Yona's Feast: AFMFL #3 Dinner Report

The close of a weekend and another night in laughter and food with friends.  My dear friend Yona had arrived in Bangkok the night before from East Timor, the small island that she calls home now with her fiance Sadar.  She had to be included in a feast but I knew she would be pretty full on this week with work and meetings so wanted to squeeze her in early to ensure she could come.  And what a feast it was:

Scallops and Shrimp on Skewers

Mushroom Rice with Tumeric

Zucchini and Tomatoes Gujarati Style

White Sea Bass a la Moutarde (in place of Flounder which I couldn't find)

This meal was a lot simpler than ones past and it came off pretty much without a hitch with the rice and zucchini dishes being made before Yona even arrived.  Much better planning this time.

The zucchini dish was a highly aromatic Indian spiced wonder, filling the kitchen with the smell of the western sub-continent.  Really quite easy after all the spices were mixed and didn't take long to make either, less than 20 minutes.

 

The yellow tumeric rice started out being browned raw in the pan with butter and mushrooms and then with broth brought to boil on the stove and then finally transferred lid and all into the oven to bake for exactly 17 minutes.  Well, that is until we took it out and X realized that the rice was still a bit hard.  So we improvised and poured some more broth in and continued to cook for low heat on the stove again, which solved the problem.

 

The skewered scallops and shrimps were one of my favorites, with the bread crumbs, partially browned and partially turned into a mush with the oil, garlic and butter.  Love this and also quite easy after you prepare the seafood and de-vein the shrimp, etc.  Cooked it for a shorter amount of time than recommended and watched it for burning, which it seemed to be easy to do as it called for high heat and very close to the element.

 

I think the fish won hands down with the diners, who included not only Yona, but also our perennial peanut gallery diner Craig (3 for 3 hello) and also X, who was able to dine in peace due to the early nature of the event and then go to work later.  Really good tender fish, not overwhelmed by the Dijon, mayonnaise, and chopped parsley smear that was on top of it.  I substituted white sea bass for the flounder, which I simply couldn't find in my supermarket.  No one complained one little bit.

 

Dessert was supplied by Yona in the form of (and my Thai friends please help correct me on this if I'm wrong) "look joop" which are miniature little "fruits" made of bean paste and sugar and then coated with what could only be described as a kind of gel or very strange rubbery liquid that hardens into an artistic rendering of whatever fruit or vegetable they are trying to present.  I particularly like the ear of corn with each kernel visible but I had eaten this one already before thinking to take a picture.

  

 Dinner was followed by a cheese course that featured Greek Feta, Italian Taleggio, and French Comte.   Again, other than barely nibbling the diners declined due to fullness.  I'm finding this is a recurring theme.  Nonetheless I enjoyed the course immensely and was pleased to find that both were recommended in my Cheese Primer book as fabulous with "big reds".  I think the Shiraz Grenache I was chuggin' fit the bill for "big red" and it was a gluttonous finish to yet another night of food orgies...