Happy birthday to me ... at Two Naughty Chooks

It was recently my birthday ... okay, not so recently, since this post is very belated, but I did have a birthday. :-) As with all birthdays, it is our tradition to go out for a nice meal to a restaurant of my choosing (for my birthday) - The Boy chooses for his birthday!

This year, I picked what is now my current favorite restaurant - Two Naughty Chooks.

We discovered this restaurant last year when we went to a wine tasting dinner, and discovered how amazing the chefs at the restaurant were. This restaurant is owned and run by a husband and wife chef team, Wayne and Brooke Dermody.

Wayne used to work at the Margan Winery restaurant, which is reputed to be a very good restaurant in the region, though now that Wayne is not there, I don't think the food is as good.

As with wine, you follow the winemaker, so too when it comes to chefs and restaurants ... follow the chef!

Two Naughty Chooks offers a wide range of meals on their menu and while it is easy to pick three or four courses from the menu, I prefer to let Wayne surprise me. Of course, everything that comes out, even when I order the "Chef's Choice" is cooked fresh and also from the menu.

This time we went with a four course meal with 2 entrees each, 1 main and 1 dessert.

For entrees, because there were 2 for each of us, it meant that we were able to try out 4 entrees from the menu and we got:

• Mushroom dumplings with sesame soy dressing and chilli jam
• Seared confit chicken wing with corn veloute and romesco
• Beef carpaccio with egg, Parmesan, almonds, pangratatto and truffle balsamic
• Pan roasted langoustine, chimichurri and toasted brioche

Needless to say, these were all sensational.

Mains again were a surprise, and we each got a different one. This is great because is means we get to share and taste each others meals too. We got:

• Lamb rump with cous cous, pearl onions, spinach and jus
• Brisk pastry wrapped ham hock with smoked onion puree and creamed leek

Of course, both extremely tasty.

By the time we got to dessert, we were both pretty full but we found some room for it. For dessert, we ended up with:

• Zokoko chocolate parfait with brownie, crunchy almonds, and milk and mint sorbet
• Banana creme brulee with choc hazelnut purr pastry

It was incredible meal and we thoroughly enjoyed it.

We have a wedding anniversary coming up, I wonder if we'll go there again. I'm sure the menu would have changed as we are getting into the winter season now. :-)

Also, if you've seen my recent blog post about a creamy chicken and truffle pasta, this is where I get my truffle stuff from.

Let me know if you have a favorite restaurant that you love to go to for special ocassions. Be sure to post pictures for me to see either on Instagram or on my Daz In The Kitchen Facebook page.


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Happy birthday to The Boy ... what incredible food we had!

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
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• Oyster and gin shooter, in tomato tea and basil oil
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• Smoked eel, jamon croquette with beetroot and apple
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• Vichy Asparagus with citrus and olive crumb and sousvide duck egg yolk
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• Charcoal octopus in romesco sauce and verde oil
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• Confit duck in a mushroom, abalone and star anise consume
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• Canon of saltbush lamb in minted pea soup and taro
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• Spice poached pear crispy wonton, salted caramel and double cream
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• 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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Moist orange and almond birthday cake

Looking at my blog archives tonight, I noticed that I have only posted 10 (11 including this one) blog posts this month compared to 43 in February, which is totally pathetic. My only excuse is that I have started working full time and I haven't been cooking as much at night or even doing dinner parties. It's no excuse, I know, but still ...

This month is my birthday month. Yeah, I'm a March baby. My birthday was a couple of weeks ago and The Boy treated me very well.

I had a pre-birthday dinner at our favorite pub - HUX @ Nortons, followed by a birthday lunch at our favorite seafood restaurant - Fish at the Rocks, and finally a post-birthday dinner with some friends at home, catered by the incredible Jay Huxley.

It was a lovely ride, of course. I love birthdays and I especially love my birthday. I get all silly and giddy about it being my birthday and The Boy knows how much I love it, so he makes a big fuss.

Each year, as a tradition, which we've done for many, many years now, we both take the day off work for the day of my birthday and we spend the day together. This year was no different, and thanks to a very understanding new boss, I got the day off.

The Boy took me to one of my favorite stores to let me pick out my birthday gift, which he had already decided on but wanted me to be happy with before he picked it up. Then lunch at our favorite seafood restaurant and a lovely night in just hanging out and enjoying each others' company. I even got an extra cuddle on account of it being my birthday.

The dinner which Jay catered was incredible and I'll share the photos from that dinner on another post. I really should have done that sooner but I've been remiss.

The Best Bud brought dessert which also doubled as my birthday cake - which is that lovely orange cake. It's an almond and orange cake and it is the most moist cake I have ever had. It was incredibly delicious too. I'm sorry that I do not have a recipe for this cake, since he bought it from a store, but you can probably find a whole host of recipes online. Plus, if your baking skills are even a little bit better than mine, you'll get pretty good results.

So that's it for a quick post because I wanted to actually mention my birthday during the month of my birthday. :-)


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