Sam" DeCavalcante 

Check in next month when we take on the Mother of all Gourds!

SEPTEMBER DINNER CLUB W.I.T.

Upcoming Dinner:  September

Hostess:  Paprika

Whatever You Want:  Italian

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