Wednesday, January 06, 2010

Lightly Asian birthday dinner


























































































This was really lovely. Light, delicate flavours, great company, simple quality food.
Ginger fried prawns
Whole steamed coral trout with soy, ginger and shallots
Jasmine rice
Thai salad with peanut chilli dressing
Raspberry lime pavlova
The pav was interesting. See how tall and round it is? Yeah, it's basically hollow. I thought the deadweight of the cream and berries would implode it. Originally I made another pav, one whose recipe I followed off the interweb and mindlessly set the oven to the temperature stated. Forty minutes later, I smelt brown. The oven was too high, too soon, and the outside was caramelised and crispy. Still good, but NOT GOOD ENOUGH. So I cried for a while and went through the seven stages of grief in about twenty minutes, then went for Attempt 2. This one was tall, smooth and completely white in an unashamedly Aryan dessert mindset. The toppings were inspired by something in last weekend's paper which I forgot to keep. Whip some cream and then smash a punnet of raspberries through it: pile on pavlova. Sprinkle more fresh raspberries on and then grate some lime zest, and dust with icing sugar.
Originally I wanted to also add lychees (for the Asian theme) but they were grey and ugly against the whiteness. Also wanted to add fresh pink rose petals and intended to purloin them from next door's rose garden, but she must have read my mind because all the roses were cut when it was fence-sneaking time.
The candles are set into balls of tinted fondant around the edge of the platter.
The sharpness of the berries and lime, the unsweetened cream and the melting shell-like pavlova all combined beautifully. It was said that this was the best pav/fruit combo EVER. Perhaps I agree.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I LOVE the look of this! You make it sound so easy, but I am not sure if it really is.... You are definitely inspiring me.