The dinner was a success.
I spent much of Sunday doing the prep for the dinner and getting all of my mise en place together.
The first dish was the Avocado and Smoked Salmon Salad with a Mango dressing. It was quite simple to put together. Chopped avocado in the juice of one lemon, salt and pepper to taste. This is topped with some smoked salmon and some Baby Dou Miao. The mango dressing is just some mango, lemon juice and some orange juice wizzed.
The second dish was Thai Mussels. I've never made mussels before so this was a bit of gamble for me... it work out really well. The green on the mussels is because they are New Zealand green mussels.
The third course was deep fried zuccini sticks with gazpatcho. The sticks were one of my wife's favorite things when we were in univeristy. I thought this might be a way to make them a little more fancy... She was pleasantly surprised.
The fourth course was tuna two ways. I served raw tuna on a bed of wild rice with a side of wasabi salsa (I made regular salsa and added some wasabi). I had wanted to find a way to introduce wasabi to the dish in a way that didn't leave me with a dollup of green paste on the dish. The other side was seared sesame crusted tuna on a bed of wilted baby spinach and asparagas. I wasn't happy with the seared tuna. I thought I'd over cooked it. It did taste good though. Sorry, I didn't take the photo so you can't see the rice and the salsa has dribbled...
Finally the dessert, created by my son, was three birthday cakes: Chocolate, Vanilla and Lemon. The centre piece of the three is made with hokey pokey toffee.
The champagne went over very well... and was damn tasty. So much so that I didn't open the red I had planned for the last course.