Dinner Party

I didn't have the energy to do a wine tasting night this month, so I scaled it back and had a dinner party with a few friends. Or at least, I thought I was scaling back the effort. Instead, I took the opportunity of doing a more complicated menu since I was only cooking for 6 people and everyone else was bringing the wine. I found the entire day so enjoyable, actually. From doing my errands on the Wimbledon High Street (dry cleaning, charity shop, post office, library) to actually finding *every*thing on my shopping list except for the scallops and ribs from the local Tesco Express to spending 3 hours doing cooking and prep before everyone got here - it was a perfect way to spend a Saturday. And of course, then we had a party!

Menu:

• Smoked salmon with capers
• Green salad with oranges, shallots and avocado
• Sticky braised ribs and lamb chops with seared scallops in an orange saffron sauce
• Green beans with cilantro and garlic
• Sauteed potatoes with rosemary
• Lemon custard (it was sort of like a light fluffy cake)
• Dark chocolate

To drink we had two bottles of champagne with the salmon, and a variety of reds with the meal (a Rhone, a Bordeaux, a Beaujolais and a Burgundy). Some things turned out better than I expected (the lemon custard) and some things weren't as good (the potatoes tasted fine but I ended up getting them all mashed up instead of staying in disk shapes), but in the end, I think it was a success. As usual, I had everything cleaned up before going to bed and then the daylight savings time kicked in, so instead of being 1am it was magically 2am - definitely time to hit the sack.