A Long Awaited Dinner Party

I have a long term blog friend, S., who lives

in Australia;

she and I have been emailing since about 2009, she's been

reading my blog I think since about 2008,

so a long time (she does not blog herself but emails

lovely encouraging emails and I treasure our correspondence!)

I sent her our Christmas card and letter this past year

and by January she was emailing me

to say that she and her sister R. were coming my way in May.

I was so excited!!!

So I said of course we must do a dinner party

and began planning...

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Appetizers before the meal

were pink-salted cashews and chocolate covered cherries

paired with yogurt cover cherries... 

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Here's the menu we had:

First course ~ mushroom soup:

See here for the recipe!

Second Course:

Roast Chicken, Potato, Onion & Goat Cheese Casserole

Roasted Beets, Salad, Fresh Cut Vegetables.

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In the far corner, you can see bright orange cut carrots

and a deep maroon , which are raw cut beets.

Mr. Husband loves his vegetables raw....

I roasted a chicken, 

having prepared it the day before,

and trussed it before roasting.
It's a wonderful dinner hosting secret to prepare
the chicken the day before, add more butter if needed
right before roasting and then enjoying the wonderful
scents of herb roasting chicken while
doing the rest of the dinner baking... 

Recipe here.

The lovely bottle of red wine was a gift 

from S and R who came to dinner!

The dishes used were my 

four white China plates, Johnson Brothers from England

with gold rims that I call my Theophany dishes.

Also used were the gold rimmed bowls I got during that time

and the two pretty bowls that Mr. Husband had found

some years before I knew him.

They set such a pretty table...

I roasted beets the way I have for years,

and I had found a clear balsamic vinegar to use again for them,

like years ago ~ see here for the recipe. 

It made such a pretty table!

Of course I used the silver plated cutlery 

Mr. Husband and I had found at the rummage sale

when we were first married.... 

A salad with shaved carrots and red peppers...

The thick pillar candle I got in Ottawa for

Mr. Husband's birthday party...

I wanted everything to be beautiful for it and I thank God

we were able to have it!

The Potato, Onion & Cheese casserole,

it's so creamy and warm and with the

fried onions with thyme,

a real winner!

Recipe here. 

It was a very satisfying meal.

And even better was all the wonderful dinner conversation...

We talked about so much,

the changes in churches and culture,
concerns about some of these changes,... 

...we talked of how many of these changes lead both my friend

Mr. Husband and myself to Orthodoxy, 

which is a Church Home that continues to feed us... 

We talked about books, Persian culture, traveling to see

culture and cultures, Elizabeth Goudge, Lewis and Tolkien,

Dickens, to mystery novelists including PD James,

the Brother Cadfael books, Amanda Cross and the riots of 1968,

of beauty, solitude, of history...

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It was most delightful;

what I would call a real meeting of the minds

and of ones that find themselves more closely aligned on so many levels

that had never even been touched on before...

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And for me I felt at home in a different way form them as well,

as they are from a Commonwealth Country like I lived in before

moving here, for me Canada, for them Australia...

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Before we had dessert, as in the third course of the evening,

we broke for a tour of our condo that I still think of 

in part more as an apartment, like apartments should be...

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We had a great time looking at icons first and last

enjoying our library and discussing various books there in...

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And then we went on to dessert...

I made the strawberry lemon cake

for the second time!

It turned out well, recipe here.

It was really fun to decorate! 

We also had our choice of gelatos....

and lastly, 

 the leftover strawberries with cream,

to top off the end to a lovely evening and 

dinner party.

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It was a dinner party and visit that I would of loved to have

again and again!

A Delicious (Russian) Mushroom Soup

Two Sundays ago,

I had a long awaited dinner party,

that I had been planning since January

and was so excited about.

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I am going to blog about the things I made for it 

before publishing the post

with the dinner all put together.

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This meal took a good deal of planning

and I enjoyed every minute of it.

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It took me about 2.5 days to prepare everything,

with a very full Saturday of cooking and baking.

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The first course of this meal

was a wonderful mushroom soup.

The inspiration for the choice of this soup

is from the wonderful dinner party 

that I'd been at in the Theophany season of 2014 

for our house blessing dinner...

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I emailed my dear local friend about the recipe and she sent me

various options and these words:

I never add potatoes.  They do add some body though.  Instead, after heating the fat (butter, oil, whatever you're using) I add about a tablespoon of AP flour, whisk to blend on low/med heat, cook about 2 minutes whisking slowly all the while, then slowly add the broth/liquid you're using.  

This will add body.

For rehydrating the mushrooms, I cover them (just) with boiling water and let them sit (covering the bowl also) for about an hour or two.  They'll soften further when sauteed.  Save the excess water and add it to your broth!

I prefer to season with either dill or thyme...in happy quantities.  :) 

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I choose the recipe that was closest to the one she uses and adapted it to what I had in the house:

Ingredients:

1 onion, chopped

{I may have used two onions}

1 medium carrot, peeled and shredded

1 celery stick, chopped (optional)

1 garlic clove, coarsely chopped

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 Tbsp. butter

{I think I tripled the butter used}

{I used 3 large portobella mushroom tops and

some dried mushrooms from outside of Rome that my 

local friend N had given us from where St. Benedict had lived...

see top of this blog post for how to rehydrate them}

8 oz. fresh wild mushrooms

1/2 cup barley

5 cups vegetable stock

3 Tbsp. scallions, chopped

salt and freshly ground pepper

sour cream for serving (optional)

fresh herbs for serving

The items above that I struck through I did not have in the house.

I forgot about the flour tip (see above) from my friend and at the last minute

I took some of the broth after mixing some flour and butter in a small

sauce pan, and mixed it together and then added it to the soup.

Worked Perfectly! 

I also added a good deal of dried ground thyme,

which worked was the perfect herb for this soup!

I added the thyme, salt and pepper at the end...

(I used fresh ground salt and added kosher salt until

the taste was right and full bodied one}

It made a full soup tureen full!

Directions:

Heat the oil and butter in a large pan until foaming. Add the onion, celery, carrot, and garlic, and cook gently for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until softened but not colored.

Chop or thinly slice the fresh mushrooms and add to the pan. Stir over a medium heat for a few minutes until they begin to soften. Pour in the vegetable stock and bring to the boil. Add the barley, salt and pepper. Lower the heat, half-cover the pan and simmer gently for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

{As mentioned I above I added the flour/butter/broth mixture at the end

as well as the seasonings} 

Add the chopped scallions, taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve hot with sour cream, garnish with fresh herbs.

~from Russian Monday: "Gribnoy Soup" - Mushroom Barley Soup

with my and my friend N's modifications

As this soup was the first of three courses,

I did not fill the soup bowl up but

rather gave a modest portion for enjoyment and taste!

I did find that while the soup was hot in the

soup tureen, the sour cream did cool the soup down

quite a bit.

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It was very good and with the sour cream as a cooling

factor, this soup can work well both in winter and summer.