JAYNA'S BDAY DINNER

Yes, once again I've forgotten to take pictures of a dinner that I've cooked. Well, not really forgotten than I didn't take pics cause I didn't want to destroy my camera like I did my last camera. Lucky thing for all of you that Big Ed loves to take pics and doumented all the food from last night's birthday dinner for Jayna.

When I asked Jayna what she wanted to eat for her bday dinner, she had two requests. No chicken (perhaps fish?) and apples. I knew we'd have a large number of guests for dinner, and fish is not the easiest thing to make for a lot of people. It has a tendency to overcook and then it tastes like crap. So I had to think of a way to cook a large amount of seafood for a crowd, and after surfing through epicurious, I decided on making a cioppino. (A fisherman's stew that was invented in SF). The recipe was pretty easy, and I liked the fact that it could be made the day before and finished the day of. And what to do with apples? Well, apple pie (or my favorite, a tarte tatin) seemed to be the easy answer. But i always gotta go the hard way and decided to make apple turnovers, again with a recipe from epicurious.

So here's a pic of the cioppino. I gotta say it turned out really well. I used a bunch of different seafood (ok, i gotta warn all of you that this does not qualify as cheap eats. Seafood is freaking expensive). And I went kinda nuts, buying scallops, tiger prawns and fish from Costco, clams and smaller shrimp from 88 and mussels from Shaws. I served this with a demi baguette from Costco and it was totally yummy. Ok, so I got bored on Monday night, and decided to make cupcakes as a second dessert. So here they are. Just boxed mixed, but still so yummy. Plus, who doesn't love a cupcake? Lastly, here is my apple turnover.Those also came out really well. But I gotta say, this was the most time consuming part of dinner. I had to make the filling and it took a lot of time to cube the 6 apples. Then you gotta cook the apples. Unlike the epicurious recipe, i wasn't planning on freezing the apple mixture, which meant that I had to thicken the sauce using some cornstarch. It turned out fine. Finally, i froze them overnight and stuck them into the oven while we were having our entrees. (Just like the Pepperidge Farm ones you buy in the supermarket). We still have a few in the freezer. I'm looking foward to eating one on a chilly fall night. Or maybe tonight.....I do love puff.

All in all dinner turned out great. I still love those recipes from epicurious and was happy to be able to throw Jayna a nice dinner for her bday.