friends for dinner: 10 years in Oz celebration

Last weekend I had 8 friends over to celebrate my husband Paul’s 10 year anniversary of living in Australia. Paul is Dutch, and I met him in The Netherlands in 1995 when I was working over there. We both moved back to Australia on 19 September 1998 and married in March 1999.

In keeping with the reason for the celebration, I went with an Australian theme without making it too crass (it was a sit-down dinner party after all!). As is my philosophy with entertaining, almost everything was prepared in advance, leaving me free on the evening to enjoy the company of my guests.

For appetisers, we started with home made cheese biscuits, pastry cups filled with horseradish cream and rare roast beef, and green olive mayonnaise on mini-toasts. The cheese biscuits were cooked the previous days, and the pastry cups and mini-toasts (which were pre-purchased) were assembled just before the guests arrived. The only thing that needed to be attended to when the doorbell rang was to pop the champagne cork! It was an exceptionally warm September evening, so we were able to enjoy pre-dinner drinks and nibbles outside.

 
cheese biscuits
(click on photo to view larger image)

For entree, I served a Primavera (Spring) Salad of fresh new season asparagus, broad beans and baby peas with Tasmanian smoked salmon. The salad was prepared earlier in the day and at serving time I just needed to portion it and serve. Too easy.

Main course was a delicious marinated butterflied leg of lamb, cooked on the BBQ by husband Paul (who I might add has taken to this Aussie pastime exceedingly well in 10 years! If you look at his blog www.aussiebbq.info/wp you can see just how enthuiastic he is about BBQ-ing!) This was served with a Warm Tomato and Fennel Seed Salsa and a Cheesy Potato Gratin. I had my butcher butterfly the lamb and I then marinated it in rosemary, garlic and olive oil the evening before. On the evening it just needed 40 minutes on the BBQ. The Warm Tomato and Fennel Salsa was made earlier in the day and just required warming, as was the Cheesy Potato Gratin. Everyone agreed that the lamb was the best they had eaten in a long time!

I made 2 desserts, as my biggest fear as a host is that there is not going to be enough food to go around. So I chose argueably Australia’s most famous dessert, Pavlova, although this one I flavoured with hazlenuts and chocolate. The other dessert was a Tropical Trifle, with a coconut custard and mangoes, passionfruit and kiwifruit. Both desserts I had made the previous day, and the pavlova just needed filling at serving time.

A good time was had by all (as you can see by these photos) and probably too much wine was drunk. It was a perfect way to mark this special milestone, and the key to success was definitely in the advance preparation.

a good time was had by all!