Just a little disclaimer! There's no recipe in this blog post. I'm just commemorating a very special event that has occurred recently in our lives.
The Boy turned 60 this year and I was very excited about the event and possibly a little concerned about his getting old! :-)
Originally, we had thought to invite a whole bunch of friends to a party to celebrate but the more we thought about it, the larger it was going to be and in the end, it was a case of - oh, if we invite so and so, then we HAVE to invite so and so too, and we couldn't possibly leave out so and so .... and it rapidly became HUGE and out of control.
We finally decided to scale it right back and similar to my 40th, we limited it to friends we had know for 10 years or more. Special friends whom we had shared many similar events with as well, and in general just kept it really low key. Some special friends came in from interstate for the evening and we had a special last minute visitor from The Boy's college visiting and we invited him along as well.
We decided to ask our favorite chef friend, Jay Huxley to cater the meal for us and The Boy pulled out wines to match the food.
Jay fixed an incredible menu for us and The Boy did a fine job matching wines. You can read about the wines for the night here.
When Jay asked me what I wanted for the menu, my response was "something fancy, modern Australian".
We had originally thought cocktail style food but Jay told me that we really needed a sit down meal to do the menu he had devised justice. This, of course, involved additional chairs and us squashing rather intimately around our dining room table, which only sat 8 people, since we ended up with 11 people for the evening.
Here's the incredible menu that we enjoyed for the evening.
- Tian of Alaskan King Crab, black caviar and radish
- Sousvide Pork Fillet, red cabbage, cauliflower purée and lentil pear salad
- Oyster and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil
- Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple
- Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk
- Charcoal octopus in romesco sauce and verde oil
- Confit duck in a mushroom, abalone and star anise consume
- Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro
- Spice poached pear crispy wonton, salted caramel and double cream
- Death by chocolate
I'm sorry that I don't have pictures of every single course. At some points in the evening, I got so excited (and just a little bit tipsy) that I forgot to take pictures of the food.
My favorite dish of the evening, if I had to pick on would be the vichy asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk. It was an incredibly decadent and sumptuous dish.
All in all, it was an amazing night of friendship, celebration, food and wine.
If you ever need a meal catered, I highly recommend Jay.
Ps. Jay is incredibly generous with his skills and knowledge and he will happily share with you his recipes if you ask. At the very least, that has been my experience with him. Whenever I've needed advice on something or a recipe for something he's cooked, he's been happy to share.
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