THE FIRST DINNER PARTY

Our weekend was nice. We spent the whole weekend cooking and grocery shopping. On Friday night, Lila just returned from Portugal and Karl found out that his Sunday Singapore trip was cancelled. We decided to host a party to thank our key friends that helped us get established here. It was mega late notice (we didn’t send out the e-mail invite until after 7pm on Friday night). We decided to do a BBQ / wine party. We didn’t really have an recipes in mind and Karl thought he’d pull some ideas from our family website. However when we discovered the site was being renovated on Saturday morning, we decided to look through the Bobby Flay cookbook (Christmas present from mom) for ideas. We made the following menu:

• APPETIZERS: Lila’s family fried eggplant salad, Lila’s humus w/ various vegetables, Cheese & crackers imported from Germany (by Lila on Friday afternoon due to a plane transfer in Frankfurt), Grilled large shrimp tossed in a red chili vinaigrette
• MAIN: Sixteen spice chicken served w/ roasted red pepper sauce and sweet cilantro / spinach pesto, Mashed potatoes w/ pesto folded in, Chopped romaine lettuce & three bean salad served with a mustard vinaigrette, Mexican grilled corn salad, and homemade sundried tomato focaccia bread
• DESSERT: Homemade tapioca based dessert pudding with a cooked blueberry & mango topping.

Our friends added some hot/fresh bbq beef jerky (for an appetizer), two types of chocolate cakes, and some egg custard tarts. Throughout the meal we served three different CA white wines, three different CA red wines, and two bottles of French sparkling wine.
To build this feast, it took us stops at four separate grocery stores to gather all the ingredients. However even with all our searching (and pocket translation dictionary) we didn’t find things like fresh pumpkin seeds, onion powder, habanera peppers, tomatillos, or corn tortillas. I guess they don’t have many Mexican dishes / cooks here. We then spent most of Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning prepping all the sauces and raw ingredients. It was extremely relaxing for both Lila and I to spend the day in the kitchen.

The apartment looked great & the party turned out great! Fourteen of our friends were able to join the party. We enjoyed all the conversations – especially the ones that started, "Have you seen …. In Shanghai yet" It really meant a lot to us to be able to thank our co-workers and friends for all the help they’ve give us.