Another dinner party

This weekend I hosted another dinner party with a couple of new flavors. If there was a theme it would be Asian flavors and rectangles. I recently read that square/rectangular things look better on round plates (which are all I have)...

For a starter, I made a bean sprout salad with a peanut-coconut vinaigrette, paired with some thin slices of deep fried tofu and hoisin sauce. With coconut I guess it is not "fruitless", but recent experiments seem to show that I can eat a moderate amount of unsweetened coconut. Anyway, I think the vinaigrette needs to be a bit stronger because of the high water content of bean sprouts (which dilutes the flavor somewhat). Still, I think it was not bad. Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture. The salad was from the "Cook Like a Chef" show, but the pairing with the tofu was my own idea. The tofu were squares/rectangles.

For the main course, I once again made the broiled sea bass marinated in miso, served with a miso foam. Again, it was great, and this time I pan-seared the skin first to get a somewhat crispier result. I wonder if the best approach is to simply deep-fry the skin peking duck style (as I once saw Morimoto did on Iron Chef America) but that may be hard to manage at home. I also paired it with some bok choy braised in chicken stock, and a ginger-green onion risotto cake. Both the fish and the risotto cake were rectangular. The presentation is way better than the last time I did this in Waterloo, but it still needs a lot of work, I think. I wasn't sure how to put them together without them touching each other too much. Particularly I didn't want the miso sauce to touch the other ingredients, and I was somewhat concerned that the bok choy would ruin the crispy texture of the risotto cake. At the end the taste was great but I am not completely happy with the way the bok choy is not really showing under the cakes (the cakes were too large or the bok choy were too small).



For dessert, I put together the chocolate terrine with a five spice creme anglaise. This time I reduced the amount of egg whites compared to last time and the result was even better: it became a bit denser and has a smoother texture. I also added chili flakes into the chocolate and it worked out well.



So overall, I think it was a pretty good dinner. But there is always room for improvement.