Dinner

It's been a very long time since we hosted a fancy dinner.
For the first course, we wanted to try making panko crusted poached eggs that we had at Catch (Calgary). We decided to pair it with home made potato gnocchi, porcini and oyster mushrooms, and a little bit of truffle oil. The pairing worked brilliantly.

After the first course we served a tomato cucumber sorbet. For some reason my ice cream machine didn't work very well making the sorbet, and there were chunks of ice after trying to do it manually. The flavor was pretty good, but the texture needed work.
For the main course, it was roasted halibut marinated in miso-mirin, served on top of stewed daikon and in a chicken ginger consomme. We used chicken consomme because Laura needs to practice it for her weekly classes. It was my first time cooking halibut, and it was slightly overcooked despite pulling it out of the oven before what the recipe says. Maybe the fish pieces are not as thick...overall, the ginger consomme, the slight sweetness/bitterness of daikon, balanced well with the miso-mirin marinate.
The dessert was a chocolate terrine (from Thomas Keller's Bouchon book) with minor modification. We served it on a warm orange (zest only...not quite fruitless) creme Anglaise and garnished with toasted macadamia nuts. The warm orange creme Anglaise was a nice touch that balanced the rich chocolate terrine.
Overall, it was an adventurous dinner with a number of things that we have not tried making before. At the end the combinations worked but there was definitely room for improvement. Next time...