This year we decided to host a Dine at Mine. Dine at Mine is an event that helps support Camp Quality which is a charity that helps kids with cancer and their families to have a happy and fulfilling life. The idea around the event is that you invite friends over to your house for dinner and they donate the money they would have spent going out to Camp Quality. The whole event was a lot of fun we had to design our menu and decide on what to make and then do some trials and then be ready for the big show on the 7th of September (election day). We ended up having 14 people at our dinner and made a whopping $730 for Camp Quality.
We decided to do a five course meal comprised of recipes that we love but that we had modified slightly. Below is the menu from our dinner. Appetisers: Deep fried feta stuffed olives, deep fried anchovy stuffed olives, arancini balls with napolitana sauce, bell peppers stuffed with feta, asparagus with garlic aioli. Entree:Homemade chicken, spinach and ricotta ravioli in a lemon, chilli sauce. Consomme: Chicken consomme. Main: Prosciutto wrapped beef scotch fillet with mushroom ragout and mashed potatoes. Sorbet: Lemon and basil sorbet. Dessert: Macaron delice. Tea, coffee and petit fours.
Mr T and I spent the weeks before the dinner getting things ready such as the sorbet which could be made well in advance and the ravioli which we froze a couple of weeks before and then it was finally the day. We had set up the tables the day before so that we could focus on the food during the day.
The table all set up and ready to go.
When it was just about time to start getting the appetisers ready, my deep fryer decided to blow up and take out the electricity on one side of the house. It left me with a charred finger and a bit shaken up but the guests were arriving thick and fast so we had to make other arrangements and decided to fry everything in pots on the stove which is not as quick as using a deep fryer but it definitely did the trick. The deep fried olives were inspired by something similar we had eaten out at a restaurant called Delissio. The arancini balls were made from our favourite risotto (pumpkin, bacon and mushroom risotto) and the aparagus and peppers were just to have a bit of something fresh on the table. I will post the recipe for the arancini balls at a later date- they were so good with a nice piece of melted mozarella in the centre! Yum!
Mr T and I getting the appetizers ready.
The entree was a pasta dish inspired by a recipe that my ex-housemate (Miss H) taught me- lemon, chilli chicken pasta. This pasta is delicious and in my experience, most people like it. It is tart, spicy and really light. I wanted to use this idea and do it a bit differently so, I decided to make it into a ravioli dish. I put the chicken and spinach into the ravioli with some ricotta and left the zucchini and broccoli in the lemon, chilli sauce and in my book, it turned out great.
Lemon, chilli chicken ravioli.(Recipe here)
Next was a consomme which is something that Mr T had learnt during his chef's apprenticeship. You first make a stock and then you clarify it with egg whites and add extra flavour with mince and veggies. The main aim with this dish is for it to be clear and boy did Mr T do a great job. I find this soup amazing as it is so full of flavour yet it is such a clear soup. It is a delicate but delicious cleanser. Mr T has promised me a guest post on the recipe for this one so stay tuned.
Consomme.
The main was prosciutto wrapped scotch fillet with mushroom ragout and mashed potatoes. We chose to do the scotch fillet as we both love our steak. The mushroom ragout is a dish that we both adore, it has Swiss brown mushrooms, field mushrooms and button mushrooms in it so it is chunky and so full of delicious mushroom flavour. This time, upon suggestion from my friend Ms H, we put it in the slow cooker to keep it warm for the night- such a great idea. For the Scotch fillet, I first rolled it in finely chopped rosemary and thyme (my favourite herb) and seasoned with salt and pepper. I then laid out the thinly sliced proscuitto with each slice overlapping the next until the row was long enough to wrap the whole fillet. Next I tied it with string and baked it in the oven. Unfortunately it was ready well before we were so we had to serve it a bit over medium rare. This dish is the only dish that we had not practiced prior to the evening what with it being huge and the piece of meat being worth $70 on it's own. The flavours still turned out fine and meat was still juicy so it was not a complete failure.
Me checking the internal temperature of the meat (the whole thing was huge!!)
The final dish (finished with some broccolini and crispy prosciutto).
For our friend who does not eat beef, we made chicken en papillotte which is chicken breast that is wrapped in baking paper with white wine and vegetables so that it steams itself. The chicken ends up moist and flavourful- a very easy, healthy and delicious dish.
The exciting part of the chicken en papilotte is opening the parcel to see what's inside.
The next cleanser was a lemon and basil sorbet- gosh was it good. The basil just added the extra depth to this sorbet, taking the edge off the sourness from the lemon and adding some great undertones. Unfortunately, I have no photos of this dish to show you but believe me, it was yummy!
Now what you have all been waiting for.....DESSERT!! I made a macaron delice which means macaron delight. This dish was inspired by a dish we tasted at the "A Taste in Time" dinner we had attended earlier in the year with the exceptions that it had mango and raspberry rather that lychee inside and we served ours with a white chocolate, raspberry crunch rather than freeze dried roses, raspberries and dark chocolate. It was a two large macaron shells sandwiching white chocolate mouse filled with raspberry coulis and mango gel with white chocolate and raspberry crunch on the side. As you get to the middle of the mousse, you reach the coulis and gel which add extra deliciousness to the dish. The crunch was an extra side that added a bit of texture.
Macaron Delice.
Finally we had tea, coffee and petit fours. The petit fours consisted of chocolate dipped cream cheese mints and palmiers neither of which were photographed on the night. The palmiers are the easiest things to make, you just get packaged puff pastry, sprinkle it with cinnamon sugar and then roll each edge of the puff pastry into the middle, slice it and cook in the oven at 180 oC until browned. Seriously, try it- you know you want to! They are so crunchy and sweet and moreish. Mr T and I polished off the leftovers in no time the next day.
All in all, I think our dinner was a success and everyone had a great time (watching the election coverage). Surprisingly enough, there were very little left overs- only a little sorbet, some palmiers and some cream cheese mints so we must have done a good job. Can't wait to do it all again next year!
If you are interested in hosting you own dine at mine next year (during September) you can visit the Dine at Mine website to register. Thanks to Dr. Kenny for being our photographer on the night, it was much appreciated.
Have/would you ever catered for a lot of people?
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